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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Twice-Told Tales
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: October 11, 2004 [eBook #13707]
+[Most recently updated: May 19, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Rick Niles, John Hagerson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE-TOLD TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+TWICE-TOLD TALES
+
+by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+
+PHILADELPHIA:
+DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER,
+23 SOUTH NINTH STREET
+
+1889
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ THE GRAY CHAMPION
+ SUNDAY AT HOME
+ THE WEDDING-KNELL
+ THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL
+ THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT
+ THE GENTLE BOY
+ MR. HIGGINBOTHAM’S CATASTROPHE
+ LITTLE ANNIE’S RAMBLE
+ WAKEFIELD
+ A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP
+ THE GREAT CARBUNCLE
+ THE PROPHETIC PICTURES
+ DAVID SWAN
+ SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE
+ THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS
+ THE TOLL-GATHERER’S DAY
+ THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN
+ FANCY’S SHOW-BOX
+ DR. HEIDEGGER’S EXPERIMENT
+ LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE:
+     I. HOWE’S MASQUERADE
+     II. EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT
+     III. LADY ELEANORE’S MANTLE
+     IV. OLD ESTHER DUDLEY
+ THE HAUNTED MIND
+ THE VILLAGE UNCLE
+ THE AMBITIOUS GUEST
+ THE SISTER-YEARS
+ SNOWFLAKES
+ THE SEVEN VAGABONDS
+ THE WHITE OLD MAID
+ PETER GOLDTHWAITE’S TREASURE
+ CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL
+ THE SHAKER BRIDAL
+ NIGHT-SKETCHES
+ ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS
+ THE LILY’S QUEST
+ FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE
+ EDWARD FANE’S ROSEBUD
+ THE THREEFOLD DESTINY
+
+
+
+
+Twice-Told Tales
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY CHAMPION
+
+
+There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual
+pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on
+the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the
+Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a
+harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger
+our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a
+single characteristic of tyranny—a governor and council holding office
+from the king and wholly independent of the country; laws made and
+taxes levied without concurrence of the people, immediate or by their
+representatives; the rights of private citizens violated and the titles
+of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by
+restrictions on the press; and finally, disaffection overawed by the
+first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For
+two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial
+love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the
+mother-country, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector
+or popish monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had
+been merely nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying
+far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects
+of Great Britain.
+
+At length a rumor reached our shores that the prince of Orange had
+ventured on an enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of
+civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was but
+a doubtful whisper; it might be false or the attempt might fail, and in
+either case the man that stirred against King James would lose his
+head. Still, the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people
+smiled mysteriously in the streets and threw bold glances at their
+oppressors, while far and wide there was a subdued and silent
+agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from
+its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to
+avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm
+their despotism by yet harsher measures.
+
+One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite
+councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the
+governor’s guard and made their appearance in the streets of Boston.
+The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the drum
+at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets less as the
+martial music of the soldiers than as a muster-call to the inhabitants
+themselves. A multitude by various avenues assembled in King street,
+which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterward, of
+another encounter between the troops of Britain and a people struggling
+against her tyranny.
+
+Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the Pilgrims came, this
+crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features
+of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency
+than on happier occasions. There was the sober garb, the general
+severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural
+forms of speech and the confidence in Heaven’s blessing on a righteous
+cause which would have marked a band of the original Puritans when
+threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet time
+for the old spirit to be extinct, since there were men in the street
+that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees before a house was
+reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old soldiers of the
+Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their
+aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here,
+also, were the veterans of King Philip’s war, who had burned villages
+and slaughtered young and old with pious fierceness while the godly
+souls throughout the land were helping them with prayer. Several
+ministers were scattered among the crowd, which, unlike all other mobs,
+regarded them with such reverence as if there were sanctity in their
+very garments. These holy men exerted their influence to quiet the
+people, but not to disperse them.
+
+Meantime, the purpose of the governor in disturbing the peace of the
+town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country
+into a ferment was almost the Universal subject of inquiry, and
+variously explained.
+
+“Satan will strike his master-stroke presently,” cried some, “because
+he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be
+dragged to prison. We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King
+street.”
+
+Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their
+minister, who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic
+dignity, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of his
+profession—a crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied at that period
+that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place
+of that worthy in the _Primer_.
+
+“The pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew,” cried
+others. “We are to be massacred, man and male-child.”
+
+Neither was this rumor wholly discredited; although the wiser class
+believed the governor’s object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor
+under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first
+settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing
+that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade of
+military force and to confound the opposite faction by possessing
+himself of their chief.
+
+“Stand firm for the old charter-governor!” shouted the crowd, seizing
+upon the idea—“the good old Governor Bradstreet!”
+
+While this cry was at the loudest the people were surprised by the
+well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly
+ninety, who appeared on the elevated steps of a door and with
+characteristic mildness besought them to submit to the constituted
+authorities.
+
+“My children,” concluded this venerable person, “do nothing rashly. Cry
+not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England and expect patiently
+what the Lord will do in this matter.”
+
+The event was soon to be decided. All this time the roll of the drum
+had been approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with
+reverberations from house to house and the regular tramp of martial
+footsteps it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made
+their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with
+shouldered matchlocks and matches burning, so as to present a row of
+fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a
+machine that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
+moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a
+party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros,
+elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favorite
+councillors and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand
+rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that “blasted wretch,” as Cotton
+Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient government
+and was followed with a sensible curse-through life and to his grave.
+On the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he
+rode along. Dudley came behind with a downcast look, dreading, as well
+he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him,
+their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native
+land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor and two or three civil
+officers under the Crown were also there. But the figure which most
+attracted the public eye and stirred up the deepest feeling was the
+Episcopal clergyman of King’s Chapel riding haughtily among the
+magistrates in his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of
+prelacy and persecution, the union of Church and State, and all those
+abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another
+guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.
+
+The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its
+moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the
+nature of things and the character of the people—on one side the
+religious multitude with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the
+other the group of despotic rulers with the high churchman in the midst
+and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad,
+flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority and scoffing at the
+universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
+deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience
+could be secured.
+
+“O Lord of hosts,” cried a voice among the crowd, “provide a champion
+for thy people!”
+
+This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald’s cry to
+introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were
+now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the
+soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The
+intervening space was empty—a paved solitude between lofty edifices
+which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen
+the figure of an ancient man who seemed to have emerged from among the
+people and was walking by himself along the centre of the street to
+confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress—a dark cloak and
+a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years before,
+with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist
+the tremulous gait of age.
+
+When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
+round, displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable
+by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at
+once of encouragement and warning, then turned again and resumed his
+way.
+
+“Who is this gray patriarch?” asked the young men of their sires.
+
+“Who is this venerable brother?” asked the old men among themselves.
+
+But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of
+fourscore years and upward, were disturbed, deeming it strange that
+they should forget one of such evident authority whom they must have
+known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop and all the old
+councillors, giving laws and making prayers and leading them against
+the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with
+locks as gray in their youth as their own were now. And the young! How
+could he have passed so utterly from their memories—that hoary sire,
+the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely
+been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood?
+
+“Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?”
+whispered the wondering crowd.
+
+Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
+solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
+advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
+ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the
+decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in
+gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior’s step,
+keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one
+side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other,
+till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped
+his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader’s
+truncheon.
+
+“Stand!” cried he.
+
+The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal
+of that voice—fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
+raised to God in prayer—were irresistible. At the old man’s word and
+outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the
+advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
+multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
+gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some
+old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor’s drum had
+summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and
+looked for the deliverance of New England.
+
+The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
+brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
+have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the
+hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his
+severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it
+sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old
+man was chief ruler there, and that the governor and council with
+soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of
+the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
+
+“What does this old fellow here?” cried Edward Randolph, fiercely.—“On,
+Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
+choice that you give all his countrymen—to stand aside or be trampled
+on.”
+
+“Nay, nay! Let us show respect to the good grandsire,” said Bullivant,
+laughing. “See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary who hath
+lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of
+times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
+Noll’s name.”
+
+“Are you mad, old man?” demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
+tones. “How dare you stay the march of King James’s governor?”
+
+“I have stayed the march of a king himself ere now,” replied the gray
+figure, with stern composure. “I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry
+of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and,
+beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
+appear once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And
+what speak ye of James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the
+throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in
+this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou
+that wast a governor, back! With this night thy power is ended.
+To-morrow, the prison! Back, lest I foretell the scaffold!”
+
+The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the words
+of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
+unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago. But
+his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly
+without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street into
+deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast
+his hard and cruel eye over the multitude and beheld them burning with
+that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench, and again he
+fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in an open space
+where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts
+he uttered no word which might discover, but, whether the oppressor
+were overawed by the Gray Champion’s look or perceived his peril in the
+threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back and
+ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before
+another sunset the governor and all that rode so proudly with him were
+prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated King
+William was proclaimed throughout New England.
+
+But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops had
+gone from King street and the people were thronging tumultuously in
+their rear, Bradstreet, the aged governor, was seen to embrace a form
+more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed that while they
+marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man had faded
+from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till where
+he stood there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape
+was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance in
+sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his
+funeral passed nor where his gravestone was.
+
+And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the
+records of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too
+mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times for its humbling
+lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard
+that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of
+their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he
+walked once more in King street. Five years later, in the twilight of
+an April morning, he stood on the green beside the meeting-house at
+Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a slab of slate inlaid
+commemorates the first-fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers
+were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker’s Hill, all through that night
+the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be ere he comes
+again! His hour is one of darkness and adversity and peril. But should
+domestic tyranny oppress us or the invader’s step pollute our soil,
+still may the Gray Champion come! for he is the type of New England’s
+hereditary spirit, and his shadowy march on the eve of danger must ever
+be the pledge that New England’s sons will vindicate their ancestry.
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY AT HOME
+
+
+Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to
+watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my
+chamber window. First the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter
+lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower
+and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to
+the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now
+the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
+At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the
+stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing with fresh
+radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the
+nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same sun brightens
+it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of
+brightness for the Sabbath.
+
+By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for the
+edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and
+its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and
+somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our
+thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind
+comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small
+concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few
+that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate
+and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the
+hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither have gladness
+and festivity found a better utterance than by its tongue; and when the
+dead are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy
+voice to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human
+interests, what a moral loneliness on week-days broods round about its
+stately height! It has no kindred with the houses above which it
+towers; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare—the lonelier because
+the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body
+of the church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of distant
+windows, amid refracted shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty
+galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit and the clock which
+tells to solitude how time is passing. Time—where man lives not—what is
+it but eternity? And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up
+throughout the week all thoughts and feelings that have reference to
+eternity, until the holy day comes round again to let them forth. Might
+not, then, its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town,
+with space for old trees to wave around it and throw their solemn
+shadows over a quiet green? We will say more of this hereafter.
+
+But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a
+holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices
+on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business
+anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether
+I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across
+the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the
+figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the
+Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions—and this
+among them—are the shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit around me
+or seem to close their evil wings and settle down, but so long as I
+imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven retains its
+sanctity on the Sabbath—while that blessed sunshine lives within
+me—never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If it have
+gone astray, it will return again.
+
+I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind
+the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot so near
+the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple
+should be deemed consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it
+said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil
+one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has no such
+holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency. It must suffice
+that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church,
+while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats have left
+their souls at home. But I am there even before my friend the sexton.
+At length he comes—a man of kindly but sombre aspect, in dark gray
+clothes, and hair of the same mixture. He comes and applies his key to
+the wide portal. Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews or
+ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again to enjoy
+the music of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too! All the steeples in
+town are talking together aloft in the sunny air and rejoicing among
+themselves while their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here are the
+children assembling to the Sabbath-school, which is kept somewhere
+within the church. Often, while looking at the arched portal, I have
+been gladdened by the sight of a score of these little girls and boys
+in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks bursting suddenly forth into
+the sunshine like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been shut up in
+the solemn gloom. Or I might compare them to cherubs haunting that holy
+place.
+
+About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell
+individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is
+invariably an old woman in black whose bent frame and rounded shoulders
+are evidently laden with some heavy affliction which she is eager to
+rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as often, for
+the sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is an elderly man, also, who
+arrives in good season and leans against the corner of the tower, just
+within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a darksome brow. I
+sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of the two. After
+these, others drop in singly and by twos and threes, either
+disappearing through the doorway or taking their stand in its vicinity.
+At last, and always with an unexpected sensation, the bell turns in the
+steeple overhead and throws out an irregular clangor, jarring the tower
+to its foundation. As if there were magic in the sound, the sidewalks
+of the street, both up and down along, are immediately thronged with
+two long lines of people, all converging hitherward and streaming into
+the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of a coach draws nearer—a deeper
+thunder by its contrast with the surrounding stillness—until it sets
+down the wealthy worshippers at the portal among their humblest
+brethren. Beyond that entrance—in theory, at least—there are no
+distinctions of earthly rank; nor, indeed, by the goodly apparel which
+is flaunting in the sun would there seem to be such on the hither side.
+Those pretty girls! Why will they disturb my pious meditations? Of all
+days in the week, they should strive to look least fascinating on the
+Sabbath, instead of heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival
+the blessed angels and keep our thoughts from heaven. Were I the
+minister himself, I must needs look. One girl is white muslin from the
+waist upward and black silk downward to her slippers; a second blushes
+from top-knot to shoe-tie, one universal scarlet; another shines of a
+pervading yellow, as if she had made a garment of the sunshine. The
+greater part, however, have adopted a milder cheerfulness of hue. Their
+veils, especially when the wind raises them, give a lightness to the
+general effect and make them appear like airy phantoms as they flit up
+the steps and vanish into the sombre doorway. Nearly all—though it is
+very strange that I should know it—wear white stockings, white as snow,
+and neat slippers laced crosswise with black ribbon pretty high above
+the ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effective than a black
+one.
+
+Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe simplicity,
+needing no black silk gown to denote his office. His aspect claims my
+reverence, but cannot win my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter
+keeping fast the gate of Heaven and frowning, more stern than pitiful,
+on the wretched applicants, that face should be my study. By middle
+age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought upon the heart or been
+attempered by it. As the minister passes into the church the bell holds
+its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the congregation dies away.
+The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then at my
+window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he
+has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies
+asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me,
+and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. Oh,
+I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising congregation
+reaches my ears. They are standing up to pray. Could I bring my heart
+into unison with those who are praying in yonder church and lift it
+heavenward with a fervor of supplication, but no distinct request,
+would not that be the safest kind of prayer?—“Lord, look down upon me
+in mercy!” With that sentiment gushing from my soul, might I not leave
+all the rest to him?
+
+Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I can
+enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir and
+the massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me. At
+this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my
+heart-strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be
+praised! I know nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate
+harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse’s lullaby.
+The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful
+echoes till I start from my reverie and find that the sermon has
+commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify in a regular way by
+any but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher
+utters gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward step by
+step quite out of hearing of the good man’s voice unless he be indeed a
+son of thunder. At my open window, catching now and then a sentence of
+the “parson’s saw,” I am as well situated as at the foot of the pulpit
+stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this one discourse will
+be the texts of many sermons preached by those colleague
+pastors—colleagues, but often disputants—my Mind and Heart. The former
+pretends to be a scholar and perplexes me with doctrinal points; the
+latter takes me on the score of feeling; and both, like several other
+preachers, spend their strength to very little purpose. I, their sole
+auditor, cannot always understand them.
+
+Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my
+curtain just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour-hand
+on the dial has passed beyond four o’clock. The declining sun is hidden
+behind the steeple and throws its shadow straight across the street; so
+that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the church door all
+is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A
+commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down and the pew doors thrown
+back; a multitude of feet are trampling along the unseen aisles, and
+the congregation bursts suddenly through the portal. Foremost scampers
+a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and dark phalanx of grown
+men, and lastly a crowd of females with young children and a few
+scattered husbands. This instantaneous outbreak of life into loneliness
+is one of the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good people
+are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they have been wrapped,
+as it were, in a sort of holy trance by the fervor of their devotion.
+There is a young man, a third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always
+to flourish a white handkerchief and brush the seat of a tight pair of
+black silk pantaloons which shine as if varnished. They must have been
+made of the stuff called “everlasting,” or perhaps of the same piece as
+Christian’s garments in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, for he put them on
+two summers ago and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a
+great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But now, with nods and
+greetings among friends, each matron takes her husband’s arm and paces
+gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging
+sunset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve
+of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here, with
+faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable
+gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his severe
+visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the most
+captivating picture of bliss in heaven is “There we shall be white!”
+
+All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now,
+attuning its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ.
+Who are the choristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down from
+heaven this blessed morn to blend themselves with the worship of the
+truly good are playing and singing their farewell to the earth. On the
+wings of that rich melody they were borne upward.
+
+This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the
+singing-men and singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and
+raised their voices fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ.
+Yet it lifted my soul higher than all their former strains. They are
+gone—the sons and daughters of Music—and the gray sexton is just
+closing the portal. For six days more there will be no face of man in
+the pews and aisles and galleries, nor a voice in the pulpit, nor music
+in the choir. Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice to be a
+desert in the heart of the town and populous only for a few hours of
+each seventh day? Oh, but the church is a symbol of religion. May its
+site, which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was felled,
+be kept holy for ever, a spot of solitude and peace amid the trouble
+and vanity of our week-day world! There is a moral, and a religion too,
+even in the silent walls. And may the steeple still point heavenward
+and be decked with the hallowed sunshine of the Sabbath morn!
+
+
+
+
+THE WEDDING-KNELL
+
+
+There is a certain church, in the city of New York which I have always
+regarded with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there
+solemnized under very singular circumstances in my grandmother’s
+girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene,
+and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now
+standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred I
+am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would it be worth while to
+correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error by reading the date of
+its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church
+surrounded by an enclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear
+urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the
+tributes of private affection or more splendid memorials of historic
+dust. With such a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath
+its tower, one would be willing to connect some legendary interest.
+
+The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement,
+though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady’s part and
+forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr.
+Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all men
+who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions a
+vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always an
+indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of
+public advantage or personal ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and
+fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable
+relaxation in his behalf of the common rules of society. In truth,
+there were so many anomalies in his character, and, though shrinking
+with diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been his fatality
+so often to become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of
+conduct, that people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of
+insanity. But there was no need of this. His caprices had their origin
+in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose, and in
+feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food. If he were
+mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless and
+abortive life.
+
+The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom in
+everything but age as can well be conceived. Compelled to relinquish
+her first engagement, she had been united to a man of twice her own
+years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and by whose death she was
+left in possession of a splendid fortune. A Southern gentleman
+considerably younger than herself succeeded to her hand and carried her
+to Charleston, where after many uncomfortable years she found herself
+again a widow. It would have been singular if any uncommon delicacy of
+feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney’s; it could not
+but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment, the cold duty of
+her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart’s principles
+consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her Southern
+husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea of his
+death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was that wisest but
+unloveliest variety of woman, a philosopher, bearing troubles of the
+heart with equanimity, dispensing with all that should have been her
+happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in most matters,
+the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one frailty that made
+her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not remain beautiful by
+proxy in the person of a daughter; she therefore refused to grow old
+and ugly on any consideration; she struggled with Time, and held fast
+her roses in spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared to have
+relinquished the spoil as not worth the trouble of acquiring it.
+
+The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such an
+unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney’s
+return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones,
+seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive
+part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of expediency
+which she would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood,
+and there was just the specious phantom of sentiment and romance in
+this late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a fool of a
+woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of life. All
+the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly wisdom and
+agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been induced to take a
+measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But while people talked
+the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnized according to
+the Episcopalian forms and in open church, with a degree of publicity
+that attracted many spectators, who occupied the front seats of the
+galleries and the pews near the altar and along the broad aisle. It had
+been arranged, or possibly it was the custom of the day, that the
+parties should proceed separately to church. By some accident the
+bridegroom was a little less punctual than the widow and her bridal
+attendants, with whose arrival, after this tedious but necessary
+preface, the action of our tale may be said to commence.
+
+The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were heard, and the
+gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal-party came through the church
+door with the sudden and gladsome effect of a burst of sunshine. The
+whole group, except the principal figure, was made up of youth and
+gayety. As they streamed up the broad aisle, while the pews and pillars
+seemed to brighten on either side, their steps were as buoyant as if
+they mistook the church for a ball-room and were ready to dance hand in
+hand to the altar. So brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice
+of a singular phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the moment
+when the bride’s foot touched the threshold the bell swung heavily in
+the tower above her and sent forth its deepest knell. The vibrations
+died away, and returned with prolonged solemnity as she entered the
+body of the church.
+
+“Good heavens! What an omen!” whispered a young lady to her lover.
+
+“On my honor,” replied the gentleman, “I believe the bell has the good
+taste to toll of its own accord. What has she to do with weddings? If
+you, dearest Julia, were approaching the altar, the bell would ring out
+its merriest peal. It has only a funeral-knell for her.”
+
+The bride and most of her company had been too much occupied with the
+bustle of entrance to hear the first boding stroke of the bell—or, at
+least, to reflect on the singularity of such a welcome to the altar.
+They therefore continued to advance with undiminished gayety. The
+gorgeous dresses of the time—the crimson velvet coats, the gold-laced
+hats, the hoop-petticoats, the silk, satin, brocade and embroidery, the
+buckles, canes and swords, all displayed to the best advantage on
+persons suited to such finery—made the group appear more like a
+bright-colored picture than anything real. But by what perversity of
+taste had the artist represented his principal figure as so wrinkled
+and decayed, while yet he had decked her out in the brightest splendor
+of attire, as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into age
+and become a moral to the beautiful around her? On they went, however,
+and had glittered along about a third of the aisle, when another stroke
+of the bell seemed to fill the church with a visible gloom, dimming and
+obscuring the bright-pageant till it shone forth again as from a mist.
+
+This time the party wavered, stopped and huddled closer together, while
+a slight scream was heard from some of the ladies and a confused
+whispering among the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might
+have been fancifully compared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly
+shaken by a puff of wind which threatened to scatter the leaves of an
+old brown, withered rose on the same stalk with two dewy buds, such
+being the emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But
+her heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible
+shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her heart;
+then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in dismay, she
+took the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell continued to
+swing, strike and vibrate with the same doleful regularity as when a
+corpse is on its way to the tomb.
+
+“My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken,” said the
+widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. “But so many
+weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and
+yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under
+such different auspices.”
+
+“Madam,” answered the rector, in great perplexity, “this strange
+occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of the famous Bishop
+Taylor wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe
+that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he seems to hang the
+bridal-chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a
+coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse
+something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, so to keep death
+in mind while contracting that engagement which is life’s chiefest
+business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this
+funeral-knell.”
+
+But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener
+point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the
+mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a
+marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken
+only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the
+wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were
+disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
+have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth. The
+widow’s glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a window of
+the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that she had
+dedicated to her first husband; then her eyelids dropped over their
+faded orbs and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another grave.
+Two buried men with a voice at her ear and a cry afar off were calling
+her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth of feeling,
+she thought how much happier had been her fate if, after years of
+bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral and she were followed
+to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover, long her
+husband. But why had she returned to him when their cold hearts shrank
+from each other’s embrace?
+
+Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to
+fade in the air. A whisper, communicated from those who stood nearest
+the windows, now spread through the church: a hearse with a train of
+several coaches was creeping along the street, conveying some dead man
+to the churchyard, while the bride awaited a living one at the altar.
+Immediately after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends were
+heard at the door. The widow looked down the aisle and clenched the arm
+of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand with such unconscious
+violence that the fair girl trembled.
+
+“You frighten me, my dear madam,” cried she. “For heaven’s sake, what
+is the matter?”
+
+“Nothing, my dear—nothing,” said the widow; then, whispering close to
+her ear, “There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of. I am
+expecting my bridegroom to come into the church with my two first
+husbands for groomsmen.”
+
+“Look! look!” screamed the bridemaid. “What is here? The funeral!”
+
+As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. First came an old
+man and woman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head to
+foot in the deepest black, all but their pale features and hoary hair,
+he leaning on a staff and supporting her decrepit form with his
+nerveless arm. Behind appeared another and another pair, as aged, as
+black and mournful as the first. As they drew near the widow recognized
+in every face some trait of former friends long forgotten, but now
+returning as if from their old graves to warn her to prepare a shroud,
+or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles and
+infirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens of her own
+decay. Many a merry night had she danced with them in youth, and now in
+joyless age she felt that some withered partner should request her hand
+and all unite in a dance of death to the music of the funeral-bell.
+
+While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed
+that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe as
+some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full in
+sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid
+stare, and a young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the
+laughter on her lips. When the spectral procession approached the
+altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in the centre
+appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with all this gloomy
+pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his
+shroud.
+
+No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like
+aspect. The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all
+else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
+The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that
+seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the
+air while he spoke.
+
+“Come, my bride!” said those pale lips. “The hearse is ready; the
+sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us be
+married, and then to our coffins!”
+
+How shall the widow’s horror be represented? It gave her the
+ghastliness of a dead man’s bride. Her youthful friends stood apart,
+shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom and herself; the
+whole scene expressed by the strongest imagery the vain struggle of the
+gilded vanities of this world when opposed to age, infirmity, sorrow
+and death.
+
+The awestruck silence was first broken by the clergyman.
+
+“Mr. Ellenwood,” said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of authority,
+“you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by the unusual
+circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must be deferred.
+As an old friend, let me entreat you to return home.”
+
+“Home—yes; but not without my bride,” answered he, in the same hollow
+accents. “You deem this mockery—perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my
+aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my
+withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have been mockery
+or madness; but now let young and old declare which of us has come
+hither without a wedding-garment—the bridegroom or the bride.”
+
+He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside the widow,
+contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
+glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None
+that beheld them could deny the terrible strength of the moral which
+his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.
+
+“Cruel! cruel!” groaned the heartstricken bride.
+
+“Cruel?” repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a wild
+bitterness, “Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the other! In
+youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took away
+all the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality enough
+even to grieve at—with only a pervading gloom, through which I walked
+wearily and cared not whither. But after forty years, when I have built
+my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting there—no, not for
+such a life as we once pictured—you call me to the altar. At your
+summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your youth, your
+beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed your life.
+What is there for me but your decay and death? And therefore I have
+bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the sexton’s deepest knell,
+and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a burial-service, that we
+may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre and enter it together.”
+
+It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion
+in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. The stern
+lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She
+seized the bridegroom’s hand.
+
+“Yes!” cried she; “let us wed even at the door of the sepulchre. My
+life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is one
+true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth: it makes me worthy of
+you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for eternity.”
+
+With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while
+a tear was gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human feeling
+from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear, even with
+his shroud.
+
+“Beloved of my youth,” said he, “I have been wild. The despair of my
+whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me. Forgive and be
+forgiven. Yes; it is evening with us now, and we have realized none of
+our morning dreams of happiness. But let us join our hands before the
+altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through life,
+yet who meet again as they are leaving it and find their earthly
+affection changed into something holy as religion. And what is time to
+the married of eternity?”
+
+Amid the tears of many and a swell of exalted sentiment in those who
+felt aright was solemnized the union of two immortal souls. The train
+of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale
+features of the aged bride and the death-bell tolling through the whole
+till its deep voice overpowered the marriage-words,—all marked the
+funeral of earthly hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as
+if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene, poured forth an
+anthem, first mingling with the dismal knell, then rising to a loftier
+strain, till the soul looked down upon its woe. And when the awful rite
+was finished and with cold hand in cold hand the married of eternity
+withdrew, the organ’s peal of solemn triumph drowned the wedding-knell.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL
+
+A PARABLE[1]
+
+The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house pulling lustily
+at the bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along the
+street. Children with bright faces tripped merrily beside their parents
+or mimicked a graver gait in the conscious dignity of their Sunday
+clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and
+fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week-days.
+When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to
+toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper’s door. The
+first glimpse of the clergyman’s figure was the signal for the bell to
+cease its summons.
+
+“But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?” cried the sexton,
+in astonishment.
+
+All within hearing immediately turned about and beheld the semblance of
+Mr. Hooper pacing slowly his meditative way toward the meeting-house.
+With one accord they started, expressing more wonder than if some
+strange minister were coming to dust the cushions of Mr. Hooper’s
+pulpit.
+
+“Are you sure it is our parson?” inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton.
+
+“Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper,” replied the sexton. “He was to
+have exchanged pulpits with Parson Shute of Westbury, but Parson Shute
+sent to excuse himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral sermon.”
+
+The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight. Mr.
+Hooper, a gentlemanly person of about thirty, though still a bachelor,
+was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had
+starched his band and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday’s garb.
+There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about his
+forehead and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his
+breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed to
+consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his features
+except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight
+further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate
+things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper walked onward
+at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking on the ground,
+as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his
+parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps. But so
+wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met with a return.
+
+“I can’t really feel as if good Mr. Hooper’s face was behind that piece
+of crape,” said the sexton.
+
+“I don’t like it,” muttered an old woman as she hobbled into the
+meeting-house. “He has changed himself into something awful only by
+hiding his face.”
+
+“Our parson has gone mad!” cried Goodman Gray, following him across the
+threshold.
+
+A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into
+the meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could refrain
+from twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright and
+turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon the
+seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a general
+bustle, a rustling of the women’s gowns and shuffling of the men’s
+feet, greatly at variance with that hushed repose which should attend
+the entrance of the minister. But Mr. Hooper appeared not to notice the
+perturbation of his people. He entered with an almost noiseless step,
+bent his head mildly to the pews on each side and bowed as he passed
+his oldest parishioner, a white-haired great-grandsire, who occupied an
+arm-chair in the centre of the aisle. It was strange to observe how
+slowly this venerable man became conscious of something singular in the
+appearance of his pastor. He seemed not fully to partake of the
+prevailing wonder till Mr. Hooper had ascended the stairs and showed
+himself in the pulpit, face to face with his congregation except for
+the black veil. That mysterious emblem was never once withdrawn. It
+shook with his measured breath as he gave out the psalm, it threw its
+obscurity between him and the holy page as he read the Scriptures, and
+while he prayed the veil lay heavily on his uplifted countenance. Did
+he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was addressing?
+
+Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape that more than one
+woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet
+perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to
+the minister as his black veil to them.
+
+Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic
+one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive
+influences rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the
+word. The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same
+characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his pulpit
+oratory, but there was something either in the sentiment of the
+discourse itself or in the imagination of the auditors which made it
+greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their
+pastor’s lips. It was tinged rather more darkly than usual with the
+gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament. The subject had reference to
+secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and
+dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even
+forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them. A subtle power was
+breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most
+innocent girl and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher
+had crept upon them behind his awful veil and discovered their hoarded
+iniquity of deed or thought. Many spread their clasped hands on their
+bosoms. There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said—at least, no
+violence; and yet with every tremor of his melancholy voice the hearers
+quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe. So sensible were
+the audience of some unwonted attribute in their minister that they
+longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil, almost believing
+that a stranger’s visage would be discovered, though the form, gesture
+and voice were those of Mr. Hooper.
+
+At the close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous
+confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious
+of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some
+gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths
+all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped in
+silent meditation; some talked loudly and profaned the Sabbath-day with
+ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads, intimating
+that they could penetrate the mystery, while one or two affirmed that
+there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper’s eyes were so
+weakened by the midnight lamp as to require a shade.
+
+After a brief interval forth came good Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of
+his flock. Turning his veiled face from one group to another, he paid
+due reverence to the hoary heads, saluted the middle-aged with kind
+dignity as their friend and spiritual guide, greeted the young with
+mingled authority and love, and laid his hands on the little children’s
+heads to bless them. Such was always his custom on the Sabbath-day.
+Strange and bewildered looks repaid him for his courtesy. None, as on
+former occasions, aspired to the honor of walking by their pastor’s
+side. Old Squire Saunders—doubtless by an accidental lapse of
+memory—neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table, where the good
+clergyman had been wont to bless the food almost every Sunday since his
+settlement. He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and at the moment
+of closing the door was observed to look back upon the people, all of
+whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister. A sad smile gleamed
+faintly from beneath the black veil and flickered about his mouth,
+glimmering as he disappeared.
+
+“How strange,” said a lady, “that a simple black veil, such as any
+woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on
+Mr. Hooper’s face!”
+
+“Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper’s intellects,” observed
+her husband, the physician of the village. “But the strangest part of
+the affair is the effect of this vagary even on a sober-minded man like
+myself. The black veil, though it covers only our pastor’s face, throws
+its influence over his whole person and makes him ghost-like from head
+to foot. Do you not feel it so?”
+
+“Truly do I,” replied the lady; “and I would not be alone with him for
+the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself.”
+
+“Men sometimes are so,” said her husband.
+
+The afternoon service was attended with similar circumstances. At its
+conclusion the bell tolled for the funeral of a young lady. The
+relatives and friends were assembled in the house and the more distant
+acquaintances stood about the door, speaking of the good qualities of
+the deceased, when their talk was interrupted by the appearance of Mr.
+Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It was now an appropriate
+emblem. The clergyman stepped into the room where the corpse was laid,
+and bent over the coffin to take a last farewell of his deceased
+parishioner. As he stooped the veil hung straight down from his
+forehead, so that, if her eye-lids had not been closed for ever, the
+dead maiden might have seen his face. Could Mr. Hooper be fearful of
+her glance, that he so hastily caught back the black veil? A person who
+watched the interview between the dead and living scrupled not to
+affirm that at the instant when the clergyman’s features were disclosed
+the corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and muslin cap,
+though the countenance retained the composure of death. A superstitious
+old woman was the only witness of this prodigy.
+
+From the coffin Mr. Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners, and
+thence to the head of the staircase, to make the funeral prayer. It was
+a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued
+with celestial hopes that the music of a heavenly harp swept by the
+fingers of the dead seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest
+accents of the minister. The people trembled, though they but darkly
+understood him, when he prayed that they and himself, and all of mortal
+race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been, for the
+dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces. The bearers
+went heavily forth and the mourners followed, saddening all the street,
+with the dead before them and Mr. Hooper in his black veil behind.
+
+“Why do you look back?” said one in the procession to his partner.
+
+“I had a fancy,” replied she, “that the minister and the maiden’s
+spirit were walking hand in hand.”
+
+“And so had I at the same moment,” said the other.
+
+That night the handsomest couple in Milford village were to be joined
+in wedlock. Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid
+cheerfulness for such occasions which often excited a sympathetic smile
+where livelier merriment would have been thrown away. There was no
+quality of his disposition which made him more beloved than this. The
+company at the wedding awaited his arrival with impatience, trusting
+that the strange awe which had gathered over him throughout the day
+would now be dispelled. But such was not the result. When Mr. Hooper
+came, the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same horrible
+black veil which had added deeper gloom to the funeral and could
+portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate effect
+on the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from beneath
+the black crape and dimmed the light of the candles. The bridal pair
+stood up before the minister, but the bride’s cold fingers quivered in
+the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her death-like paleness
+caused a whisper that the maiden who had been buried a few hours before
+was come from her grave to be married. If ever another wedding were so
+dismal, it was that famous one where they tolled the wedding-knell.
+
+After performing the ceremony Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his
+lips, wishing happiness to the new-married couple in a strain of mild
+pleasantry that ought to have brightened the features of the guests
+like a cheerful gleam from the hearth. At that instant, catching a
+glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved his
+own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His
+frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon
+the carpet and rushed forth into the darkness, for the Earth too had on
+her black veil.
+
+The next day the whole village of Milford talked of little else than
+Parson Hooper’s black veil. That, and the mystery concealed behind it,
+supplied a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the
+street and good women gossipping at their open windows. It was the
+first item of news that the tavernkeeper told to his guests. The
+children babbled of it on their way to school. One imitative little imp
+covered his face with an old black handkerchief, thereby so affrighting
+his playmates that the panic seized himself and he wellnigh lost his
+wits by his own waggery.
+
+It was remarkable that, of all the busybodies and impertinent people in
+the parish, not one ventured to put the plain question to Mr. Hooper
+wherefore he did this thing. Hitherto, whenever there appeared the
+slightest call for such interference, he had never lacked advisers nor
+shown himself averse to be guided by their judgment. If he erred at
+all, it was by so painful a degree of self-distrust that even the
+mildest censure would lead him to consider an indifferent action as a
+crime. Yet, though so well acquainted with this amiable weakness, no
+individual among his parishioners chose to make the black veil a
+subject of friendly remonstrance. There was a feeling of dread, neither
+plainly confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each to shift
+the responsibility upon another, till at length it was found expedient
+to send a deputation of the church, in order to deal with Mr. Hooper
+about the mystery before it should grow into a scandal. Never did an
+embassy so ill discharge its duties. The minister received them with
+friendly courtesy, but became silent after they were seated, leaving to
+his visitors the whole burden of introducing their important business.
+The topic, it might be supposed, was obvious enough. There was the
+black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper’s forehead and concealing every
+feature above his placid mouth, on which, at times, they could perceive
+the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But that piece of crape, to their
+imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a
+fearful secret between him and them. Were the veil but cast aside, they
+might speak freely of it, but not till then. Thus they sat a
+considerable time, speechless, confused and shrinking uneasily from Mr.
+Hooper’s eye, which they felt to be fixed upon them with an invisible
+glance. Finally, the deputies returned abashed to their constituents,
+pronouncing the matter too weighty to be handled except by a council of
+the churches, if, indeed, it might not require a General Synod.
+
+But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with
+which the black veil had impressed all besides herself. When the
+deputies returned without an explanation, or even venturing to demand
+one, she with the calm energy of her character determined to chase away
+the strange cloud that appeared to be settling round Mr. Hooper every
+moment more darkly than before. As his plighted wife it should be her
+privilege to know what the black veil concealed. At the minister’s
+first visit, therefore, she entered upon the subject with a direct
+simplicity which made the task easier both for him and her. After he
+had seated himself she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the veil, but
+could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so overawed the
+multitude; it was but a double fold of crape hanging down from his
+forehead to his mouth and slightly stirring with his breath.
+
+“No,” said she, aloud, and smiling, “there is nothing terrible in this
+piece of crape, except that it hides a face which I am always glad to
+look upon. Come, good sir; let the sun shine from behind the cloud.
+First lay aside your black veil, then tell me why you put it on.”
+
+Mr. Hooper’s smile glimmered faintly.
+
+“There is an hour to come,” said he, “when all of us shall cast aside
+our veils. Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece of
+crape till then.”
+
+“Your words are a mystery too,” returned the young lady. “Take away the
+veil from them, at least.”
+
+“Elizabeth, I will,” said he, “so far as my vow may suffer me. Know,
+then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever,
+both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of
+multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No
+mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me
+from the world; even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it.”
+
+“What grievous affliction hath befallen you,” she earnestly inquired,
+“that you should thus darken your eyes for ever?”
+
+“If it be a sign of mourning,” replied Mr. Hooper, “I, perhaps, like
+most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black
+veil.”
+
+“But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an
+innocent sorrow?” urged Elizabeth. “Beloved and respected as you are,
+there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness
+of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office do away this scandal.”
+
+The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the
+rumors that were already abroad in the village. But Mr. Hooper’s
+mildness did not forsake him. He even smiled again—that same sad smile
+which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light proceeding from
+the obscurity beneath the veil.
+
+“If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough,” he merely
+replied; “and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do
+the same?” And with this gentle but unconquerable obstinacy did he
+resist all her entreaties.
+
+At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in
+thought, considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to
+withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other
+meaning, was perhaps a symptom of mental disease. Though of a firmer
+character than his own, the tears rolled down her cheeks. But in an
+instant, as it were, a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes
+were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when like a sudden twilight in
+the air its terrors fell around her. She arose and stood trembling
+before him.
+
+“And do you feel it, then, at last?” said he, mournfully.
+
+She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand and turned to
+leave the room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.
+
+“Have patience with me, Elizabeth!” cried he, passionately. “Do not
+desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine,
+and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between
+our souls. It is but a mortal veil; it is not for eternity. Oh, you
+know not how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my
+black veil! Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity for ever.”
+
+“Lift the veil but once and look me in the face,” said she.
+
+“Never! It cannot be!” replied Mr. Hooper.
+
+“Then farewell!” said Elizabeth.
+
+She withdrew her arm from his grasp and slowly departed, pausing at the
+door to give one long, shuddering gaze that seemed almost to penetrate
+the mystery of the black veil. But even amid his grief Mr. Hooper
+smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him from
+happiness, though the horrors which it shadowed forth must be drawn
+darkly between the fondest of lovers.
+
+From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper’s black veil
+or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to
+hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was
+reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober
+actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its own
+semblance of insanity. But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was
+irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of
+mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside to
+avoid him, and that others would make it a point of hardihood to throw
+themselves in his way. The impertinence of the latter class compelled
+him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial-ground; for
+when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would always be faces
+behind the gravestones peeping at his black veil. A fable went the
+rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him thence. It grieved
+him to the very depth of his kind heart to observe how the children
+fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest sports while his
+melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive dread caused him
+to feel more strongly than aught else that a preternatural horror was
+interwoven with the threads of the black crape. In truth, his own
+antipathy to the veil was known to be so great that he never willingly
+passed before a mirror nor stooped to drink at a still fountain lest in
+its peaceful bosom he should be affrighted by himself. This was what
+gave plausibility to the whispers that Mr. Hooper’s conscience tortured
+him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed or
+otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus from beneath the black veil
+there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow,
+which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never
+reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there.
+With self-shudderings and outward terrors he walked continually in its
+shadow, groping darkly within his own soul or gazing through a medium
+that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed,
+respected his dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil. But still
+good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng
+as he passed by.
+
+Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable
+effect of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of
+his mysterious emblem—for there was no other apparent cause—he became a
+man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His converts
+always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming,
+though but figuratively, that before he brought them to celestial light
+they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed,
+enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections. Dying sinners cried
+aloud for Mr. Hooper and would not yield their breath till he appeared,
+though ever, as he stooped to whisper consolation, they shuddered at
+the veiled face so near their own. Such were the terrors of the black
+veil even when Death had bared his visage. Strangers came long
+distances to attend service at his church with the mere idle purpose of
+gazing at his figure because it was forbidden them to behold his face.
+But many were made to quake ere they departed. Once, during Governor
+Belcher’s administration, Mr. Hooper was appointed to preach the
+election sermon. Covered with his black veil, he stood before the chief
+magistrate, the council and the representatives, and wrought so deep an
+impression that the legislative measures of that year were
+characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral
+sway.
+
+In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward
+act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved
+and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and
+joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish. As years wore
+on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired a name
+throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father Hooper.
+Nearly all his parishioners who were of mature age when he was settled
+had been borne away by many a funeral: he had one congregation in the
+church and a more crowded one in the churchyard; and, having wrought so
+late into the evening and done his work so well, it was now good Father
+Hooper’s turn to rest.
+
+Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight in the
+death-chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none.
+But there was the decorously grave though unmoved physician, seeking
+only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save.
+There were the deacons and other eminently pious members of his church.
+There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark of Westbury, a young and
+zealous divine who had ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of the
+expiring minister. There was the nurse—no hired handmaiden of Death,
+but one whose calm affection had endured thus long in secrecy, in
+solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not perish even at the
+dying-hour. Who but Elizabeth! And there lay the hoary head of good
+Father Hooper upon the death-pillow with the black veil still swathed
+about his brow and reaching down over his face, so that each more
+difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it to stir. All through life
+that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had
+separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love and kept him
+in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; and still it lay upon his
+face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber and shade him
+from the sunshine of eternity.
+
+For some time previous his mind had been confused, wavering doubtfully
+between the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at
+intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to come. There had been
+feverish turns which tossed him from side to side and wore away what
+little strength he had. But in his most convulsive struggles and in the
+wildest vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought retained its
+sober influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lest the black
+veil should slip aside. Even if his bewildered soul could have
+forgotten, there was a faithful woman at his pillow who with averted
+eyes would have covered that aged face which she had last beheld in the
+comeliness of manhood.
+
+At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of
+mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath
+that grew fainter and fainter except when a long, deep and irregular
+inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit.
+
+The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.
+
+“Venerable Father Hooper,” said he, “the moment of your release is at
+hand. Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time from
+eternity?”
+
+Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head;
+then—apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful—he
+exerted himself to speak.
+
+“Yea,” said he, in faint accents; “my soul hath a patient weariness
+until that veil be lifted.”
+
+“And is it fitting,” resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, “that a man so
+given to prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and thought,
+so far as mortal judgment may pronounce,—is it fitting that a father in
+the Church should leave a shadow on his memory that may seem to blacken
+a life so pure? I pray you, my venerable brother, let not this thing
+be! Suffer us to be gladdened by your triumphant aspect as you go to
+your reward. Before the veil of eternity be lifted let me cast aside
+this black veil from your face;” and, thus speaking, the Reverend Mr.
+Clark bent forward to reveal the mystery of so many years.
+
+But, exerting a sudden energy that made all the beholders stand aghast,
+Father Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the bedclothes and
+pressed them strongly on the black veil, resolute to struggle if the
+minister of Westbury would contend with a dying man.
+
+“Never!” cried the veiled clergyman. “On earth, never!”
+
+“Dark old man,” exclaimed the affrighted minister, “with what horrible
+crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?”
+
+Father Hooper’s breath heaved: it rattled in his throat; but, with a
+mighty effort grasping forward with his hands, he caught hold of life
+and held it back till he should speak. He even raised himself in bed,
+and there he sat shivering with the arms of Death around him, while the
+black veil hung down, awful at that last moment in the gathered terrors
+of a lifetime. And yet the faint, sad smile so often there now seemed
+to glimmer from its obscurity and linger on Father Hooper’s lips.
+
+“Why do you tremble at me alone?” cried he, turning his veiled face
+round the circle of pale spectators. “Tremble also at each other. Have
+men avoided me and women shown no pity and children screamed and fled
+only for my black veil? What but the mystery which it obscurely
+typifies has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows
+his inmost heart to his friend, the lover to his best-beloved; when man
+does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely
+treasuring up the secret of his sin,—then deem me a monster for the
+symbol beneath which I have lived and die. I look around me, and, lo!
+on every visage a black veil!”
+
+While his auditors shrank from one another in mutual affright, Father
+Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile
+lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a
+veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years has
+sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is moss-grown,
+and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought that
+it mouldered beneath the black veil.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT
+
+
+There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the
+curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry
+Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted the facts recorded on the
+grave pages of our New England annalists have wrought themselves almost
+spontaneously into a sort of allegory. The masques, mummeries and
+festive customs described in the text are in accordance with the
+manners of the age. Authority on these points may be found in Strutt’s
+_Book of English Sports and Pastimes_.
+
+Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the
+banner-staff of that gay colony. They who reared it, should their
+banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England’s rugged
+hills and scatter flower-seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom
+were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep
+verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap of a more vivid hue than
+the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all
+the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the summer months and
+revelling with autumn and basking in the glow of winter’s fireside.
+Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile,
+and came hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry
+Mount.
+
+Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on Midsummer
+eve. This venerated emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the
+slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the
+old wood-monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner colored like
+the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with
+birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with
+silvery leaves fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of
+twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden-flowers and blossoms
+of the wilderness laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and
+dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine tree. Where
+this green and flowery splendor terminated the shaft of the Maypole was
+stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the
+lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses—some that had been
+gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still
+richer blush, which the colonists had reared from English seed. O
+people of the Golden Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise
+flowers!
+
+But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the Maypole?
+It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from their
+classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all
+the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were Gothic
+monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders of a
+comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag; a second,
+human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a third,
+still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the beard and
+horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a bear erect,
+brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with pink silk
+stockings. And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of
+the dark forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of a human
+hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His inferior
+nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped. Other faces
+wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with
+red noses pendulous before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth
+and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. Here might
+be seen the salvage man—well known in heraldry—hairy as a baboon and
+girdled with green leaves. By his side—a nobler figure, but still a
+counterfeit—appeared an Indian hunter with feathery crest and
+wampum-belt. Many of this strange company wore foolscaps and had little
+bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound
+responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits. Some
+youths and maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their
+places in the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry upon
+their features.
+
+Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad smile
+of sunset round their venerated Maypole. Had a wanderer bewildered in
+the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a half-affrighted
+glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already
+transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the
+others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change;
+but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible themselves,
+compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with whom their
+superstition peopled the black wilderness.
+
+Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had
+ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud.
+One was a youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow
+pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded staff—the
+ensign of high dignity among the revellers—and his left grasped the
+slender fingers of a fair maiden not less gayly decorated than himself.
+Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy curls of each,
+and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up spontaneously
+there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the Maypole that its
+boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an English priest,
+canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen fashion, and
+wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By the riot of his rolling
+eye and the pagan decorations of his holy garb, he seemed the wildest
+monster there, and the very Comus of the crew.
+
+“Votaries of the Maypole,” cried the flower-decked priest, “merrily all
+day long have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your merriest
+hour, my hearts! Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May, whom I, a
+clerk of Oxford and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently to join in
+holy matrimony.—Up with your nimble spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green
+men and glee-maidens, bears and wolves and horned gentlemen! Come! a
+chorus now rich with the old mirth of Merry England and the wilder glee
+of this fresh forest, and then a dance, to show the youthful pair what
+life is made of and how airily they should go through it!—All ye that
+love the Maypole, lend your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord and
+Lady of the May!”
+
+This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where
+jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The
+Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at
+sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life,
+beginning the measure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses that
+hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole had been twined for
+them, and would be thrown over both their heads in symbol of their
+flowery union. When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar
+burst from the rout of monstrous figures.
+
+“Begin you the stave, reverend sir,” cried they all, “and never did the
+woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send up.”
+
+Immediately a prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with practised
+minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such a mirthful
+cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the sound. But the
+May-lord—he of the gilded staff—chancing to look into his lady’s eyes,
+was wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that met his own.
+
+“Edith, sweet Lady of the May,” whispered he, reproachfully, “is yon
+wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look so
+sad? Oh, Edith, this is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive
+shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be
+brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing.”
+
+“That was the very thought that saddened me. How came it in your mind
+too?” said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high
+treason to be sad at Merry Mount. “Therefore do I sigh amid this
+festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream, and
+fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary and their
+mirth unreal, and that we are no true lord and lady of the May. What is
+the mystery in my heart?”
+
+Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower
+of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers!
+No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were
+sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former
+pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. From
+the moment that they truly loved they had subjected themselves to
+earth’s doom of care and sorrow and troubled joy, and had no more a
+home at Merry Mount. That was Edith’s mystery. Now leave we the priest
+to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole till the
+last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit and the shadows of the forest
+mingle gloomily in the dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who these gay
+people were.
+
+Two hundred years ago, and more, the Old World and its inhabitants
+became mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the
+West—some to barter glass and such like jewels for the furs of the
+Indian hunter, some to conquer virgin empires, and one stern band to
+pray. But none of these motives had much weight with thecolonists of
+Merry Mount. Their leaders were men who had sported so long with life,
+that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these unwelcome guests were led
+astray by the crowd of vanities which they should have put to flight.
+Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on masques, and
+play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the heart’s fresh
+gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act
+out their latest day-dream. They gathered followers from all that giddy
+tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men. In their
+train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets; wandering players,
+whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers,
+and mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and
+fairs; in a word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that
+age, but now began to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of
+Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly they
+came across the sea. Many had been maddened by their previous troubles
+into a gay despair; others were as madly gay in the flush of youth,
+like the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever might be the quality of
+their mirth, old and young were gay at Merry Mount. The young deemed
+themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but
+the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully,
+because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a
+lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not
+even to be truly blest.
+
+All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither.
+The King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore
+potent sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled whole acres of the
+forest to make bonfires, and danced by the blaze all night, crowned
+with garlands, and throwing flowers into the flame. At harvest time,
+though their crop was of the smallest, they made an image with the
+sheaves of Indian corn, and wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and
+bore it home triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists
+of Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made their
+true history a poet’s tale. Spring decked the hallowed emblem with
+young blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought roses of the
+deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the forest; Autumn enriched
+it with that red and yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood
+leaf into a painted flower; and Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung
+it round with icicles, till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a
+frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole,
+and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced
+round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it
+their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner staff of
+Merry Mount.
+
+Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than
+those Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of
+Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight,
+and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield till evening made it
+prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the
+straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up
+the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to
+proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians.
+Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of
+psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The
+selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled
+reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the
+whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole.
+
+A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult woods,
+each with a horseload of iron armor to burden his footsteps, would
+sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry Mount. There were the
+silken colonists, sporting round their Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear
+to dance, or striving to communicate their mirth to the grave Indian,
+or masquerading in the skins of deer and wolves which they had hunted
+for that especial purpose. Often the whole colony were playing at
+Blindman’s Buff, magistrates and all with their eyes bandaged, except a
+single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of
+the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a
+flower-decked corpse with merriment and festive music to his grave. But
+did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times they sang ballads and
+told tales for the edification of their pious visitors, or perplexed
+them with juggling tricks, or grinned at them through horse-collars;
+and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of their own
+stupidity and began a yawning-match. At the very least of these
+enormities the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so darkly that
+the revellers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud had overcast
+the sunshine which was to be perpetual there. On the other hand, the
+Puritans affirmed that when a psalm was pealing from their place of
+worship the echo which the forest sent them back seemed often like the
+chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of laughter. Who but the
+fiend and his bond-slaves the crew of Merry Mount had thus disturbed
+them? In due time a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as
+serious on the other as anything could be among such light spirits as
+had sworn allegiance to the Maypole. The future complexion of New
+England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grisly
+saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would
+their spirits darken all the clime and make it a land of clouded
+visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm for ever; but should the
+banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the
+hills, and flowers would beautify the forest and late posterity do
+homage to the Maypole.
+
+After these authentic passages from history we return to the nuptials
+of the Lord and Lady of the May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and
+must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the Maypole a
+solitary sunbeam is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint
+golden tinge blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even that dim
+light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry Mount
+to the evening gloom which has rushed so instantaneously from the black
+surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have rushed forth in
+human shape.
+
+Yes, with the setting sun the last day of mirth had passed from Merry
+Mount. The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag
+lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the
+bells of the morrice-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The
+Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.
+Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their
+foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment when waking thoughts
+start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the
+hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of
+monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a
+dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So
+stern was the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame
+and soul, seemed wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all
+of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the Puritan
+of Puritans: it was Endicott himself.
+
+“Stand off, priest of Baal!” said he, with a grim frown and laying no
+reverent hand upon the surplice. “I know thee, Blackstone![2] Thou art
+the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted
+Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of
+it in thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified
+this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would
+defile it! And first for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of
+thy worship!”
+
+And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor
+long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound, it showered
+leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast, and finally, with
+all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic of departed
+pleasures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. As it sank,
+tradition says, the evening sky grew darker and the woods threw forth a
+more sombre shadow.
+
+“There!” cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work; “there lies
+the only Maypole in New England. The thought is strong within me that
+by its fall is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirthmakers
+amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott!”
+
+“Amen!” echoed his followers.
+
+But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol. At the
+sound the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of
+broad mirth, yet at this moment strangely expressive of sorrow and
+dismay.
+
+“Valiant captain,” quoth Peter Palfrey, the ancient of the band, “what
+order shall be taken with the prisoners?”
+
+“I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole,” replied
+Endicott, “yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again and give
+each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It would
+have served rarely for a whipping-post.”
+
+“But there are pine trees enow,” suggested the lieutenant.
+
+“True, good ancient,” said the leader. “Wherefore bind the heathen crew
+and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece as earnest of our
+future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks to rest themselves
+so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own well-ordered
+settlements where such accommodations may be found. Further penalties,
+such as branding and cropping of ears, shall be thought of hereafter.”
+
+“How many stripes for the priest?” inquired Ancient Palfrey.
+
+“None as yet,” answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the
+culprit. “It must be for the Great and General Court to determine
+whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penalty, may
+atone for his transgressions. Let him look to himself. For such as
+violate our civil order it may be permitted us to show mercy, but woe
+to the wretch that troubleth our religion!”
+
+“And this dancing bear?” resumed the officer. “Must he share the
+stripes of his fellows?”
+
+“Shoot him through the head!” said the energetic Puritan. “I suspect
+witchcraft in the beast.”
+
+“Here be a couple of shining ones,” continued Peter Palfrey, pointing
+his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. “They seem to be of high
+station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be fitted
+with less than a double share of stripes.”
+
+Endicott rested on his sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect
+of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and apprehensive,
+yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure affection seeking
+aid and giving it that showed them to be man and wife with the sanction
+of a priest upon their love. The youth in the peril of the moment, had
+dropped his gilded staff and thrown his arm about the Lady of the May,
+who leaned against his breast too lightly to burden him, but with
+weight enough to express that their destinies were linked together for
+good or evil. They looked first at each other and then into the grim
+captain’s face. There they stood in the first hour of wedlock, while
+the idle pleasures of which their companions were the emblems had given
+place to the sternest cares of life, personified by the dark Puritans.
+But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high as when its
+glow was chastened by adversity.
+
+“Youth,” said Endicott, “ye stand in an evil case—thou and thy
+maiden-wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both
+have a token to remember your wedding-day.”
+
+“Stern man,” cried the May-lord, “how can I move thee? Were the means
+at hand, I would resist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
+with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched.”
+
+“Not so,” replied the immitigable zealot. “We are not wont to show an
+idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.—What
+sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the
+penalty besides his own?”
+
+“Be it death,” said Edith, “and lay it all on me.”
+
+Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case.
+Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their
+home desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous
+destiny in the shape of the Puritan leader their only guide. Yet the
+deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was
+softened. He smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost
+sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes.
+
+“The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,” observed
+Endicott. “We will see how they comport themselves under their present
+trials ere we burden them with greater. If among the spoil there be any
+garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put upon this May-lord
+and his Lady instead of their glistening vanities. Look to it, some of
+you.”
+
+“And shall not the youth’s hair be cut?” asked Peter Palfrey, looking
+with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young man.
+
+“Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,”
+answered the captain. “Then bring them along with us, but more gently
+than their fellows. There be qualities in the youth which may make him
+valiant to fight and sober to toil and pious to pray, and in the maiden
+that may fit her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing up babes in
+better nurture than her own hath been.—Nor think ye, young ones, that
+they are the happiest, even in our lifetime of a moment, who misspend
+it in dancing round a Maypole.”
+
+And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock-foundation
+of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole
+and threw it with his own gauntleted hand over the heads of the Lord
+and Lady of the May. It was a deed of prophecy. As the moral gloom of
+the world overpowers all systematic gayety, even so was their home of
+wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to it no
+more. But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses
+that had grown there, so in the tie that united them were intertwined
+all the purest and best of their early joys. They went heavenward
+supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot
+to tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of
+Merry Mount.
+
+
+
+
+ THE GENTLE BOY
+
+
+In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called
+Quakers—led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the
+spirit—made their appearance in New England. Their reputation as
+holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them,
+the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further
+intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was intended
+to purge the land of heresy, though more than sufficiently vigorous,
+were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming persecution as a
+divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a holy courage unknown
+to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the cross by providing for
+the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness.
+Though it was the singular fact that every nation of the earth rejected
+the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace toward all men, the place
+of greatest uneasiness and peril, and therefore in their eyes the most
+eligible, was the province of Massachusetts Bay.
+
+The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our pious
+forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured nearly a
+hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were attractions as
+powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor and reward would have been for
+the worldly-minded. Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the
+sect, eager to testify against the oppression which they hoped to
+share; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from
+affording them passage, they made long and circuitous journeys through
+the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a
+supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened almost to madness by
+the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the
+rules of decency as well as of rational religion, and presented a
+singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian
+successors of the present day. The command of the Spirit, inaudible
+except to the soul and not to be controverted on grounds of human
+wisdom, was made a plea for most indecorous exhibitions which,
+abstractedly considered, well deserved the moderate chastisement of the
+rod. These extravagances, and the persecution which was at once their
+cause and consequence, continued to increase, till in the year 1659 the
+government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect
+with the crown of martyrdom.
+
+An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to
+this act, but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon
+the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow
+mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made
+hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his
+influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the
+enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by
+brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less
+deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his associates
+in after-times. The historian of the sect affirms that by the wrath of
+Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the “bloody town”
+of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he takes his stand,
+as it were, among the graves of the ancient persecutors, and
+triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them in old age or at
+the parting-hour. He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and
+in madness, but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he
+records the loathsome disease and “death by rottenness” of the fierce
+and cruel governor.
+
+
+On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of
+two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from
+the metropolis to the neighboring country-town in which he resided. The
+air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made
+brighter by the rays of a young moon which had now nearly reached the
+verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a
+gray frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts
+of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him
+and his home. The low straw-thatched houses were scattered at
+considerable intervals along the road, and, the country having been
+settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still
+bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn wind
+wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except
+the pine trees and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which it
+was the instrument. The road had penetrated the mass of woods that lay
+nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space, when the
+traveller’s ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than even that
+of the wind. It was like the wailing of some one in distress, and it
+seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir tree in the centre
+of a cleared but unenclosed and uncultivated field. The Puritan could
+not but remember that this was the very spot which had been made
+accursed a few hours before by the execution of the Quakers, whose
+bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave beneath the tree
+on which they suffered. He struggled, however, against the
+superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and compelled himself to
+pause and listen.
+
+“The voice is most likely mortal, nor have I cause to tremble if it be
+otherwise,” thought he, straining his eyes through the dim moonlight.
+“Methinks it is like the wailing of a child—some infant, it may be,
+which has strayed from its mother and chanced upon this place of death.
+For the ease of mine own conscience I must search this matter out.” He
+therefore left the path and walked somewhat fearfully across the field.
+Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and trampled by the
+thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the spectacle of that
+day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead to their loneliness.
+
+The traveller at length reached the fir tree, which from the middle
+upward was covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been
+erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death.
+Under this unhappy tree—which in after-times was believed to drop
+poison with its dew—sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood. It
+was a slender and light-clad little boy who leaned his face upon a
+hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth and wailed bitterly, yet
+in a suppressed tone, as if his grief might receive the punishment of
+crime. The Puritan, whose approach had been unperceived, laid his hand
+upon the child’s shoulder and addressed him compassionately.
+
+“You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you
+weep,” said he. “But dry your eyes and tell me where your mother
+dwells; I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you
+in her arms tonight.”
+
+The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to
+the stranger. It was a pale, bright-eyed countenance, certainly not
+more than six years old, but sorrow, fear and want had destroyed much
+of its infantile expression. The Puritan, seeing the boy’s frightened
+gaze and feeling that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to
+reassure him:
+
+“Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were
+to leave you here. What! you do not fear to sit beneath the gallows on
+a new-made grave, and yet you tremble at a friend’s touch? Take heart,
+child, and tell me what is your name and where is your home.”
+
+“Friend,” replied the little boy, in a sweet though faltering voice,
+“they call me Ilbrahim, and my home is here.”
+
+The pale, spiritual face, the eyes that seemed to mingle with the
+moonlight, the sweet, airy voice and the outlandish name almost made
+the Puritan believe that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung
+up out of the grave on which he sat; but perceiving that the apparition
+stood the test of a short mental prayer, and remembering that the arm
+which he had touched was lifelike, he adopted a more rational
+supposition. “The poor child is stricken in his intellect,” thought he,
+“but verily his words are fearful in a place like this.” He then spoke
+soothingly, intending to humor the boy’s fantasy:
+
+“Your home will scarce be comfortable, Ilbrahim, this cold autumn
+night, and I fear you are ill-provided with food. I am hastening to a
+warm supper and bed; and if you will go with me, you shall share them.”
+
+“I thank thee, friend, but, though I be hungry and shivering with cold,
+thou wilt not give me food nor lodging,” replied the boy, in the quiet
+tone which despair had taught him even so young. “My father was of the
+people whom all men hate; they have laid him under this heap of earth,
+and here is my home.”
+
+The Puritan, who had laid hold of little Ilbrahim’s hand, relinquished
+it as if he were touching a loathsome reptile. But he possessed a
+compassionate heart which not even religious prejudice could harden
+into stone. “God forbid that I should leave this child to perish,
+though he comes of the accursed sect,” said he to himself. “Do we not
+all spring from an evil root? Are we not all in darkness till the light
+doth shine upon us? He shall not perish, neither in body nor, if prayer
+and instruction may avail for him, in soul.” He then spoke aloud and
+kindly to Ilbrahim, who had again hid his face in the cold earth of the
+grave:
+
+“Was every door in the land shut against you, my child, that you have
+wandered to this unhallowed spot?”
+
+“They drove me forth from the prison when they took my father thence,”
+said the boy, “and I stood afar off watching the crowd of people; and
+when they were gone, I came hither, and found only this grave. I knew
+that my father was sleeping here, and I said, ‘This shall be my home.’”
+
+“No, child, no, not while I have a roof over my head or a morsel to
+share with you,” exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now fully
+excited. “Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm.”
+
+The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth as if the cold
+heart beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast. The
+traveller, however, continued to entreat him tenderly, and, seeming to
+acquire some degree of confidence, he at length arose; but his slender
+limbs tottered with weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he leaned
+against the tree of death for support.
+
+“My poor boy, are you so feeble?” said the Puritan. “When did you taste
+food last?”
+
+“I ate of bread and water with my father in the prison,” replied
+Ilbrahim, “but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day,
+saying that he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey’s end.
+Trouble not thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food
+many times ere now.”
+
+The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about
+him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the
+gratuitous cruelty of the instruments in this persecution. In the
+awakened warmth of his feelings he resolved that at whatever risk he
+would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had
+confided to his care. With this determination he left the accursed
+field and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy
+had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his
+progress, and he soon beheld the fire-rays from the windows of the
+cottage which he, a native of a distant clime, had built in the Western
+wilderness. It was surrounded by a considerable extent of cultivated
+ground, and the dwelling was situated in the nook of a wood-covered
+hill, whither it seemed to have crept for protection.
+
+“Look up, child,” said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head had
+sunk upon his shoulder; “there is our home.”
+
+At the word “home” a thrill passed through the child’s frame, but he
+continued silent. A few moments brought them to the cottage door, at
+which the owner knocked; for at that early period, when savages were
+wandering everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were
+indispensable to the security of a dwelling. The summons was answered
+by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity,
+who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the
+door and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Farther back
+in the passageway the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no
+little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father’s
+return.
+
+As the Puritan entered he thrust aside his cloak and displayed
+Ilbrahim’s face to the female.
+
+“Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
+hands,” observed he. “Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear
+ones who have departed from us.”
+
+“What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?” she inquired.
+“Is he one whom the wilderness-folk have ravished from some Christian
+mother?”
+
+“No, Dorothy; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness,” he
+replied. “The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
+morsel and to drink of his birchen cup, but Christian men, alas! had
+cast him out to die.” Then he told her how he had found him beneath the
+gallows, upon his father’s grave, and how his heart had prompted him
+like the speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast home
+and be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and clothe
+him as if he were his own child, and to afford him the instruction
+which should counteract the pernicious errors hitherto instilled into
+his infant mind.
+
+Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband, and
+she approved of all his doings and intentions.
+
+“Have you a mother, dear child?” she inquired.
+
+The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply, but
+Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother, who like the rest of
+her sect was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from the prison
+a short time before, carried into the uninhabited wilderness and left
+to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was no uncommon method
+of disposing of the Quakers, and they were accustomed to boast that the
+inhabitants of the desert were more hospitable to them than civilized
+man.
+
+“Fear not, little boy; you shall not need a mother, and a kind one,”
+said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. “Dry your tears,
+Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother.”
+
+The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had
+successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim would
+consent to occupy it he knelt down, and as Dorothy listed to his simple
+and affecting prayer she marvelled how the parents that had taught it
+to him could have been judged worthy of death. When the boy had fallen
+asleep, she bent over his pale and spiritual countenance, pressed a
+kiss upon his white brow, drew the bedclothes up about his neck, and
+went away with a pensive gladness in her heart.
+
+Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old
+country. He had remained in England during the first years of the Civil
+War, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons under
+Cromwell. But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to develop
+themselves, he quitted the army of the Parliament and sought a refuge
+from the strife which was no longer holy among the people of his
+persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts. A more worldly consideration
+had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither, for New England
+offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as to
+dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it difficult
+to provide for a wife and increasing family. To this supposed impurity
+of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to impute the removal
+by death of all the children for whose earthly good the father had been
+over-thoughtful. They had left their native country blooming like
+roses, and like roses they had perished in a foreign soil. Those
+expounders of the ways of Providence, who had thus judged their brother
+and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin, were not more
+charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to fill up the
+void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the accursed sect.
+Nor did they fail to communicate their disapprobation to Tobias, but
+the latter in reply merely pointed at the little quiet, lovely boy,
+whose appearance and deportment were indeed as powerful arguments as
+could possibly have been adduced in his own favor. Even his beauty,
+however, and his winning manners sometimes produced an effect
+ultimately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the outer surfaces of
+their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard, affirmed that
+no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their antipathy
+to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of divers
+theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince him of
+the errors of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful
+controversialist, but the feeling of his religion was strong as
+instinct in him, and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the
+faith which his father had died for.
+
+The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the
+child’s protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly began
+to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold regards
+of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people manifested
+their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some consideration,
+being a representative to the General Court and an approved lieutenant
+in the train-bands, yet within a week after his adoption of Ilbrahim he
+had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also, when walking through a
+solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice from some invisible
+speaker, and it cried, “What shall be done to the backslider? Lo! the
+scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine cords, and every cord
+three knots.” These insults irritated Pearson’s temper for the moment;
+they entered also into his heart, and became imperceptible but powerful
+workers toward an end which his most secret thought had not yet
+whispered.
+
+
+On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
+Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
+at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this measure
+from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the appointed
+hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had wrought for
+him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent years,
+unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of religious
+exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that martial
+call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and Dorothy set
+forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two parents linked
+together by the infant of their love. On their path through the
+leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of their
+acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the other side;
+but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had descended the
+hill and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house of prayer.
+Around the door, from which the drummer still sent forth his thundering
+summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including several of the
+oldest members of the congregation, many of the middle-aged and nearly
+all the younger males. Pearson found it difficult to sustain their
+united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy, whose mind was differently
+circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer to her and faltered not in
+her approach. As they entered the door they overheard the muttered
+sentiments of the assemblage; and when the reviling voices of the
+little children smote Ilbrahim’s ear, he wept.
+
+The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling, the
+unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit
+offered nothing to excite the devotion which without such external aids
+often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was
+occupied by rows of long cushionless benches, supplying the place of
+pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division impassable except by
+children beneath a certain age.
+
+Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and
+Ilbrahim, being within the years of infancy, was retained under the
+care of the latter. The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their
+rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to
+dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose and turned his
+repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the
+sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a sweet infant of the
+skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the inhabitants of
+this miserable world closed up their impure hearts against him, drew
+back their earth-soiled garments from his touch and said, “We are
+holier than thou.”
+
+Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother and retaining fast
+hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might
+befit a person of matured taste and understanding who should find
+himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not
+recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not yet
+commenced, however, when the boy’s attention was arrested by an event
+apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her face muffled in a
+hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced slowly up the
+broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim’s faint
+color varied, his nerves fluttered; he was unable to turn his eyes from
+the muffled female.
+
+When the preliminary prayer and hymn were over, the minister arose,
+and, having turned the hour-glass which stood by the great Bible,
+commenced his discourse. He was now well stricken in years, a man of
+pale, thin countenance, and his gray hairs were closely covered by a
+black velvet skull-cap. In his younger days he had practically learned
+the meaning of persecution from Archbishop Laud, and he was not now
+disposed to forget the lesson against which he had murmured then.
+Introducing the often-discussed subject of the Quakers, he gave a
+history of that sect and a description of their tenets in which error
+predominated and prejudice distorted the aspect of what was true. He
+adverted to the recent measures in the province, and cautioned his
+hearers of weaker parts against calling in question the just severity
+which God-fearing magistrates had at length been compelled to exercise.
+He spoke of the danger of pity—in some cases a commendable and
+Christian virtue, but inapplicable to this pernicious sect. He observed
+that such was their devilish obstinacy in error that even the little
+children, the sucking babes, were hardened and desperate heretics. He
+affirmed that no man without Heaven’s especial warrant should attempt
+their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw them from the
+slough he should himself be precipitated into its lowest depths.
+
+The sands of the second hour were principally in the lower half of the
+glass when the sermon concluded. An approving murmur followed, and the
+clergyman, having given out a hymn, took his seat with much
+self-congratulation, and endeavored to read the effect of his eloquence
+in the visages of the people. But while voices from all parts of the
+house were tuning themselves to sing a scene occurred which, though not
+very unusual at that period in the province, happened to be without
+precedent in this parish.
+
+The muffled female, who had hitherto sat motionless in the front rank
+of the audience, now arose and with slow, stately and unwavering step
+ascended the pulpit stairs. The quaverings of incipient harmony were
+hushed and the divine sat in speechless and almost terrified
+astonishment while she undid the door and stood up in the sacred desk
+from which his maledictions had just been thundered. She then divested
+herself of the cloak and hood, and appeared in a most singular array. A
+shapeless robe of sackcloth was girded about her waist with a knotted
+cord; her raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its blackness
+was defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strewn upon her
+head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the deathly
+whiteness of a countenance which, emaciated with want and wild with
+enthusiasm and strange sorrows, retained no trace of earlier beauty.
+This figure stood gazing earnestly on the audience, and there was no
+sound nor any movement except a faint shuddering which every man
+observed in his neighbor, but was scarcely conscious of in himself. At
+length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke for the first few
+moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct utterance. Her
+discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly entangled with her
+reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible rhapsody, which, however,
+seemed to spread its own atmosphere round the hearer’s soul, and to
+move his feelings by some influence unconnected with the words. As she
+proceeded beautiful but shadowy images would sometimes be seen like
+bright things moving in a turbid river, or a strong and singularly
+shaped idea leapt forth and seized at once on the understanding or the
+heart. But the course of her unearthly eloquence soon led her to the
+persecutions of her sect, and from thence the step was short to her own
+peculiar sorrows. She was naturally a woman of mighty passions, and
+hatred and revenge now wrapped themselves in the garb of piety. The
+character of her speech was changed; her images became distinct though
+wild, and her denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness.
+
+“The governor and his mighty men,” she said, “have gathered together,
+taking counsel among themselves and saying, ‘What shall we do unto this
+people—even unto the people that have come into this land to put our
+iniquity to the blush?’ And, lo! the devil entereth into the
+council-chamber like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled,
+with a dark and twisted countenance and a bright, downcast eye. And he
+standeth up among the rulers; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to
+each; and every man lends his ear, for his word is ‘Slay! Slay!rsquo;
+But I say unto ye, Woe to them that slay! Woe to them that shed the
+blood of saints! Woe to them that have slain the husband and cast forth
+the child, the tender infant, to wander homeless and hungry and cold
+till he die, and have saved the mother alive in the cruelty of their
+tender mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are they in the
+delight and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their death-hour,
+whether it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and
+lingering pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave,
+when the children’s children shall revile the ashes of the fathers!
+Woe, woe, woe, at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the
+slain in this bloody land, and the father, the mother and the child,
+shall await them in a day that they cannot escape! Seed of the faith,
+seed of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know
+not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your voices,
+chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!”
+
+Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
+inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the
+hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience
+generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They
+remained stupefied, stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent
+which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its
+violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the
+usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed her
+in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.
+
+“Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane,” he said,
+“Is it to the Lord’s house that you come to pour forth the foulness of
+your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and remember
+that the sentence of death is on you—yea, and shall be executed, were
+it but for this day’s work.”
+
+“I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance,” replied
+she, in a depressed, and even mild, tone. “I have done my mission unto
+thee and to thy people; reward me with stripes, imprisonment or death,
+as ye shall be permitted.” The weakness of exhausted passion caused her
+steps to totter as she descended the pulpit stairs.
+
+The people, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on the floor of
+the house, whispering among themselves and glancing toward the
+intruder. Many of them now recognized her as the woman who had
+assaulted the governor with frightful language as he passed by the
+window of her prison; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer
+death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into
+the wilderness. The new outrage by which she had provoked her fate
+seemed to render further lenity impossible, and a gentleman in military
+dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the door of the
+meetinghouse and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her feet press the
+floor, however, when an unexpected scene occurred. In that moment of
+her peril, when every eye frowned with death, a little timid boy threw
+his arms round his mother.
+
+“I am here, mother; it is I, and I will go with thee to prison,” he
+exclaimed.
+
+She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost frightened expression, for
+she knew that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not
+hoped to see his face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one
+of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived
+her in the solitude of the desert or in prison; but when she felt his
+hand warm within her own and heard his little eloquence of childish
+love, she began to know that she was yet a mother.
+
+“Blessed art thou, my son!” she sobbed. “My heart was withered—yea,
+dead with thee and with thy father—and now it leaps as in the first
+moment when I pressed thee to my bosom.”
+
+She knelt down and embraced him again and again, while the joy that
+could find no words expressed itself in broken accents, like the
+bubbles gushing up to vanish at the surface of a deep fountain. The
+sorrows of past years and the darker peril that was nigh cast not a
+shadow on the brightness of that fleeting moment. Soon, however, the
+spectators saw a change upon her face as the consciousness of her sad
+estate returned, and grief supplied the fount of tears which joy had
+opened. By the words she uttered it would seem that the indulgence of
+natural love had given her mind a momentary sense of its errors, and
+made her know how far she had strayed from duty in following the
+dictates of a wild fanaticism.
+
+“In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy,” she said, “for
+thy mother’s path has gone darkening onward, till now the end is death.
+Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were tottering,
+and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for; yet I have
+ill-performed a mother’s part by thee in life, and now I leave thee no
+inheritance but woe and shame. Thou wilt go seeking through the world,
+and find all hearts closed against thee and their sweet affections
+turned to bitterness for my sake. My child, my child, how many a pang
+awaits thy gentle spirit, and I the cause of all!”
+
+She hid her face on Ilbrahim’s head, and her long raven hair,
+discolored with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a
+veil. A low and interrupted moan was the voice of her heart’s anguish,
+and it did not fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their
+involuntary virtue for a sin. Sobs were audible in the female section
+of the house, and every man who was a father drew his hand across his
+eyes.
+
+Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain feeling like the
+consciousness of guilt oppressed him; so that he could not go forth and
+offer himself as the protector of the child. Dorothy, however, had
+watched her husband’s eye. Her mind was free from the influence that
+had begun to work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman and
+addressed her in the hearing of all the congregation.
+
+“Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be his mother,” she said,
+taking Ilbrahim’s hand. “Providence has signally marked out my husband
+to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our roof
+now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him. Leave
+the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his welfare.”
+
+The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while
+she gazed earnestly in Dorothy’s face. Her mild but saddened features
+and neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of
+fireside poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far
+as mortal could be so, in respect to God and man, while the enthusiast,
+in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had as evidently
+violated the duties of the present life and the future by fixing her
+attention wholly on the latter. The two females, as they held each a
+hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory: it was rational piety
+and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a young heart.
+
+“Thou art not of our people,” said the Quaker, mournfully.
+
+“No, we are not of your people,” replied Dorothy, with mildness, “but
+we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you. Doubt not
+that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our
+tender and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own children
+have gone before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no longer so,”
+she added, in a faltering tone, “and your son will have all my care.”
+
+“But will ye lead him in the path which his parents have trodden?”
+demanded the Quaker. “Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his
+father has died for, and for which I—even I—am soon to become an
+unworthy martyr? The boy has been baptized in blood; will ye keep the
+mark fresh and ruddy upon his forehead?”
+
+“I will not deceive you,” answered Dorothy. “If your child become our
+child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has
+imparted to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we
+must do toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences,
+and not of yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your trust,
+even in complying with your wishes.”
+
+The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and
+then turned her eyes upward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally,
+and the contention of her soul was evident.
+
+“Friend,” she said, at length, to Dorothy, “I doubt not that my son
+shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe
+that even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world, for
+surely thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a husband.
+Doth he stand here among this multitude of people? Let him come forth,
+for I must know to whom I commit this most precious trust.”
+
+She turned her face upon the male auditors, and after a momentary delay
+Tobias Pearson came forth from among them. The Quaker saw the dress
+which marked his military rank, and shook her head; but then she noted
+the hesitating air, the eyes that struggled with her own and were
+vanquished, the color that went and came and could find no
+resting-place. As she gazed an unmirthful smile spread over her
+features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot.
+Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake:
+
+“I hear it, I hear it! The voice speaketh within me and saith, ‘Leave
+thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I have
+other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy
+love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.’
+I go, friends, I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence
+trusting that all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands
+there is a labor in the vineyard.”
+
+She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and
+clung to his mother with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she
+had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands
+over his head in mental prayer, she was ready to depart.
+
+“Farewell, friends in mine extremity,” she said to Pearson and his
+wife; “the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in heaven,
+to be returned a thousandfold hereafter.—And farewell, ye mine enemies,
+to whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a hair of my head, nor
+to stay my footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming when ye shall
+call upon me to witness for ye to this one sin uncommitted, and I will
+rise up and answer.”
+
+She turned her steps toward the door, and the men who had stationed
+themselves to guard it withdrew and suffered her to pass. A general
+sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred.
+Sanctified by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the
+people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill and was lost
+behind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to
+renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already
+heard in many lands of Christendom, and she had pined in the cells of a
+Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the dungeons
+of the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the followers of the
+Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy and kindness which
+all the contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her
+husband and herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the
+sultan’s countenance was gracious to them; in that pagan land, too, was
+Ilbrahim’s birthplace, and his Oriental name was a mark of gratitude
+for the good deeds of an unbeliever.
+
+
+When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over
+Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like
+the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a
+piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after
+a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by
+many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their
+house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted
+infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed
+native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth and
+security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in
+the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim’s demeanor lost a
+premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he
+became more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with
+freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered
+imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a
+certain unhealthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state
+Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from
+every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of
+happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
+points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety,
+coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the
+family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody
+countenances and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of the
+cottage.
+
+On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of
+pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy’s prevailing temper
+sometimes yielded to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not
+always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently
+they appeared to flow—though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a
+cause—from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him
+often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household,
+and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the
+slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in
+distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and
+poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely
+forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
+sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he
+would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in
+the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine
+beautifully round something stronger than itself; but if repulsed or
+torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy’s
+acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child,
+and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a
+butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew
+daily less productive of familiar caresses.
+
+The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant
+and his protectors had not undergone a favorable change, in spite of
+the momentary triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over their
+sympathies. The scorn and bitterness of which he was the object were
+very grievous to Ilbrahim, especially when any circumstance made him
+sensible that the children his equals in age partook of the enmity of
+their parents. His tender and social nature had already overflowed in
+attachments to everything about him, and still there was a residue of
+unappropriated love which he yearned to bestow upon the little ones who
+were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on Ilbrahim
+was accustomed to remain for hours silent and inactive within hearing
+of the children’s voices at their play, yet with his usual delicacy of
+feeling he avoided their notice, and would flee and hide himself from
+the smallest individual among them. Chance, however, at length seemed
+to open a medium of communication between his heart and theirs; it was
+by means of a boy about two years older than Ilbrahim, who was injured
+by a fall from a tree in the vicinity of Pearson’s habitation. As the
+sufferer’s own home was at some distance, Dorothy willingly received
+him under her roof and became his tender and careful nurse.
+
+Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy,
+and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting
+to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter immediately
+impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some examination to
+discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of the mouth and
+the irregular, broken line and near approach of the eyebrows.
+Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was an almost
+imperceptible twist of every joint and the uneven prominence of the
+breast, forming a body regular in its general outline, but faulty in
+almost all its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and
+reserved, and the village schoolmaster stigmatized him as obtuse in
+intellect, although at a later period of life he evinced ambition and
+very peculiar talents. But, whatever might be his personal or moral
+irregularities, Ilbrahim’s heart seized upon and clung to him from the
+moment that he was brought wounded into the cottage; the child of
+persecution seemed to compare his own fate with that of the sufferer,
+and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had created a sort
+of relationship between them. Food, rest and the fresh air for which he
+languished were neglected; he nestled continually by the bedside of the
+little stranger and with a fond jealousy endeavored to be the medium of
+all the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became
+convalescent Ilbrahim contrived games suitable to his situation or
+amused him by a faculty which he had perhaps breathed in with the air
+of his barbaric birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary
+adventures on the spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible
+succession. His tales were, of course, monstrous, disjointed and
+without aim, but they were curious on account of a vein of human
+tenderness which ran through them all and was like a sweet familiar
+face encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The
+auditor paid much attention to these romances and sometimes interrupted
+them by brief remarks upon the incidents, displaying shrewdness above
+his years, mingled with a moral obliquity which grated very harshly
+against Ilbrahim’s instinctive rectitude. Nothing, however, could
+arrest the progress of the latter’s affection, and there were many
+proofs that it met with a response from the dark and stubborn nature on
+which it was lavished. The boy’s parents at length removed him to
+complete his cure under their own roof.
+
+Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure, but he made
+anxious and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of
+the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant
+summer afternoon the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the
+little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the
+recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score
+of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced
+among the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this
+weary world as they journeyed by the spot marvelled why life, beginning
+in such brightness, should proceed in gloom, and their hearts or their
+imaginations answered them and said that the bliss of childhood gushes
+from its innocence. But it happened that an unexpected addition was
+made to the heavenly little band. It was Ilbrahim, who came toward the
+children with a look of sweet confidence on his fair and spiritual
+face, as if, having manifested his love to one of them, he had no
+longer to fear a repulse from their society. A hush came over their
+mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood whispering to each
+other while he drew nigh; but all at once the devil of their fathers
+entered into the unbreeched fanatics, and, sending up a fierce, shrill
+cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an instant he was the
+centre of a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks against him, pelted
+him with stones and displayed an instinct of destruction far more
+loathsome than the bloodthirstiness of manhood.
+
+The invalid, in the mean while, stood apart from the tumult, crying out
+with a loud voice, “Fear not, Ilbrahim; come hither and take my hand,”
+and his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching the
+victim’s struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye, the
+foul-hearted little villain lifted his staff and struck Ilbrahim on the
+mouth so forcibly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor child’s
+arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of blows, but now
+he dropped them at once. His persecutors beat him down, trampled upon
+him, dragged him by his long fair locks, and Ilbrahim was on the point
+of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever entered bleeding into heaven.
+The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a few neighbors, who put
+themselves to the trouble of rescuing the little heretic, and of
+conveying him to Pearson’s door.
+
+Ilbrahim’s bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
+accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was
+more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a
+negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had
+previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried
+by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion which had once corresponded
+to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its
+former play of expression—the dance of sunshine reflected from moving
+water—was destroyed by the cloud over his existence; his notice was
+attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to
+find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him than at a
+happier period. A stranger founding his judgment upon these
+circumstances would have said that the dulness of the child’s intellect
+widely contradicted the promise of his features, but the secret was in
+the direction of Ilbrahim’s thoughts, which were brooding within him
+when they should naturally have been wandering abroad. An attempt of
+Dorothy to revive his former sportiveness was the single occasion on
+which his quiet demeanor yielded to a violent display of grief; he
+burst into passionate weeping and ran and hid himself, for his heart
+had become so miserably sore that even the hand of kindness tortured it
+like fire. Sometimes at night, and probably in his dreams, he was heard
+to cry, “Mother! Mother!” as if her place, which a stranger had
+supplied while Ilbrahim was happy, admitted of no substitute in his
+extreme affliction. Perhaps among the many life-weary wretches then
+upon the earth there was not one who combined innocence and misery like
+this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the victim of his own heavenly
+nature.
+
+While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an
+earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection in
+his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences found
+Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted and
+longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first effect of
+his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened feeling, an
+incipient love for the child’s whole sect, but joined to this, and
+resulting, perhaps, from self-suspicion, was a proud and ostentatious
+contempt of their tenets and practical extravagances. In the course of
+much thought, however—for the subject struggled irresistibly into his
+mind—the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident, and the
+points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another
+aspect or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go on
+even while he slept, and that which had been a doubt when he laid down
+to rest would often hold the place of a truth confirmed by some
+forgotten demonstration when he recalled his thoughts in the morning.
+But, while he was thus becoming assimilated to the enthusiasts, his
+contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them, grew very fierce against
+himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a
+sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his
+state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim’s misfortune, and the emotions
+consequent upon that event completed the change of which the child had
+been the original instrument.
+
+In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the
+infatuation of their victims had decreased. The dungeons were never
+empty; the streets of almost every village echoed daily with the lash;
+the life of a woman whose mild and Christian spirit no cruelty could
+embitter had been sacrificed, and more innocent blood was yet to
+pollute the hands that were so often raised in prayer. Early after the
+Restoration the English Quakers represented to Charles II. that a “vein
+of blood was open in his dominions,” but, though the displeasure of the
+voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not prompt. And now
+the tale must stride forward over many months, leaving Pearson to
+encounter ignominy and misfortune; his wife, to a firm endurance of a
+thousand sorrows; poor Ilbrahim, to pine and droop like a cankered
+rose-bud; his mother, to wander on a mistaken errand, neglectful of the
+holiest trust which can be committed to a woman.
+
+
+A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson’s
+habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from
+his broad hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and a
+ruddy light, and large logs dripping with half-melted snow lay ready to
+cast upon the embers. But the apartment was saddened in its aspect by
+the absence of much of the homely wealth which had once adorned it, for
+the exaction of repeated fines and his own neglect of temporal affairs
+had greatly impoverished the owner. And with the furniture of peace the
+implements of war had likewise disappeared; the sword was broken, the
+helm and cuirass were cast away for ever: the soldier had done with
+battles, and might not lift so much as his naked hand to guard his
+head. But the Holy Book remained, and the table on which it rested was
+drawn before the fire, while two of the persecuted sect sought comfort
+from its pages.
+
+He who listened while the other read was the master of the house, now
+emaciated in form and altered as to the expression and healthiness of
+his countenance, for his mind had dwelt too long among visionary
+thoughts and his body had been worn by imprisonment and stripes. The
+hale and weatherbeaten old man who sat beside him had sustained less
+injury from a far longer course of the same mode of life. In person he
+was tall and dignified, and, which alone would have made him hateful to
+the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed hat
+and rested on his shoulders. As the old man read the sacred page the
+snow drifted against the windows or eddied in at the crevices of the
+door, while a blast kept laughing in the chimney and the blaze leaped
+fiercely up to seek it. And sometimes, when the wind struck the hill at
+a certain angle and swept down by the cottage across the wintry plain,
+its voice was the most doleful that can be conceived; it came as if the
+past were speaking, as if the dead had contributed each a whisper, as
+if the desolation of ages were breathed in that one lamenting sound.
+
+The Quaker at length closed the book, retaining, however, his hand
+between the pages which he had been reading, while he looked
+steadfastly at Pearson. The attitude and features of the latter might
+have indicated the endurance of bodily pain; he leaned his forehead on
+his hands, his teeth were firmly closed and his frame was tremulous at
+intervals with a nervous agitation.
+
+“Friend Tobias,” inquired the old man, compassionately, “hast thou
+found no comfort in these many blessed passages of Scripture?”
+
+“Thy voice has fallen on my ear like a sound afar off and indistinct,”
+replied Pearson, without lifting his eyes. “Yea; and when I have
+hearkened carefully, the words seemed cold and lifeless and intended
+for another and a lesser grief than mine. Remove the book,” he added,
+in a tone of sullen bitterness; “I have no part in its consolations,
+and they do but fret my sorrow the more.”
+
+“Nay, feeble brother; be not as one who hath never known the light,”
+said the elder Quaker, earnestly, but with mildness. “Art thou he that
+wouldst be content to give all and endure all for conscience’ sake,
+desiring even peculiar trials that thy faith might be purified and thy
+heart weaned from worldly desires? And wilt thou sink beneath an
+affliction which happens alike to them that have their portion here
+below and to them that lay up treasure in heaven? Faint not, for thy
+burden is yet light.”
+
+“It is heavy! It is heavier than I can bear!” exclaimed Pearson, with
+the impatience of a variable spirit. “From my youth upward I have been
+a man marked out for wrath, and year by year—yea, day after day—I have
+endured sorrows such as others know not in their lifetime. And now I
+speak not of the love that has been turned to hatred, the honor to
+ignominy, the ease and plentifulness of all things to danger, want and
+nakedness. All this I could have borne and counted myself blessed. But
+when my heart was desolate with many losses, I fixed it upon the child
+of a stranger, and he became dearer to me than all my buried ones; and
+now he too must die as if my love were poison. Verily, I am an accursed
+man, and I will lay me down in the dust and lift up my head no more.”
+
+“Thou sinnest, brother, but it is not for me to rebuke thee, for I also
+have had my hours of darkness wherein I have murmured against the
+cross,” said the old Quaker. He continued, perhaps in the hope of
+distracting his companion’s thoughts from his own sorrows: “Even of
+late was the light obscured within me, when the men of blood had
+banished me on pain of death and the constables led me onward from
+village to village toward the wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was
+wielding the knotted cords; they sunk deep into the flesh, and thou
+mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my footsteps by the blood
+that followed. As we went on—”
+
+“Have I not borne all this, and have I murmured?” interrupted Pearson,
+impatiently.
+
+“Nay, friend, but hear me,” continued the other. “As we journeyed on
+night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of the
+persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven forbid that
+I should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in the cottage
+windows, and I could discern the inmates as they gathered in comfort
+and security, every man with his wife and children by their own evening
+hearth. At length we came to a tract of fertile land. In the dim light
+the forest was not visible around it, and, behold, there was a
+straw-thatched dwelling which bore the very aspect of my home far over
+the wild ocean—far in our own England. Then came bitter thoughts upon
+me—yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul. The happiness of
+my early days was painted to me, the disquiet of my manhood, the
+altered faith of my declining years. I remembered how I had been moved
+to go forth a wanderer when my daughter, the youngest, the dearest of
+my flock, lay on her dying-bed, and—”
+
+“Couldst thou obey the command at such a moment?” exclaimed Pearson,
+shuddering.
+
+“Yea! yea!” replied the old man, hurriedly. “I was kneeling by her
+bedside when the voice spoke loud within me, but immediately I rose and
+took my staff and gat me gone. Oh that it were permitted me to forget
+her woeful look when I thus withdrew my arm and left her journeying
+through the dark valley alone! for her soul was faint and she had
+leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was assailed by
+the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a cruel parent;
+yea, even my daughter with her pale dying features seemed to stand by
+me and whisper, ‘Father, you are deceived; go home and shelter your
+gray head.’—O Thou to whom I have looked in my furthest wanderings,”
+continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes to heaven, “inflict not
+upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the unmitigated agony of my soul
+when I believed that all I had done and suffered for thee was at the
+instigation of a mocking fiend!—But I yielded not; I knelt down and
+wrestled with the tempter, while the scourge bit more fiercely into the
+flesh. My prayer was heard, and I went on in peace and joy toward the
+wilderness.”
+
+The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of
+reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale, and his unwonted
+emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat
+in silence, with their faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its
+red embers new scenes of persecution yet to be encountered. The snow
+still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of
+the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed
+upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a
+neighboring apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyes of both
+Quakers to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous gust
+of wind had led his thoughts by a natural association to homeless
+travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation.
+
+“I have wellnigh sunk under my own share of this trial,” observed he,
+sighing heavily; “yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so the
+child’s mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and many, but
+this will be the sorest of all.”
+
+“Fear not for Catharine,” replied the old Quaker, “for I know that
+valiant woman and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother’s
+heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with
+her faith; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has
+been thus early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and
+she will feel that he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her.
+Blessed, blessed are they that with so little suffering can enter into
+peace!”
+
+The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound: it
+was a quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson’s wan
+countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him
+what to dread; the old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his
+glance was firm as that of the tried soldier who awaits his enemy.
+
+“The men of blood have come to seek me,” he observed, with calmness.
+“They have heard how I was moved to return from banishment, and now am
+I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long
+looked for. I will open unto them lest they say, ‘Lo, he
+feareth!rsquo;”
+
+“Nay; I will present myself before them,” said Pearson, with recovered
+fortitude. “It may be that they seek me alone and know not that thou
+abidest with me.”
+
+“Let us go boldly, both one and the other,” rejoined his companion. “It
+is not fitting that thou or I should shrink.”
+
+They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they
+opened, bidding the applicant “Come in, in God’s name!” A furious blast
+of wind drove the storm into their faces and extinguished the lamp;
+they had barely time to discern a figure so white from head to foot
+with the drifted snow that it seemed like Winter’s self come in human
+shape to seek refuge from its own desolation.
+
+“Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it may,” said Pearson.
+“It must needs be pressing, since thou comest on such a bitter night.”
+
+“Peace be with this household!” said the stranger, when they stood on
+the floor of the inner apartment.
+
+Pearson started; the elder Quaker stirred the slumbering embers of the
+fire till they sent up a clear and lofty blaze. It was a female voice
+that had spoken; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry,
+in that comfortable light.
+
+“Catharine, blessed woman,” exclaimed the old man, “art thou come to
+this darkened land again? Art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as
+in former years? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and from
+the dungeon hast thou come forth triumphant, but strengthen, strengthen
+now thy heart, Catharine, for Heaven will prove thee yet this once ere
+thou go to thy reward.”
+
+“Rejoice, friends!” she replied. “Thou who hast long been of our
+people, and thou whom a little child hath led to us, rejoice! Lo, I
+come, the messenger of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is
+over-past. The heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in
+gentleness toward us, and he hath sent forth his letters to stay the
+hands of the men of blood. A ship’s company of our friends hath arrived
+at yonder town, and I also sailed joyfully among them.”
+
+As Catharine spoke her eyes were roaming about the room in search of
+him for whose sake security was dear to her. Pearson made a silent
+appeal to the old man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task
+assigned him.
+
+“Sister,” he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone, “thou
+tellest us of his love manifested in temporal good, and now must we
+speak to thee of that selfsame love displayed in chastenings. Hitherto,
+Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome and difficult
+path and leading an infant by the hand; fain wouldst thou have looked
+heavenward continually, but still the cares of that little child have
+drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth. Sister, go on
+rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede thine own no more.”
+
+But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled. She shook like a
+leaf; she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her
+hair. The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his
+eye upon hers as if to repress any outbreak of passion.
+
+“I am a woman—I am but a woman; will He try me above my strength?” said
+Catharine, very quickly and almost in a whisper. “I have been wounded
+sore; I have suffered much—many things in the body, many in the mind;
+crucified in myself and in them that were dearest to me. Surely,” added
+she, with a long shudder, “he hath spared me in this one thing.” She
+broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence: “Tell me, man of
+cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast me down never to rise
+again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his hand?—And thou to whom I
+committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled thy trust? Give me back the
+boy well, sound, alive—alive—or earth and heaven shall avenge me!”
+
+The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint—the very
+faint—voice of a child.
+
+On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest and to
+Dorothy that Ilbrahim’s brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its
+close. The two former would willingly have remained by him to make use
+of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to
+the time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing
+traveller’s reception in the world whither he goes, may at least
+sustain him in bidding adieu to earth. But, though Ilbrahim uttered no
+complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked upon him; so that
+Dorothy’s entreaties and their own conviction that the child’s feet
+might tread heaven’s pavement and not soil it had induced the two
+Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and,
+except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have
+been thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm
+began to rise, something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy’s mind
+and to render his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing wind
+lingered to shake the casement, he strove to turn his head toward it;
+if the door jarred to and fro upon its hinges, he looked long and
+anxiously thitherward; if the heavy voice of the old man as he read the
+Scriptures rose but a little higher, the child almost held his
+dying-breath to listen; if a snowdrift swept by the cottage with a
+sound like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that
+some visitant should enter. But after a little time he relinquished
+whatever secret hope had agitated him and with one low complaining
+whisper turned his cheek upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy
+with his usual sweetness and besought her to draw near him; she did so,
+and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his, grasping it with a gentle
+pressure, as if to assure himself that he retained it. At intervals,
+and without disturbing the repose of his countenance, a very faint
+trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a mild but somewhat
+cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver.
+
+As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the
+borders of eternity, Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern the
+near though dim delightfulness of the home he was about to reach; she
+would not have enticed the little wanderer back, though she bemoaned
+herself that she must leave him and return. But just when Ilbrahim’s
+feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice behind him,
+and it recalled him a few, few paces of the weary path which he had
+travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features she perceived that their
+placid expression was again disturbed. Her own thoughts had been so
+wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and of human speech were
+lost to her; but when Catharine’s shriek pierced through the room, the
+boy strove to raise himself.
+
+“Friend, she is come! Open unto her!” cried he.
+
+In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside; she drew Ilbrahim
+to her bosom, and he nestled there with no violence of joy, but
+contentedly as if he were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into her
+face, and, reading its agony, said with feeble earnestness,
+
+“Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now;” and with these words the
+gentle boy was dead.
+
+
+The king’s mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual in
+preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities, trusting
+in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the supposed
+instability of the royal government, shortly renewed their severities
+in all other respects. Catharine’s fanaticism had become wilder by the
+sundering of all human ties; and wherever a scourge was lifted, there
+was she to receive the blow; and whenever a dungeon was unbarred,
+thither she came to cast herself upon the floor. But in process of time
+a more Christian spirit—a spirit of forbearance, though not of
+cordiality or approbation—began to pervade the land in regard to the
+persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims eyed her rather
+in pity than in wrath, when the matrons fed her with the fragments of
+their children’s food and offered her a lodging on a hard and lowly
+bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their sports to cast
+stones after the roving enthusiast,—then did Catharine return to
+Pearson’s dwelling, and made that her home.
+
+As if Ilbrahim’s sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his
+gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true
+religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same
+griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made
+the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement, she
+became a subject of not deep but general interest—a being on whom the
+otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every one
+spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to
+experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which
+are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a
+long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent
+sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim’s
+green and sunken grave.
+
+
+
+
+ MR. HIGGINBOTHAM’S CATASTROPHE
+
+
+A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
+Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker
+settlement, to the village of Parker’s Falls, on Salmon River. He had a
+neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each
+side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden
+tobacco-stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare and was
+a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none the
+worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them say, would rather
+be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he beloved
+by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court
+by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock, knowing well that
+the country-lasses of New England are generally great performers on
+pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedler
+was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the
+news and anxious to tell it again.
+
+After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler—whose name
+was Dominicus Pike—had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece
+of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little
+gray mare. It being nearly seven o’clock, he was as eager to hold a
+morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An
+opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a
+sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the
+hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart.
+Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a
+bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a
+weary yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the
+freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do
+the same all day.
+
+“Good-morning, mister,” said Dominicus, when within speaking-distance.
+“You go a pretty good jog. What’s the latest news at Parker’s Falls?”
+
+The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and
+answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker’s Falls,
+which, as being the limit of his own day’s journey, the pedler had
+naturally mentioned in his inquiry.
+
+“Well, then,” rejoined Dominicus Pike, “let’s have the latest news
+where you did come from. I’m not particular about Parker’s Falls. Any
+place will answer.”
+
+Being thus importuned, the traveller—who was as ill-looking a fellow as
+one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods—appeared to
+hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news or
+weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on the step of
+the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he might have
+shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.
+
+“I do remember one little trifle of news,” said he. “Old Mr.
+Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight o’clock
+last night by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to the
+branch of a St. Michael’s pear tree where nobody would find him till
+the morning.”
+
+As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger
+betook himself to his journey again with more speed than ever, not even
+turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish cigar
+and relate all the particulars. The pedler whistled to his mare and
+went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham,
+whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him many a bunch of
+long nines and a great deal of pig-tail, lady’s twist and fig tobacco.
+He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which the news had
+spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a straight line;
+the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o’clock the preceding
+night, yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the morning, when, in
+all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham’s own family had but just
+discovered his corpse hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree. The
+stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots, to travel at such a
+rate.
+
+“Ill-news flies fast, they say,” thought Dominicus Pike, “but this
+beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
+President’s message.”
+
+The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a
+mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend
+did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and
+country-store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish
+wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself
+invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
+with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline till it
+became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of
+corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader, and a former
+clerk of his to whom Dominicus related the facts testified that the old
+gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about
+nightfall with the money and valuable papers of the store in his
+pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham’s
+catastrophe, hinting—what the pedler had discovered in his own dealings
+with him—that he was a crusty old fellow as close as a vise. His
+property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping school in
+Kimballton.
+
+What with telling the news for the public good and driving bargains for
+his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put
+up at a tavern about five miles short of Parker’s Falls. After supper,
+lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the bar-room and
+went through the story of the murder, which had grown so fast that it
+took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as twenty people in
+the room, nineteen of whom received it all for gospel. But the
+twentieth was an elderly farmer who had arrived on horseback a short
+time before and was now seated in a corner, smoking his pipe. When the
+story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair
+right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in the face, puffing
+out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever smelt.
+
+“Will you make affidavit,” demanded he, in the tone of a
+country-justice taking an examination, “that old Squire Higginbotham of
+Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last and found
+hanging on his great pear tree yesterday morning?”
+
+“I tell the story as I heard it, mister,” answered Dominicus, dropping
+his half-burnt cigar. “I don’t say that I saw the thing done, so I
+can’t take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that way.”
+
+“But I can take mine,” said the farmer, “that if Squire Higginbotham
+was murdered night before last I drank a glass of bitters with his
+ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
+store as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
+little business for him on the road. He didn’t seem to know any more
+about his own murder than I did.”
+
+“Why, then it can’t be a fact!” exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
+
+“I guess he’d have mentioned, if it was,” said the old farmer; and he
+removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in
+the mouth.
+
+Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no
+heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself
+with a glass of gin and water and went to bed, where all night long he
+dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree.
+
+To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would
+have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham’s), Dominicus rose in the
+gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart and
+trotted swiftly away toward Parker’s Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy
+road and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have
+encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to
+bear it, but he met neither ox-team, light wagon, chaise, horseman nor
+foot-traveller till, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came
+trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder, on the end
+of a stick.
+
+“Good-morning, mister,” said the pedler, reining in his mare. “If you
+come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, maybe you can tell me the
+real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow
+actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a nigger?”
+
+Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the
+stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this
+sudden question the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow
+hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus
+replied:
+
+“No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him
+last night at eight o’clock; I came away at seven. His folks can’t have
+looked for him in the orchard yet.”
+
+Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself and,
+though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace
+which would have kept the pedler’s mare on a smart trot. Dominicus
+stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been
+committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it
+in all its circumstances on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham’s
+corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the mulatto,
+at above thirty miles’ distance, to know that he was hanging in the
+orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the unfortunate
+man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with the
+stranger’s surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a
+hue-and-cry after him as an accomplice in the murder, since a murder,
+it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
+
+“But let the poor devil go,” thought the pedler. “I don’t want his
+black blood on my head, and hanging the nigger wouldn’t unhang Mr.
+Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman? It’s a sin, I know, but I
+should hate to have him come to life a second time and give me the
+lie.”
+
+With these meditations Dominicus Pike drove into the street of Parker’s
+Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as three
+cotton-factories and a slitting-mill can make it. The machinery was not
+in motion and but a few of the shop doors unbarred when he alighted in
+the stable-yard of the tavern and made it his first business to order
+the mare four quarts of oats. His second duty, of course, was to impart
+Mr. Higginbotham’s catastrophe to the hostler. He deemed it advisable,
+however, not to be too positive as to the date of the direful fact, and
+also to be uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a
+mulatto or by the son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate
+it on his own authority or that of any one person, but mentioned it as
+a report generally diffused.
+
+The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and
+became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had
+originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker’s Falls as any
+citizen of the place, being part-owner of the slitting-mill and a
+considerable stockholder in the cotton-factories. The inhabitants felt
+their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such was the excitement
+that the Parker’s Falls _Gazette_ anticipated its regular day of
+publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and a column
+of double pica emphasized with capitals and headed “HORRID MURDER OF
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!” Among other dreadful details, the printed account
+described the mark of the cord round the dead man’s neck and stated the
+number of thousand dollars of which he had been robbed; there was much
+pathos, also, about the affliction of his niece, who had gone from one
+fainting-fit to another ever since her uncle was found hanging on the
+St. Michael’s pear tree with his pockets inside out. The village poet
+likewise commemorated the young lady’s grief in seventeen stanzas of a
+ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and in consideration of Mr.
+Higginbotham’s claims on the town determined to issue handbills
+offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of his
+murderers and the recovery of the stolen property.
+
+Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker’s Falls, consisting of
+shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory-girls, mill-men and
+schoolboys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible
+loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the
+cotton-machines, which refrained from their usual din out of respect to
+the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown, his
+untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult.
+
+Our friend Dominicus in his vanity of heart forgot his intended
+precautions, and, mounting on the town-pump, announced himself as the
+bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a
+sensation. He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had
+just begun a new edition of the narrative with a voice like a
+field-preacher when the mail-stage drove into the village street. It
+had travelled all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton at
+three in the morning.
+
+“Now we shall hear all the particulars!” shouted the crowd.
+
+The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern followed by a thousand
+people; for if any man had been minding his own business till then, he
+now left it at sixes and sevens to hear the news. The pedler, foremost
+in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom had been startled
+from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the centre of a mob. Every
+man assailing them with separate questions, all propounded at once, the
+couple were struck speechless, though one was a lawyer and the other a
+young lady.
+
+“Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about old
+Mr. Higginbotham!” bawled the mob. “What is the coroner’s verdict? Are
+the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham’s niece come out of her
+fainting-fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!”
+
+The coachman said not a word except to swear awfully at the hostler for
+not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had
+generally his wits about him even when asleep; the first thing he did
+after learning the cause of the excitement was to produce a large red
+pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely polite young
+man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as
+glibly as a lawyer’s, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a
+fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a
+sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a
+love-tale from it as a tale of murder.
+
+“Gentlemen and ladies,” said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the
+mill-men and the factory-girls, “I can assure you that some
+unaccountable mistake—or, more probably, a wilful falsehood maliciously
+contrived to injure Mr. Higginbotham’s credit—has excited this singular
+uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o’clock this morning, and
+most certainly should have been informed of the murder had any been
+perpetrated. But I have proof nearly as strong as Mr. Higginbotham’s
+own oral testimony in the negative. Here is a note relating to a suit
+of his in the Connecticut courts which was delivered me from that
+gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten o’clock last evening.”
+
+So saying, the lawyer, exhibited the date and signature of the note,
+which irrefragably proved either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham
+was alive when he wrote it, or, as some deemed the more probable case
+of two doubtful ones, that he was so absorbed in worldly business as to
+continue to transact it even after his death. But unexpected evidence
+was forthcoming. The young lady, after listening to the pedler’s
+explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and put her
+curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern door, making a modest
+signal to be heard.
+
+“Good people,” said she, “I am Mr. Higginbotham’s niece.”
+
+A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy
+and bright—that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the
+authority of the Parker’s Falls _Gazette_, to be lying at death’s door
+in a fainting-fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted all along
+whether a young lady would be quite so desperate at the hanging of a
+rich old uncle.
+
+“You see,” continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, “that this
+strange story is quite unfounded as to myself, and I believe I may
+affirm it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham. He
+has the kindness to give me a home in his house, though I contribute to
+my own support by teaching a school. I left Kimballton this morning to
+spend the vacation of commencement-week with a friend about five miles
+from Parker’s Falls. My generous uncle, when he heard me on the stairs,
+called me to his bedside and gave me two dollars and fifty cents to pay
+my stage-fare, and another dollar for my extra expenses. He then laid
+his pocketbook under his pillow, shook hands with me, and advised me to
+take some biscuit in my bag instead of breakfasting on the road. I feel
+confident, therefore, that I left my beloved relative alive, and trust
+that I shall find him so on my return.”
+
+The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so
+sensible and well worded, and delivered with such grace and propriety,
+that everybody thought her fit to be preceptress of the best academy in
+the State. But a stranger would have supposed that Mr. Higginbotham was
+an object of abhorrence at Parker’s Falls and that a thanksgiving had
+been proclaimed for his murder, so excessive was the wrath of the
+inhabitants on learning their mistake. The mill-men resolved to bestow
+public honors on Dominicus Pike, only hesitating whether to tar and
+feather him, ride him on a rail or refresh him with an ablution at the
+town-pump, on the top of which he had declared himself the bearer of
+the news. The selectmen, by advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting
+him for a misdemeanor in circulating unfounded reports, to the great
+disturbance of the peace of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus
+either from mob-law or a court of justice but an eloquent appeal made
+by the young lady in his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt
+gratitude to his benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out
+of town under a discharge of artillery from the schoolboys, who found
+plenty of ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he
+turned his head to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham’s
+niece a ball of the consistence of hasty-pudding hit him slap in the
+mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His whole person was so
+bespattered with the like filthy missiles that he had almost a mind to
+ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the town-pump;
+for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been a deed of
+charity.
+
+However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud—an emblem
+of all stains of undeserved opprobrium—was easily brushed off when dry.
+Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he refrain
+from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had excited. The
+handbills of the selectmen would cause the commitment of all the
+vagabonds in the State, the paragraph in the Parker’s Falls _Gazette_
+would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in
+the London newspapers, and many a miser would tremble for his moneybags
+and life on learning the catastrophe of Mr. Higginbotham. The pedler
+meditated with much fervor on the charms of the young schoolmistress,
+and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke nor looked so like an angel
+as Miss Higginbotham while defending him from the wrathful populace at
+Parker’s Falls.
+
+Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along
+determined to visit that place, though business had drawn, him out of
+the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of the
+supposed murder he continued to revolve the circumstances in his mind,
+and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed. Had
+nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveller, it
+might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
+evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact, and there was
+a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly questioned.
+When to this singular combination of incidents it was added that the
+rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham’s character and habits of
+life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael’s pear tree, near
+which he always passed at nightfall, the circumstantial evidence
+appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted whether the autograph
+produced by the lawyer, or even the niece’s direct testimony, ought to
+be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries along the road, the pedler
+further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had in his service an Irishman of
+doubtful character whom he had hired without a recommendation, on the
+score of economy.
+
+“May I be hanged myself,” exclaimed Dominicus Pike, aloud, on reaching
+the top of a lonely hill, “if I’ll believe old Higginbotham is unhanged
+till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his own mouth. And, as
+he’s a real shaver, I’ll have the minister, or some other responsible
+man, for an endorser.”
+
+It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton
+turnpike, about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name. His
+little mare was fast bringing him up with a man on horseback who
+trotted through the gate a few rods in advance of him, nodded to the
+toll-gatherer and kept on towards the village. Dominicus was acquainted
+with the toll-man, and while making change the usual remarks on the
+weather passed between them.
+
+“I suppose,” said the pedler, throwing back his whiplash to bring it
+down like a feather on the mare’s flank, “you have not seen anything of
+old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?”
+
+“Yes,” answered the toll-gatherer; “he passed the gate just before you
+drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the dusk.
+He’s been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff’s sale
+there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat with
+me, but to-night he nodded, as if to say, ‘Charge my toll,’ and jogged
+on; for, wherever he goes, he must always be at home by eight o’clock.”
+
+“So they tell me,” said Dominicus.
+
+“I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,”
+continued the toll-gatherer. “Says I to myself tonight, ‘He’s more like
+a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.’”
+
+The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just
+discern the horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to
+recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham, but through the evening shadows
+and amid the dust from the horse’s feet the figure appeared dim and
+unsubstantial, as if the shape of the mysterious old man were faintly
+moulded of darkness and gray light.
+
+Dominicus shivered. “Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other
+world by way of the Kimballton turnpike,” thought he. He shook the
+reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the rear of
+the gray old shadow till the latter was concealed by a bend of the
+road. On reaching this point the pedler no longer saw the man on
+horseback, but found himself at the head of the village street, not far
+from a number of stores and two taverns clustered round the
+meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a gate, the
+boundary of a wood-lot beyond which lay an orchard, farther still a
+mowing-field, and last of all a house. These were the premises of Mr.
+Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had been
+left in the background by the Kimballton turnpike.
+
+Dominicus knew the place, and the little mare stopped short by
+instinct, for he was not conscious of tightening the reins. “For the
+soul of me, I cannot get by this gate!” said he, trembling. “I never
+shall be my own man again till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is
+hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree.” He leaped from the cart, gave
+the rein a turn round the gate-post, and ran along the green path of
+the wood-lot as if Old Nick were chasing behind. Just then the village
+clock tolled eight, and as each deep stroke fell Dominicus gave a fresh
+bound and flew faster than before, till, dim in the solitary centre of
+the orchard, he saw the fated pear tree. One great branch stretched
+from the old contorted trunk across the path and threw the darkest
+shadow on that one spot. But something seemed to struggle beneath the
+branch.
+
+The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of
+peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful
+emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed forward, prostrated a
+sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip, and found—not, indeed,
+hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree, but trembling beneath it with a
+halter round his neck—the old identical Mr. Higginbotham.
+
+“Mr. Higginbotham,” said Dominicus, tremulously, “you’re an honest man,
+and I’ll take your word for it. Have you been hanged, or not?”
+
+If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the
+simple machinery by which this “coming event” was made to cast its
+“shadow before.” Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr.
+Higginbotham; two of them successively lost courage and fled, each
+delaying the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in
+the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of
+fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of
+Dominicus Pike.
+
+It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into high
+favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress and
+settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves the
+interest. In due time the old gentleman capped the climax of his favors
+by dying a Christian death in bed; since which melancholy event,
+Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton and established a large
+tobacco-manufactory in my native village.
+
+
+
+
+ LITTLE ANNIE’S RAMBLE
+
+
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+
+The town-crier has rung his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie
+stands on her father’s doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the
+loud voice is talking about. Let me listen too. Oh, he is telling the
+people that an elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with
+horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to
+town and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them.
+Perhaps little Annie would like to go? Yes, and I can see that the
+pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street with the green
+trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine and the pavements
+and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept them
+with her broom. She feels that impulse to go strolling away—that
+longing after the mystery of the great world—which many children feel,
+and which I felt in my childhood. Little Annie shall take a ramble with
+me. See! I do but hold out my hand, and like some bright bird in the
+sunny air, with her blue silk frock fluttering upward from her white
+pantalets, she comes bounding on tiptoe across the street.
+
+Smooth back your brown curls, Annie, and let me tie on your bonnet, and
+we will set forth. What a strange couple to go on their rambles
+together! One walks in black attire, with a measured step and a heavy
+brow and his thoughtful eyes bent down, while the gay little girl trips
+lightly along as if she were forced to keep hold of my hand lest her
+feet should dance away from the earth. Yet there is sympathy between
+us. If I pride myself on anything, it is because I have a smile that
+children love; and, on the other hand, there are few grown ladies that
+could entice me from the side of little Annie, for I delight to let my
+mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless child. So come, Annie;
+but if I moralize as we go, do not listen to me: only look about you
+and be merry.
+
+Now we turn the corner. Here are hacks with two horses and
+stage-coaches with four thundering to meet each other, and trucks and
+carts moving at a slower pace, being heavily laden with barrels from
+the wharves; and here are rattling gigs which perhaps will be smashed
+to pieces before our eyes. Hitherward, also, comes a man trundling a
+wheelbarrow along the pavement. Is not little Annie afraid of such a
+tumult? No; she does not even shrink closer to my side, but passes on
+with fearless confidence, a happy child amidst a great throng of grown
+people who pay the same reverence to her infancy that they would to
+extreme old age. Nobody jostles her: all turn aside to make way for
+little Annie; and, what is most singular, she appears conscious of her
+claim to such respect. Now her eyes brighten with pleasure. A
+street-musician has seated himself on the steps of yonder church and
+pours forth his strains to the busy town—a melody that has gone astray
+among the tramp of footsteps, the buzz of voices and the war of passing
+wheels. Who heeds the poor organ-grinder? None but myself and little
+Annie, whose feet begin to move in unison with the lively tune, as if
+she were loth that music should be wasted without a dance. But where
+would Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes or the
+rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age, some feeble with
+disease; some are so lean that their bones would rattle, and others of
+such ponderous size that their agility would crack the flagstones; but
+many, many have leaden feet because their hearts are far heavier than
+lead. It is a sad thought that I have chanced upon. What a company of
+dancers should we be! For I too am a gentleman of sober footsteps, and
+therefore, little Annie, let us walk sedately on.
+
+It is a question with me whether this giddy child or my sage self have
+most pleasure in looking at the shop-windows. We love the silks of
+sunny hue that glow within the darkened premises of the spruce
+dry-goods men; we are pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver and
+the chased gold, the rings of wedlock and the costly love-ornaments,
+glistening at the window of the jeweller; but Annie, more than I, seeks
+for a glimpse of her passing figure in the dusty looking-glasses at the
+hardware-stores. All that is bright and gay attracts us both.
+
+Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood as well as
+present partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the
+fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner—those pies with such
+white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich
+mince with whole plums intermixed, or piquant apple delicately
+rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty
+pyramid; those sweet little circlets sweetly named kisses; those dark
+majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress,
+mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered with sugar! Then
+the mighty treasures of sugarplums, white and crimson and yellow, in
+large glass vases, and candy of all varieties, and those little
+cockles—or whatever they are called—much prized by children for their
+sweetness, and more for the mottoes which they enclose, by love-sick
+maids and bachelors! Oh, my mouth waters, little Annie, and so doth
+yours, but we will not be tempted except to an imaginary feast; so let
+us hasten onward devouring the vision of a plum-cake.
+
+Here are pleasures, as some people would say, of a more exalted kind,
+in the window of a bookseller. Is Annie a literary lady? Yes; she is
+deeply read in Peter Parley’s tomes and has an increasing love for
+fairy-tales, though seldom met with nowadays, and she will subscribe
+next year to the _Juvenile Miscellany_. But, truth to tell, she is apt
+to turn away from the printed page and keep gazing at the pretty
+pictures, such as the gay-colored ones which make this shop-window the
+continual loitering-place of children. What would Annie think if, in
+the book which I mean to send her on New Year’s day, she should find
+her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco with gilt edges,
+there to remain till she become a woman grown with children of her own
+to read about their mother’s childhood? That would be very queer.
+
+Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand, till
+suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town. Oh, my
+stars! Is this a toyshop, or is it fairy-land? For here are gilded
+chariots in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by
+side, while their courtiers on these small horses should gallop in
+triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair. Here, too, are
+dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of those same princely
+personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest hall of
+their palace—full five feet high—and behold their nobles feasting adown
+the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen should
+sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here stands a
+turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly heathen as he
+is, and next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at Annie and myself.
+Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot in red-and-blue
+uniforms, with drums, fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of noiseless
+music; they have halted on the shelf of this window after their weary
+march from Liliput. But what cares Annie for soldiers? No conquering
+queen is she—neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine; her whole heart is
+set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a fashionable stare. This
+is the little girl’s true plaything. Though made of wood, a doll is a
+visionary and ethereal personage endowed by childish fancy with a
+peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of romance, an actor and a
+sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the chief inhabitant of that
+wild world with which children ape the real one. Little Annie does not
+understand what I am saying, but looks wishfully at the proud lady in
+the window. We will invite her home with us as we return.—Meantime,
+good-bye, Dame Doll! A toy yourself, you look forth from your window
+upon many ladies that are also toys, though they walk and speak, and
+upon a crowd in pursuit of toys, though they wear grave visages. Oh,
+with your never-closing eyes, had you but an intellect to moralize on
+all that flits before them, what a wise doll would you be!—Come, little
+Annie, we shall find toys enough, go where we may.
+
+Now we elbow our way among the throng again. It is curious in the most
+crowded part of a town to meet with living creatures that had their
+birthplace in some far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in
+the wilderness of men. Look up, Annie, at that canary-bird hanging out
+of the window in his cage. Poor little fellow! His golden feathers are
+all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he would have glistened twice as
+brightly among the summer islands, but still he has become a citizen in
+all his tastes and habits, and would not sing half so well without the
+uproar that drowns his music. What a pity that he does not know how
+miserable he is! There is a parrot, too, calling out, “Pretty Poll!
+Pretty Poll!” as we pass by. Foolish bird, to be talking about her
+prettiness to strangers, especially as she is not a pretty Poll, though
+gaudily dressed in green and yellow! If she had said “Pretty Annie!”
+there would have been some sense in it. See that gray squirrel at the
+door of the fruit-shop whirling round and round so merrily within his
+wire wheel! Being condemned to the treadmill, he makes it an amusement.
+Admirable philosophy!
+
+Here comes a big, rough dog—a countryman’s dog—in search of his master,
+smelling at everybody’s heels and touching little Annie’s hand with his
+cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have patted
+him.—Success to your search, Fidelity!—And there sits a great yellow
+cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at
+this transitory world with owl’s eyes, and making pithy comments,
+doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.—Oh, sage puss, make
+room for me beside you, and we will be a pair of philosophers.
+
+Here we see something to remind us of the town-crier and his
+ding-dong-bell. Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air,
+pictured all over with wild beasts, as if they had met together to
+choose a king, according to their custom in the days of Æsop. But they
+are choosing neither a king nor a President, else we should hear a most
+horrible snarling! They have come from the deep woods and the wild
+mountains and the desert sands and the polar snows only to do homage to
+my little Annie. As we enter among them the great elephant makes us a
+bow in the best style of elephantine courtesy, bending lowly down his
+mountain bulk, with trunk abased and leg thrust out behind. Annie
+returns the salute, much to the gratification of the elephant, who is
+certainly the best-bred monster in the caravan. The lion and the
+lioness are busy with two beef-bones. The royal tiger, the beautiful,
+the untamable, keeps pacing his narrow cage with a haughty step,
+unmindful of the spectators or recalling the fierce deeds of his former
+life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such inferior animals from
+the jungles of Bengal.
+
+Here we see the very same wolf—do not go near him, Annie!—the selfsame
+wolf that devoured little Red Riding-Hood and her grandmother. In the
+next cage a hyena from Egypt who has doubtless howled around the
+pyramids and a black bear from our own forests are fellow-prisoners and
+most excellent friends. Are there any two living creatures who have so
+few sympathies that they cannot possibly be friends? Here sits a great
+white bear whom common observers would call a very stupid beast, though
+I perceive him to be only absorbed in contemplation; he is thinking of
+his voyages on an iceberg, and of his comfortable home in the vicinity
+of the north pole, and of the little cubs whom he left rolling in the
+eternal snows. In fact, he is a bear of sentiment. But oh those
+unsentimental monkeys! The ugly, grinning, aping, chattering,
+ill-natured, mischievous and queer little brutes! Annie does not love
+the monkeys; their ugliness shocks her pure, instinctive delicacy of
+taste and makes her mind unquiet because it bears a wild and dark
+resemblance to humanity. But here is a little pony just big enough for
+Annie to ride, and round and round he gallops in a circle, keeping time
+with his trampling hoofs to a band of music. And here, with a laced
+coat and a cocked hat, and a riding-whip in his hand—here comes a
+little gentleman small enough to be king of the fairies and ugly enough
+to be king of the gnomes, and takes a flying leap into the saddle.
+Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily gallops the pony, and
+merrily rides the little old gentleman.—Come, Annie, into the street
+again; perchance we may see monkeys on horseback there.
+
+Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie ever
+read the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder man
+proclaim that his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes another,
+mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast from a tin
+horn, as much as to say, “Fresh fish!” And hark! a voice on high, like
+that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing that some
+chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome caverns
+into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But, well-a-day, we
+hear a shrill voice of affliction—the scream of a little child, rising
+louder with every repetition of that smart, sharp, slapping sound
+produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie sympathizes, though
+without experience of such direful woe.
+
+Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear. Will
+he tell us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of
+beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than
+any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in
+his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried
+motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the
+sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.
+
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+
+Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It
+drowns the buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man’s mind from
+his own business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends
+to the hushed chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the
+cellar kitchen where the hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who of
+all that address the public ear, whether in church or court-house or
+hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town-crier! What
+saith the people’s orator?
+
+“Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue silk
+frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel eyes.
+Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother—”
+
+Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.—Oh, my pretty Annie, we
+forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and has
+sent the town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting old
+and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go my
+hand? Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go forget not to thank
+Heaven, my Annie, that after wandering a little way into the world you
+may return at the first summons with an untainted and unwearied heart,
+and be a happy child again. But I have gone too far astray for the
+town-crier to call me back.
+
+Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my ramble
+with little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious
+moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of
+childish imaginations about topics unworthy of a grown man’s notice.
+Has it been merely this? Not so—not so. They are not truly wise who
+would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of
+aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple
+thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for little cause or
+none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us
+is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
+forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as
+yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
+to call ourselves young any more,—then it is good to steal away from
+the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
+hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of still
+fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
+struggle onward and do our part in life—perhaps as fervently as ever,
+but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
+wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!
+
+
+
+
+WAKEFIELD
+
+
+In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,
+of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time
+from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very
+uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be
+condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
+from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record
+of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
+found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
+London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in
+the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
+friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
+dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home
+every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
+great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned
+certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his
+wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the
+door one evening quietly as from a day’s absence, and became a loving
+spouse till death.
+
+This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the
+purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is
+one, I think, which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We
+know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly,
+yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least, it
+has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the
+story must be true and a conception of its hero’s character. Whenever
+any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in
+thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or
+if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield’s
+vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be a pervading
+spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done up neatly
+and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy
+and every striking incident its moral.
+
+What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea
+and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his
+matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm,
+habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most
+constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest
+wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so;
+his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that tended to no
+purpose or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
+energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning
+of the term, made no part of Wakefield’s gifts. With a cold but not
+depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous
+thoughts nor perplexed with originality, who could have anticipated
+that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place among the
+doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked who was the
+man in London the surest to perform nothing to-day which should be
+remembered on the morrow, they would have thought of Wakefield. Only
+the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without having
+analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness that
+had rusted into his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the
+most uneasy attribute about him; of a disposition to craft which had
+seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets
+hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she called a little
+strangeness sometimes in the good man. This latter quality is
+indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
+
+Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk
+of an October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat covered
+with an oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small
+portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to
+take the night-coach into the country. She would fain inquire the
+length of his journey, its object and the probable time of his return,
+but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates him only
+by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the
+return-coach nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days, but,
+at all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening. Wakefield,
+himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is before him. He
+holds out his hand; she gives her own and meets his parting kiss in the
+matter-of-course way of a ten years’ matrimony, and forth goes the
+middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplex his good lady by
+a whole week’s absence. After the door has closed behind him, she
+perceives it thrust partly open and a vision of her husband’s face
+through the aperture, smiling on her and gone in a moment. For the time
+this little incident is dismissed without a thought, but long
+afterward, when she has been more years a widow than a wife, that smile
+recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield’s visage.
+In her many musings she surrounds the original smile with a multitude
+of fantasies which make it strange and awful; as, for instance, if she
+imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is frozen on his pale
+features; or if she dreams of him in heaven, still his blessed spirit
+wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its sake, when all others have
+given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow.
+
+But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along the
+street ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass of
+London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow
+close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous turns
+and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the fireside of a
+small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his
+own and at his journey’s end. He can scarcely trust his good-fortune in
+having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at one time he was
+delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted lantern, and again
+there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from
+the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he heard a voice shouting
+afar and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless a dozen busybodies
+had been watching him and told his wife the whole affair.
+
+Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this
+great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy
+bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee
+home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself
+even for a little week from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she for
+a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided from
+her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true wife
+for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections—not
+that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close again.
+
+Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield
+lies down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads forth his
+arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed, “No,”
+thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him; “I will not sleep alone
+another night.” In the morning he rises earlier than usual and sets
+himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and
+rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singular step
+with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to
+define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the
+project and the convulsive effort with which he plunges into the
+execution of it are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded man.
+Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds
+himself curious to know the progress of matters at home—how his
+exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and, briefly, how
+the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which he was a
+central object will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity,
+therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But how is he to
+attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this comfortable
+lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to his
+home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach had been
+whirling him away all night. Yet should he reappear, the whole project
+is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with
+this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the
+head of the street and send one hasty glance toward his forsaken
+domicile. Habit—for he is a man of habits—takes him by the hand and
+guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at the
+critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the
+step.—Wakefield, whither are you going?
+
+At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of
+the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away,
+breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his
+head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him?
+Will not the whole household—the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart
+maid-servant and the dirty little footboy—raise a hue-and-cry through
+London streets in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master? Wonderful
+escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is perplexed
+with a sense of change about the familiar edifice such as affects us
+all when, after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill
+or lake or work of art with which we were friends of old. In ordinary
+cases this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and
+contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In
+Wakefield the magic of a single night has wrought a similar
+transformation, because in that brief period a great moral change has
+been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before leaving the
+spot he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife passing athwart
+the front window with her face turned toward the head of the street.
+The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea that
+among a thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must have detected
+him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when
+he finds himself by the coal-fire of his lodgings.
+
+So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial
+conception and the stirring up of the man’s sluggish temperament to put
+it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train. We
+may suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying a new wig
+of reddish hair and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike his
+customary suit of brown, from a Jew’s old-clothes bag. It is
+accomplished: Wakefield is another man. The new system being now
+established, a retrograde movement to the old would be almost as
+difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.
+Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionally
+incident to his temper and brought on at present by the inadequate
+sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs.
+Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death.
+Well, twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a
+heavier step, a paler cheek and more anxious brow, and in the third
+week of his non-appearance he detects a portent of evil entering the
+house in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker is muffled.
+Toward nightfall comes the chariot of a physician and deposits its
+big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield’s door, whence after a
+quarter of an hour’s visit he emerges, perchance the herald of a
+funeral. Dear woman! will she die?
+
+By this time Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling,
+but still lingers away from his wife’s bedside, pleading with his
+conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught
+else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks
+she gradually recovers. The crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps,
+but quiet, and, let him return soon or late, it will never be feverish
+for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the mist of Wakefield’s mind
+and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf
+divides his hired apartment from his former home. “It is but in the
+next street,” he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world. Hitherto
+he has put off’ his return from one particular day to another;
+henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined—not to-morrow;
+probably next week; pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have nearly as much
+chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the self-banished
+Wakefield.
+
+Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen
+pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays
+its strong hand on every deed which we do and weaves its consequences
+into an iron tissue of necessity.
+
+Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for ten years or so to haunt
+around his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be
+faithful to his wife with all the affection of which his heart is
+capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be
+remarked, he has lost the perception of singularity in his conduct.
+
+Now for a scene. Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a
+man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless
+observers, yet bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no common
+fate for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his low and
+narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless,
+sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener seem to look
+inward. He bends his head and moves with an indescribable obliquity of
+gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the world. Watch him
+long enough to see what we have described, and you will allow that
+circumstances—which often produce remarkable men from Nature’s ordinary
+handiwork—have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along
+the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly
+female considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her
+hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid mien of
+settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away or have become so
+essential to her heart that they would be poorly exchanged for joy.
+Just as the lean man and well-conditioned woman are passing a slight
+obstruction occurs and brings these two figures directly in contact.
+Their hands touch; the pressure of the crowd forces her bosom against
+his shoulder; they stand face to face, staring into each other’s eyes.
+After a ten years’ separation thus Wakefield meets his wife. The throng
+eddies away and carries them asunder. The sober widow, resuming her
+former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the portal and throws a
+perplexed glance along the street. She passes in, however, opening her
+prayer-book as she goes.
+
+And the man? With so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands to
+gaze after him he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and throws
+himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break out; his
+feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength; all the
+miserable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance, and
+he cries out passionately, “Wakefield, Wakefield! You are mad!” Perhaps
+he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to
+itself that, considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and the
+business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind. He
+had contrived—or, rather, he had happened—to dissever himself from the
+world, to vanish, to give up his place and privileges with living men
+without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise
+parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city as of old, but the
+crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say, always
+beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of
+the one nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield’s
+unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human sympathies and
+to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his
+reciprocal influence on them. It would be a most curious speculation to
+trace out the effect of such circumstances on his heart and intellect
+separately and in unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be
+conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the
+truth, indeed, would come, but only for the moment, and still he would
+keep saying, “I shall soon go back,” nor reflect that he had been
+saying so for twenty years.
+
+I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear in the
+retrospect scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at
+first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no more than
+an interlude in the main business of his life. When, after a little
+while more, he should deem it time to re-enter his parlor, his wife
+would clap her hands for joy on beholding the middle-aged Mr.
+Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close of our
+favorite follies, we should be young men—all of us—and till Doomsday.
+
+One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is
+taking his customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his
+own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter
+down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his
+umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the
+parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and
+fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque
+shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin and the broad
+waist form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the
+up-flickering and down-sinking blaze almost too merrily for the shade
+of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall, and is
+driven by the unmannerly gust full into Wakefield’s face and bosom. He
+is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand wet and
+shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him and his
+own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes which
+doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their bedchamber? No;
+Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the steps—heavily, for twenty
+years have stiffened his legs since he came down, but he knows it
+not.—Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home that is left you?
+Then step into your grave.—The door opens. As he passes in we have a
+parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smile which was
+the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing
+off at his wife’s expense. How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor
+woman! Well, a good night’s rest to Wakefield!
+
+This happy event—supposing it to be such—could only have occurred at an
+unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the
+threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which
+shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the
+seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely
+adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that
+by stepping aside for a moment a man exposes himself to a fearful risk
+of losing his place for ever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it
+were, the outcast of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP
+
+
+(SCENE, _the corner of two principal streets_,[3] _the_ TOWN-PUMP
+_talking through its nose_.)
+
+Noon by the north clock! Noon by the east! High noon, too, by these hot
+sunbeams, which full, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almost make the
+water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly, we public
+characters have a tough time of it! And among all the town-officers
+chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains for a single year
+the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed in perpetuity upon
+the town-pump? The title of “town-treasurer” is rightfully mine, as
+guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the
+poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for
+the pauper without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of
+the fire department and one of the physicians to the board of health.
+As a keeper of the peace all water-drinkers will confess me equal to
+the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town-clerk by
+promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To speak
+within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit,
+moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool,
+steady, upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and
+the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody
+seeks me in vain, for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner,
+just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike,
+and at night I hold a lantern over my head both to show where I am and
+keep people out of the gutters. At this sultry noontide I am cupbearer
+to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to
+my waist. Like a dramseller on the mall at muster-day, I cry aloud to
+all and sundry in my plainest accents and at the very tiptop of my
+voice.
+
+Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up,
+gentlemen! Walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the
+unadulterated ale of Father Adam—better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica,
+strong beer or wine of any price; here it is by the hogshead or the
+single glass, and not a cent to pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and
+help yourselves!
+
+It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they
+come.—A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff and away again, so as to keep
+yourselves in a nice cool sweat.—You, my friend, will need another
+cupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as
+it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score
+of miles to-day, and like a wise man have passed by the taverns and
+stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat
+without and fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder or
+melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink
+and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the
+fiery fever of last night’s potations, which he drained from no cup of
+mine.—Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great strangers
+hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a
+closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent.
+Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet
+and is converted quite to steam in the miniature Tophet which you
+mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an
+honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a
+dram-shop, spend the price of your children’s food for a swig half so
+delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor
+of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, remember that I
+keep a constant supply at the old stand.—Who next?—Oh, my little
+friend, you are let loose from school and come hither to scrub your
+blooming face and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and
+other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the town-pump? Take it,
+pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and
+tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear
+child! put down the cup and yield your place to this elderly gentleman
+who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones that I suspect he is
+afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so much as thanking
+me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no
+wine-cellars.—Well, well, sir, no harm done, I hope? Go draw the cork,
+tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it
+will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titillation
+of the gout, it is all one to the town-pump. This thirsty dog with his
+red tongue lolling out does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his
+hind legs and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers
+away again!—Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout?
+
+Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends, and
+while my spout has a moment’s leisure I will delight the town with a
+few historical remniscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome
+shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn
+earth in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement.
+The water was as bright and clear and deemed as precious as liquid
+diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial till
+the fatal deluge of the firewater burst upon the red men and swept
+their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his
+followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long
+beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark.
+Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here out of
+the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm and laid
+it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it was the
+watering-place, and, as it were, the washbowl, of the vicinity, whither
+all decent folks resorted to purify their visages and gaze at them
+afterward—at least, the pretty maidens did—in the mirror which it made.
+On Sabbath-days, whenever a babe was to be baptized, the sexton filled
+his basin here and placed it on the communion-table of the humble
+meeting-house, which partly covered the site of yonder stately brick
+one. Thus one generation after another was consecrated to Heaven by its
+waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom,
+and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting
+image in a fountain. Finally the fountain vanished also. Cellars were
+dug on all sides and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence
+oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two
+streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the
+dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now
+their grave. But in the course of time a town-pump was sunk into the
+source of the ancient spring; and when the first decayed, another took
+its place, and then another, and still another, till here stand I,
+gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my iron goblet. Drink and be
+refreshed. The water is as pure and cold as that which slaked the
+thirst of the red sagamore beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem
+of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow
+falls but from the brick buildings. And be it the moral of my story
+that, as this wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized
+again, so shall the virtues of cold water—too little valued since your
+fathers’ days—be recognized by all.
+
+Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence and
+spout forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for this teamster
+and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere
+along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering
+of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of
+the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon
+or two apiece and they can afford time to breathe it in with sighs of
+calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their
+monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.
+
+But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the
+remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of
+modesty if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own
+multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you
+think of me, the better men and women you will find yourselves. I shall
+say nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days, though on that
+account alone I might call myself the household god of a hundred
+families. Far be it from me, also, to hint, my respectable friends, at
+the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to
+keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight
+bells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the
+town-pump and found me always at my post firm amid the confusion and
+ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth
+while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma as the
+physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the
+nauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so, since the days
+of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial influence
+on mankind.
+
+No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede
+to me—if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a class—of
+being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as
+mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast
+portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from the fiery
+fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall be my
+great confederate. Milk and water—the TOWN-PUMP and the Cow! Such is
+the glorious copartnership that shall tear down the distilleries and
+brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the
+tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolize the whole business of
+quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away
+from the land, finding no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may
+shelter herself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw
+its own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her
+strength. Until now the frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in the
+human blood, transmitted from sire to son and rekindled in every
+generation by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fire
+shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and
+war—the drunkenness of nations—perhaps will cease. At least, there will
+be no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of
+peaceful joy—a calm bliss of temperate affections—shall pass hand in
+hand through life and lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close.
+To them the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an
+eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their
+dead faces shall express what their spirits were and are to be by a
+lingering smile of memory and hope.
+
+Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised orator.
+I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo
+for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to themselves.—Do,
+some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my
+whistle.—Thank you, sir!—My dear hearers, when the world shall have
+been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect your useless
+vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make a bonfire in honor
+of the town-pump. And when I shall have decayed like my predecessors,
+then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain richly sculptured
+take my place upon this spot. Such monuments should be erected
+everywhere and inscribed with the names of the distinguished champions
+of my cause. Now, listen, for something very important is to come next.
+
+There are two or three honest friends of mine—and true friends I know
+they are—who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do put
+me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow upon
+the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.—I pray you,
+gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get
+tipsy with zeal for temperance and take up the honorable cause of the
+town-pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy-bottle? Or
+can the excellent qualities of cold water be no otherwise exemplified
+than by plunging slapdash into hot water and woefully scalding
+yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral warfare
+which you are to wage—and, indeed, in the whole conduct of your
+lives—you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never
+permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and manifold
+disquietudes, of the world around me to reach that deep, calm well of
+purity which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul,
+it is to cool earth’s fever or cleanse its stains.
+
+One o’clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as
+well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance
+with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband while
+drawing her water, as Rachel did of old!—Hold out your vessel, my dear!
+There it is, full to the brim; so now run home, peeping at your sweet
+image in the pitcher as you go, and forget not in a glass of my own
+liquor to drink “SUCCESS TO THE TOWN-PUMP.”
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE[4]
+
+A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
+Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after
+a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
+thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
+one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
+this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
+enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut
+of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that had
+drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank
+of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their
+number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies by
+the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at
+the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary region whither they
+had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the
+nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that bleak
+verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest-trees and
+either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
+of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
+solitary man had listened while the mountain-stream talked with the
+wind.
+
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and welcomed
+one another to the hut where each man was the host and all were the
+guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
+food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a general repast; at
+the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship was perceptible among
+the party, though repressed by the idea that the renewed search for the
+Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven
+men and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire,
+which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam.
+As they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the
+assemblage, each man looking like a caricature of himself in the
+unsteady light that flickered over him, they came mutually to the
+conclusion that an odder society had never met in city or wilderness,
+on mountain or plain.
+
+The eldest of the group—a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man some sixty
+years of age—was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of
+dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the bear had
+long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated
+mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom in their early youth the
+Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the passionate
+dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as “the
+Seeker,” and by no other name. As none could remember when he first
+took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco that
+for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had been condemned
+to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same
+feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near this miserable
+Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing a high-crowned hat shaped
+somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea—a Doctor
+Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by
+continually stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling unwholesome
+fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of
+him—whether truly or not—that at the commencement of his studies he had
+drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted it, with other
+inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment, and had never
+been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Master Ichabod
+Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston, and an elder of
+the famous Mr. Norton’s church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that
+Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer-time
+every morning and evening in wallowing naked among an immense quantity
+of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of
+Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his
+companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that
+always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of
+spectacles which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of
+nature to this gentleman’s perception. The fifth adventurer likewise
+lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet.
+He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more
+than natural if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog,
+morning mist and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced
+with moonshine whenever he could get it. Certain it is that the poetry
+which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
+the party was a young man of haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from
+the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the
+fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed
+intensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the lord De
+Vere, who when at home was said to spend much of his time in the
+burial-vault of his dead progenitors rummaging their mouldy coffins in
+search of all the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among
+bones and dust; so that, besides his own share, he had the collected
+haughtiness of his whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a handsome
+youth in rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little person in whom
+a delicate shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow
+of a young wife’s affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband’s
+Matthew—two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair
+who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose
+wits had been set agog by the Great Carbuncle.
+
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
+sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
+object that of whatever else they began to speak their closing words
+were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
+the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
+traveller’s tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
+and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
+could only be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as
+when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing
+far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now
+that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a
+hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke
+at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so
+that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the
+innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the
+singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all
+adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a
+light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun. It was
+observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in
+anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
+scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As
+if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian
+traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those
+who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher
+hills or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it
+hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to
+believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or
+perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might
+naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the intricacies
+of forest, valley and mountain.
+
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
+looked round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object
+of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+
+“So, fellow-pilgrims,” said he, “here we are, seven wise men and one
+fair damsel, who doubtless is as wise as any graybeard of the company.
+Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
+now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
+with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch
+it.—What says our friend in the bearskin? How mean you, good sir, to
+enjoy the prize which you have been seeking the Lord knows how long
+among the Crystal Hills?”
+
+“How enjoy it!” exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. “I hope for no
+enjoyment from it--that folly has past, long ago! I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has
+become a fate upon me, in old age. The pursuit alone is my
+strength--the energy of my soul--the warmth of my blood, and the pith
+and marrow of my bones! Were I to turn my back upon it, I should fall
+down dead, on the hither side of the Notch, which is the gate-way of
+this mountain region. Yet, not to have my wasted life time back again,
+would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I
+shall bear it to a certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it
+in my arms, lie down and die, and keep it buried with me for ever.”
+
+“Oh, wretch, regardless of the interests of science!” cried Doctor
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. “Thou art not worthy to
+behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
+ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole
+purpose for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great
+Carbuncle. Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good
+people, that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I
+shall return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to
+its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
+powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
+will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design to
+melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
+various methods, I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
+the result of my labours upon the world, in a folio volume.”
+
+“Excellent!” quoth the man with the spectacles. “Nor need you hesitate,
+learned Sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
+the perusal of your folio may teach every mother’s son of us to concoct
+a Great Carbuncle of his own.”
+
+“But, verily,” said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, “for mine own part, I
+object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to
+reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, Sirs, I
+have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my
+regular traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and
+putting my credit to great hazard, and furthermore, have put myself to
+peril of death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all
+this without daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the
+quest for the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic
+with the evil one. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous
+wrong to my soul, body, reputation and estate, without a reasonable
+chance of profit?”
+
+“Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,” said the man with the spectacles. “I
+never laid such a great folly to thy charge.”
+
+“Truly, I hope not,” said the merchant. “Now, as touching this Great
+Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it, but,
+be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely
+outvalue the Great Mogul’s best diamond, which he holds at an
+incalculable sum; wherefore I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
+shipboard and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into
+heathendom if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
+dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the
+earth, that he may place it among his crown-jewels. If any of ye have a
+wiser plan, let him expound it.”
+
+“That have I, thou sordid man!” exclaimed the poet. “Dost thou desire
+nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this
+ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For
+myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my
+attic-chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London. There night and
+day will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be
+diffused throughout my intellectual powers and gleam brightly in every
+line of poesy that I indite. Thus long ages after I am gone the
+splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name.”
+
+“Well said, Master Poet!” cried he of the spectacles. “Hide it under
+thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes and make
+thee look like a jack-o’-lantern!”
+
+“To think,” ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather to himself than his
+companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
+intercourse—“to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of
+conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grubb street! Have not I
+resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament
+for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for
+ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor,
+the banners and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping
+bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers
+sought the prize in vain but that I might win it and make it a symbol
+of the glories of our lofty line? And never on the diadem of the White
+Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is
+reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres.”
+
+“It is a noble thought,” said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer.
+“Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral
+lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship’s progenitors more
+truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle-hall.”
+
+“Nay, forsooth,” observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in
+hand with his bride, “the gentleman has bethought himself of a
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
+for a like purpose.”
+
+“How, fellow?” exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise. “What castle-hall
+hast thou to hang it in?”
+
+“No castle,” replied Matthew, “but as neat a cottage as any within
+sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I,
+being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great
+Carbuncle because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings
+and it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they
+visit us! It will shine through the house, so that we may pick up a pin
+in any corner, and will set all the windows a-glowing as if there were
+a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when
+we awake in the night, to be able to see one another’s faces!”
+
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of
+the young couple’s project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable
+stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud
+to adorn his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had
+sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an
+expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew asked him rather peevishly
+what he himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
+
+“The Great Carbuncle!” answered the cynic, with ineffable scorn. “Why,
+you blockhead, there is no such thing in _rerum naturâ_. I have come
+three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of
+these mountains and poke my head into every chasm for the sole purpose
+of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass
+than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug.”
+
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
+adventurers to the Crystal Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so
+impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
+was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
+the darkness instead of heavenward, and who, could they but extinguish
+the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight
+gloom their chiefest glory.
+
+As the cynic spoke several of the party were startled by a gleam of red
+splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and
+the rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with an illumination
+unlike that of their fire, on the trunks and black boughs of the
+forest-trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing,
+and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars—those
+dial-points of heaven—now warned the adventurers to close their eyes on
+the blazing logs and open them in dreams to the glow of the Great
+Carbuncle.
+
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
+corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
+a curtain of curiously-woven twigs such as might have hung in deep
+festoons around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
+wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She
+and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from
+visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one
+another’s eyes. They awoke at the same instant and with one happy smile
+beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
+consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
+recollect where they were than the bride peeped through the interstices
+of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of the hut was
+deserted.
+
+“Up, dear Matthew!” cried she, in haste. “The strange folk are all
+gone. Up this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!”
+
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty
+prize which had lured them thither that they had slept peacefully all
+night and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine,
+while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish
+wakefulness or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize
+their dreams with the curliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah
+after their calm rest were as light as two young deer, and merely
+stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the
+Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food ere they turned their
+faces to the mountain-side. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection
+as they toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength from the
+mutual aid which they afforded.
+
+After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe and
+the entanglement of Hannah’s hair in a bough, they reached the upper
+verge of the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course.
+The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut
+in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind
+and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine that rose immeasurably
+above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they had
+traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than
+trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude.
+
+“Shall we go on?” said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah’s waist
+both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to
+it.
+
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman’s love of jewels,
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
+world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+
+“Let us climb a little higher,” whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
+turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+
+“Come, then,” said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
+along with him; for she became timid again the moment that he grew
+bold.
+
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
+treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines
+which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
+reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments
+of naked rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn reared by giants
+in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
+breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentred in
+their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed
+no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them within the
+verge of the forest-trees, and sent a farewell glance after her
+children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never been.
+But soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the
+mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast
+landscape and sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest
+mountain-peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally the
+vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the
+appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden,
+but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth
+which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth
+again—more intensely, alas! than beneath a clouded sky they had ever
+desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their
+desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain,
+concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated—at least, for them—the
+whole region of visible space. But they drew closer together with a
+fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should
+snatch them from each other’s sight. Still, perhaps, they would have
+been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and heaven as
+they could find foothold if Hannah’s strength had not begun to fail,
+and with that her courage also. Her breath grew short. She refused to
+burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered against his
+side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last she
+sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity.
+
+“We are lost, dear Matthew,” said she, mournfully; “we shall never find
+our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our
+cottage!”
+
+“Dear heart, we will yet be happy there,” answered Matthew. “Look! In
+this direction the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its aid I
+can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back,
+love, and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle.”
+
+“The sun cannot be yonder,” said Hannah, with despondence. “By this
+time it must be noon; if there could ever be any sunshine here, it
+would come from above our heads.”
+
+“But look!” repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. “It is
+brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?”
+
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
+through the mist and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
+continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
+with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
+mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
+started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely the
+effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old chaos had
+been completely swallowed up. As the process went on they saw the
+gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very
+border of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly beautiful,
+spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the
+solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims
+looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes, with a thrill
+of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from
+the brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake.
+
+For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery and found the
+long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms around
+each other and trembled at their own success, for as the legends of
+this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory they felt themselves
+marked out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful. Often from
+childhood upward they had seen it shining like a distant star, and now
+that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their hearts. They
+seemed changed to one another’s eyes in the red brilliancy that flamed
+upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks
+and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its power. But
+with their next glance they beheld an object that drew their attention
+even from the mighty stone. At the base of the cliff, directly beneath
+the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure of a man with his arms
+extended in the act of climbing and his face turned upward as if to
+drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if
+changed to marble.
+
+“It is the Seeker,” whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
+husband’s arm. “Matthew, he is dead.”
+
+“The joy of success has killed him,” replied Matthew, trembling
+violently. “Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
+death.”
+
+“‘The Great Carbuncle’!” cried a peevish voice behind them. “The great
+humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.”
+
+They turned their heads, and there was the cynic with his prodigious
+spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
+the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
+Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all
+the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
+radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet as
+he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced
+that there was the least glimmer there.
+
+“Where is your great humbug?” he repeated. “I challenge you to make me
+see it.”
+
+“There!” said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning
+the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. “Take off those
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it.”
+
+Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic’s sight in at
+least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze
+at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from
+his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the Great
+Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep,
+shuddering groan, he dropped his head and pressed both hands across his
+miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was in very truth no light of the
+Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
+itself, for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects
+through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a
+single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
+vision, had blinded him for ever.
+
+“Matthew,” said Hannah, clinging to him, “let us go hence.”
+
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling down, supported her in
+his arms while he threw some of the thrillingly-cold water of the
+enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not
+renovate her courage.
+
+“Yes, dearest,” cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
+breast; “we will go hence and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
+sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will
+kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and be happy in its
+light. But never again will we desire more light than all the world may
+share with us.”
+
+“No,” said his bride, “for how could we live by day or sleep by night
+in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle?”
+
+Out of the hollow of their hands they drank each a draught from the
+lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip.
+Then, lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered not a
+word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they
+began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left the shore, till then
+untrodden, of the spirit’s lake, they threw a farewell glance toward
+the cliff and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through
+which the gem burned duskily.
+
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
+on to tell that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the
+quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself
+again to his warehouse, near the town-dock, in Boston. But as he passed
+through the Notch of the mountains a war-party of Indians captured our
+unlucky merchant and carried him to Montreal, there holding him in
+bondage till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had woefully
+subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence,
+moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the rest of his
+life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence-worth of
+copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory
+with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder,
+dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible and burnt with the blowpipe,
+and published the result of his experiments in one of the heaviest
+folios of the day. And for all these purposes the gem itself could not
+have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar
+mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice which he found in a sunless
+chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded in all points
+with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say that, if his
+poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of
+the ice. The lord De Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where he
+contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled in due
+course of time another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral
+torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the
+Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp.
+
+The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world a
+miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light
+for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long he
+would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
+his face eastward at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a
+pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumination of Saint
+Peter’s church, and finally perished in the Great Fire of London, into
+the midst of which he had thrust himself with the desperate idea of
+catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
+heaven.
+
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of
+telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward
+the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full
+credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the
+ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that from the hour when
+two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel
+which would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned. When our
+pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone with
+particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition
+that as the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the
+forehead of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake, and that at
+noontide the Seeker’s form may still be seen to bend over its
+quenchless gleam.
+
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and
+say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
+lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that many a
+mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a wondrous light around their
+summits, and was lured by the faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim
+of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROPHETIC PICTURES[5]
+
+
+“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only
+excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all
+other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives
+lectures in anatomy to Dr. Boylston. In a word, he will meet the
+best-instructed man among us on his own ground. Moreover, he is a
+polished gentleman, a citizen of the world—yes, a true cosmopolite; for
+he will speak like a native of each clime and country on the globe,
+except our own forests, whither he is now going. Nor is all this what I
+most admire in him.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Elinor, who had listened with a women’s interest to the
+description of such a man. “Yet this is admirable enough.”
+
+“Surely it is,” replied her lover, “but far less so than his natural
+gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that
+all men—and all women too, Elinor—shall find a mirror of themselves in
+this wonderful painter. But the greatest wonder is yet to be told.”
+
+“Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these,” said Elinor,
+laughing, “Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are you
+telling me of a painter, or a wizard?”
+
+“In truth,” answered he, “that question might be asked much more
+seriously than you suppose. They say that he paints not merely a man’s
+features, but his mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments and
+passions and throws them upon the canvas like sunshine, or perhaps, in
+the portraits of dark-souled men, like a gleam of infernal fire. It is
+an awful gift,” added Walter, lowering his voice from its tone of
+enthusiasm. “I shall be almost afraid to sit to him.”
+
+“Walter, are you in earnest?” exclaimed Elinor.
+
+“For Heaven’s sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look which
+you now wear,” said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed.
+“There! it is passing away now; but when you spoke, you seemed
+frightened to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?”
+
+“Nothing, nothing!” answered Elinor, hastily. “You paint my face with
+your own fantasies. Well, come for me tomorrow, and we will visit this
+wonderful artist.”
+
+But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a
+remarkable expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face
+of his mistress. It was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance
+with what should have been the feelings of a maiden on the eve of
+wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of her heart.
+
+“A look!” said Elinor to herself. “No wonder that it startled him if it
+expressed what I sometimes feel. I know by my own experience how
+frightful a look may be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of it
+at the time; I have seen nothing of it since; I did but dream it;” and
+she busied herself about the embroidery of a ruff in which she meant
+that her portrait should be taken.
+
+The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native
+artists who at a later period than this borrowed their colors from the
+Indians and manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts.
+Perhaps, if he could have revoked his life and prearranged his destiny,
+he might have chosen to belong to that school without a master in the
+hope of being at least original, since there were no works of art to
+imitate nor rules to follow. But he had been born and educated in
+Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or beauty of
+conception and every touch of the master-hand in all the most famous
+pictures in cabinets and galleries and on the walls of churches till
+there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn. Art could add
+nothing to its lessons, but Nature might. He had, therefore, visited a
+world whither none of his professional brethren had preceded him, to
+feast his eyes on visible images that were noble and picturesque, yet
+had never been transferred to canvas. America was too poor to afford
+other temptations to an artist of eminence, though many of the colonial
+gentry on the painter’s arrival had expressed a wish to transmit their
+lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill. Whenever such proposals
+were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant and seemed to
+look him through and through. If he beheld only a sleek and comfortable
+visage, though there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the picture and
+golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly rejected the task and the
+reward; but if the face were the index of anything uncommon in thought,
+sentiment or experience, or if he met a beggar in the street with a
+white beard and a furrowed brow, or if sometimes a child happened to
+look up and smile, he would exhaust all the art on them that he denied
+to wealth.
+
+Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an
+object of general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the
+technical merit of his productions, yet there were points in regard to
+which the opinion of the crowd was as valuable as the refined judgment
+of the amateur. He watched the effect that each picture produced on
+such untutored beholders, and derived profit from their remarks, while
+they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature herself as him
+who seemed to rival her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was
+tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it an
+offence against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of the
+Creator, to bring into existence such lively images of his creatures.
+Others, frightened at the art which could raise phantoms at will and
+keep the form of the dead among the living, were inclined to consider
+the painter as a magician, or perhaps the famous Black Man of old
+witch-times plotting mischief in a new guise. These foolish fancies
+were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior circles
+his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising like
+smoke-wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused by the
+varied knowledge and talents which he made subservient to his
+profession.
+
+Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to
+obtain their portraits as the first of what, they doubtless hoped,
+would be a long series of family pictures. The day after the
+conversation above recorded they visited the painter’s rooms. A servant
+ushered them into an apartment where, though the artist himself was not
+visible, there were personages whom they could hardly forbear greeting
+with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the whole assembly were but
+pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the idea of life and
+intellect from such striking counterfeits. Several of the portraits
+were known to them either as distinguished characters of the day or
+their private acquaintances. There was Governor Burnett, looking as if
+he had just received an undutiful communication from the House of
+Representatives and were inditing a most sharp response. Mr. Cooke hung
+beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy and somewhat puritanical, as
+befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir William Phipps eyed
+them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an imperious old dame not
+unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a very young man, wore
+the expression of warlike enterprise which long afterward made him a
+distinguished general. Their personal friends were recognized at a
+glance. In most of the pictures the whole mind and character were
+brought out on the countenance and concentrated into a single look; so
+that, to speak paradoxically, the originals hardly resembled themselves
+so strikingly as the portraits did.
+
+Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had
+almost vanished into the darkening canvas. There was also a pale but
+unfaded Madonna who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now
+regarded the lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to
+worship too.
+
+“How singular a thought,” observed Walter Ludlow, “that this beautiful
+face has been beautiful for above two hundred years! Oh, if all beauty
+would endure so well! Do you not envy her, Elinor?”
+
+“If earth were heaven, I might,” she replied. “But, where all things
+fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade!”
+
+“This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he
+be,” continued Walter; “he troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly at
+us.”
+
+“Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks,” said Elinor.
+
+The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that
+had been recently commenced. After a little inspection they began to
+recognize the features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman,
+growing into shape and life, as it were, out of a cloud.
+
+“Kind old man!” exclaimed Elinor. “He gazes at me as if he were about
+to utter a word of paternal advice.”
+
+“And at me,” said Walter, “as if he were about to shake his head and
+rebuke me for some suspected iniquity. But so does the original. I
+shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before
+him to be married.”
+
+They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the
+painter, who had been some moments in the room and had listened to a
+few of their remarks. He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well
+worthy of his own pencil. Indeed, by the picturesque though careless
+arrangement of his rich dress, and perhaps because his soul dwelt
+always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat like a portrait
+himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the artist and
+his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the
+canvas to salute them.
+
+Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the
+object of their visit. While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart his
+figure and Elinor’s with so happy an effect that they also seemed
+living pictures of youth and beauty gladdened by bright fortune. The
+artist was evidently struck.
+
+“My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston
+must be brief,” said he, thoughtfully; then, after an observant glance,
+he added, “But your wishes shall be gratified though I disappoint the
+chief-justice and Madame Oliver. I must not lose this opportunity for
+the sake of painting a few ells of broadcloth and brocade.”
+
+The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into
+one picture and represent them engaged in some appropriate action. This
+plan would have delighted the lovers, but was necessarily rejected
+because so large a space of canvas would have been unfit for the room
+which it was intended to decorate. Two half-length portraits were
+therefore fixed upon. After they had taken leave, Walter Ludlow asked
+Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an influence over their
+fates the painter was about to acquire.
+
+“The old women of Boston affirm,” continued he, “that after he has once
+got possession of a person’s face and figure he may paint him in any
+act or situation whatever, and the picture will be prophetic. Do you
+believe it?”
+
+“Not quite,” said Elinor, smiling. “Yet if he has such magic, there is
+something so gentle in his manner that I am sure he will use it well.”
+
+It was the painter’s choice to proceed with both the portraits at the
+same time, assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he
+sometimes used, that the faces threw light upon each other.
+Accordingly, he gave now a touch to Walter and now to Elinor, and the
+features of one and the other began to start forth so vividly that it
+appeared as if his triumphant art would actually disengage them from
+the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade they beheld their
+phantom selves, but, though the likeness promised to be perfect, they
+were not quite satisfied with the expression: it seemed more vague than
+in most of the painter’s works. He, however, was satisfied with the
+prospect of success, and, being much interested in the lovers, employed
+his leisure moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon sketch of
+their two figures. During their sittings he engaged them in
+conversation and kindled up their faces with characteristic traits,
+which, though continually varying, it was his purpose to combine and
+fix. At length he announced that at their next visit both the portraits
+would be ready for delivery.
+
+“If my pencil will but be true to my conception in the few last touches
+which I meditate,” observed he, “these two pictures will be my very
+best performances. Seldom indeed has an artist such subjects.” While
+speaking he still bent his penetrative eye upon them, nor withdrew it
+till they had reached the bottom of the stairs.
+
+Nothing in the whole circle of human vanities takes stronger hold of
+the imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why
+should it be so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the
+andirons, the mirror-like water, and all other reflecting surfaces,
+continually present us with portraits—or, rather, ghosts—of ourselves
+which we glance at and straightway forget them. But we forget them only
+because they vanish. It is the idea of duration—of earthly
+immortality—that gives such a mysterious interest to our own portraits.
+
+Walter and Elinor were not insensible to this feeling, and hastened to
+the painter’s room punctually at the appointed hour to meet those
+pictured shapes which were to be their representatives with posterity.
+The sunshine flashed after them into the apartment, but left it
+somewhat gloomy as they closed the door. Their eyes were immediately
+attracted to their portraits, which rested against the farthest wall of
+the room. At the first glance through the dim light and the distance,
+seeing themselves in precisely their natural attitudes and with all the
+air that they recognized so well, they uttered a simultaneous
+exclamation of delight.
+
+“There we stand,” cried Walter, enthusiastically, “fixed in sunshine
+for ever. No dark passions can gather on our faces.”
+
+“No,” said Elinor, more calmly; “no dreary change can sadden us.”
+
+This was said while they were approaching and had yet gained only an
+imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them,
+busied himself at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his
+visitors to form their own judgment as to his perfected labors. At
+intervals he sent a glance from beneath his deep eyebrows, watching
+their countenances in profile with his pencil suspended over the
+sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of the other’s
+picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without
+uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward, then back, viewing
+Elinor’s portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.
+
+“Is there not a change?” said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone.
+“Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid the longer I look. It is
+certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress, the
+features, all are the same, and yet something is altered.”
+
+“Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?” inquired the
+painter, now drawing near with irrepressible interest.
+
+“The features are perfect Elinor,” answered Walter, “and at the first
+glance the expression seemed also hers; but I could fancy that the
+portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it. The
+eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression.
+Nay, it is grief and terror. Is this like Elinor?”
+
+“Compare the living face with the pictured one,” said the painter.
+
+Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and
+absorbed, fascinated, as it were, in contemplation of Walter’s
+portrait, Elinor’s face had assumed precisely the expression of which
+he had just been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before
+a mirror, she could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the
+picture itself been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her present
+aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared quite
+unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover.
+
+“Elinor,” exclaimed Walter, in amazement, “what change has come over
+you?”
+
+She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her
+hand, and thus attracted her notice; then with a sudden tremor she
+looked from the picture to the face of the original.
+
+“Do you see no change in your portrait?” asked she.
+
+“In mine? None,” replied Walter, examining it. “But let me see. Yes;
+there is a slight change—an improvement, I think, in the picture,
+though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than
+yesterday, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes and
+about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look, it
+becomes very decided.”
+
+While he was intent on these observations Elinor turned to the painter.
+She regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid her with
+sympathy and commiseration, though wherefore she could but vaguely
+guess.
+
+“That look!” whispered she, and shuddered. “How came it there?”
+
+“Madam,” said the painter, sadly, taking her hand and leading her
+apart, “in both these pictures I have painted what I saw. The
+artist—the true artist—must look beneath the exterior. It is his
+gift—his proudest, but often a melancholy one—to see the inmost soul,
+and by a power indefinable even to himself to make it glow or darken
+upon the canvas in glances that express the thought and sentiment of
+years. Would that I might convince myself of error in the present
+instance!”
+
+They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands
+almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched
+cottages, old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume, and
+all such picturesque vagaries of an artist’s idle moments. Turning them
+over with seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures was
+disclosed.
+
+“If I have failed,” continued he—“if your heart does not see itself
+reflected in your own portrait, if you have no secret cause to trust my
+delineation of the other—it is not yet too late to alter them. I might
+change the action of these figures too. But would it influence the
+event?” He directed her notice to the sketch.
+
+A thrill ran through Elinor’s frame; a shriek was upon her lips, but
+she stifled it with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who
+hide thoughts of fear and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from the
+table, she perceived that Walter had advanced near enough to have seen
+the sketch, though she could not determine whether it had caught his
+eye.
+
+“We will not have the pictures altered,” said she, hastily. “If mine is
+sad, I shall but look the gayer for the contrast.”
+
+“Be it so,” answered the painter, bowing. “May your griefs be such
+fanciful ones that only your pictures may mourn for them! For your
+joys, may they be true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely
+face till it quite belie my art!”
+
+After the marriage of Walter and Elinor the pictures formed the two
+most splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side,
+separated by a narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly,
+yet always returning the gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen who
+professed a knowledge of such subjects reckoned these among the most
+admirable specimens of modern portraiture, while common observers
+compared them with the originals, feature by feature, and were
+rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third
+class—neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people
+of natural sensibility—that the pictures wrought their strongest
+effect. Such persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming
+interested, would return day after day and study these painted faces
+like the pages of a mystic volume. Walter Ludlow’s portrait attracted
+their earliest notice. In the absence of himself and his bride they
+sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter had intended
+to throw upon the features, all agreeing that there was a look of
+earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was less
+diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor’s picture. They differed,
+indeed, in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the gloom
+that dwelt upon her face, but agreed that it was gloom and alien from
+the natural temperament of their youthful friend. A certain fanciful
+person announced as the result of much scrutiny that both these
+pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy strength of
+feeling in Elinor’s countenance bore reference to the more vivid
+emotion—or, as he termed it, the wild passion—in that of Walter. Though
+unskilled in the art, he even began a sketch in which the action of the
+two figures was to correspond with their mutual expression.
+
+It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor’s face was
+assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render
+her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the
+other hand, instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had
+given him on the canvas, became reserved and downcast, with no outward
+flashes of emotion, however it might be smouldering within. In course
+of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple silk wrought with
+flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the pictures,
+under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim
+them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the
+silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her
+presence.
+
+Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to the
+north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look over
+the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New England’s
+loftiest mountain. But he did not profane that scene by the mockery of
+his art. He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake George,
+making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till not a
+picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He had
+gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had flung
+his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as soon
+paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous
+cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery
+except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face,
+instinct with thought, passion or suffering. With store of such his
+adventurous ramble had enriched him. The stern dignity of Indian
+chiefs, the dusky loveliness of Indian girls, the domestic life of
+wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle beneath gloomy pine trees, the
+frontier fortress with its garrison, the anomaly of the old French
+partisan bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy deserts,—such were
+the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The glow of perilous
+moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles of fierce power, love,
+hate, grief, frenzy—in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old
+earth—had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was
+filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which
+genius would transmute into its own substance and imbue with
+immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had
+sought so far was found.
+
+But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its
+overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the
+companions of his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing
+purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of humankind.
+He had no aim, no pleasure, no sympathies, but what were ultimately
+connected with his art. Though gentle in manner and upright in intent
+and action, he did not possess kindly feelings; his heart was cold: no
+living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm. For
+these two beings, however, he had felt in its greatest intensity the
+sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil.
+He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight and pictured the
+result upon their features with his utmost skill, so as barely to fall
+short of that standard which no genius ever reached, his own severe
+conception. He had caught from the duskiness of the future—at least, so
+he fancied—a fearful secret, and had obscurely revealed it on the
+portraits. So much of himself—of his imagination and all other
+powers—had been lavished on the study of Walter and Elinor that he
+almost regarded them as creations of his own, like the thousands with
+which he had peopled the realms of Picture. Therefore did they flit
+through the twilight of the woods, hover on the mist of waterfalls,
+look forth from the mirror of the lake, nor melt away in the noontide
+sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries of life nor
+pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits, each with an
+unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of
+the soul. He could not recross the Atlantic till he had again beheld
+the originals of those airy pictures.
+
+“O glorious Art!” Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the
+street. “Thou art the image of the Creator’s own. The innumerable forms
+that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The dead live
+again; thou recallest them to their old scenes and givest their gray
+shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou
+snatchest back the fleeting moments of history. With thee there is no
+past, for at thy touch all that is great becomes for ever present, and
+illustrious men live through long ages in the visible performance of
+the very deeds which made them what they are. O potent Art! as thou
+bringest the faintly-revealed past to stand in that narrow strip of
+sunlight which we call ‘now,’ canst thou summon the shrouded future to
+meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I not thy prophet?”
+
+Thus with a proud yet melancholy fervor did he almost cry aloud as he
+passed through the toilsome street among people that knew not of his
+reveries nor could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man
+to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him by
+whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires and hopes
+will become extravagant and he the semblance—perhaps the reality—of a
+madman. Reading other bosoms with an acuteness almost preternatural,
+the painter failed to see the disorder of his own.
+
+“And this should be the house,” said he, looking up and down the front
+before he knocked. “Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it
+will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it
+is framed within them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest
+tints—the faces of the portraits, the figures and action of the
+sketch!”
+
+He knocked.
+
+“The portraits—are they within?” inquired he of the domestic; then,
+recollecting himself, “Your master and mistress—are they at home?”
+
+“They are, sir,” said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
+picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,
+“and the portraits too.”
+
+The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door
+with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was
+empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes
+were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured
+representatives, who had long been the objects of so singular an
+interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
+
+They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing
+before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich
+and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel
+with one hand, while the other grasped that of his bride. The pictures,
+concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished splendor,
+appearing to throw a sombre light across the room rather than to be
+disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been almost
+prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had successively
+dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of time into a
+quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made it the very
+expression of the portrait. Walter’s face was moody and dull or
+animated only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness for their
+momentary illumination. He looked from Elinor to her portrait, and
+thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he finally stood
+absorbed.
+
+The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him
+on its progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his
+mind. Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied
+itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which he had
+foreshadowed?
+
+Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as
+with his own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil
+influence that the painter had cast upon the features. Gradually his
+eyes kindled, while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of his
+face her own assumed a look of terror; and when, at last, he turned
+upon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was complete.
+
+“Our fate is upon us!” howled Walter. “Die!”
+
+Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground, and
+aimed it at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude of
+each the painter beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture, with
+all its tremendous coloring, was finished.
+
+“Hold, madman!” cried he, sternly.
+
+He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the
+wretched beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny
+as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician
+controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.
+
+“What!” muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce excitement
+into sullen gloom. “Does Fate impede its own decree?”
+
+“Wretched lady,” said the painter, “did I not warn you?”
+
+“You did,” replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the
+quiet grief which it had disturbed. “But I loved him.”
+
+Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one or all
+our deeds be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate
+and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires,
+and none be turned aside by the prophetic pictures.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID SWAN
+
+A FANTASY
+
+We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually
+influence our course through life and our final destiny. There are
+innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close
+upon us, yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their
+near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our
+minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would
+be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford
+us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a
+page from the secret history of David Swan.
+
+We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of
+twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston,
+where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him
+behind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New
+Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary
+school education with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy.
+After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer’s
+day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down
+in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the
+stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a
+little tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a
+fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any
+wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty
+lips and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon
+some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up in a striped cotton
+handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet
+rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday, and his grassy
+lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring
+murmured drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the
+blue sky overhead, and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its
+depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he did
+not dream of.
+
+While he lay sound asleep in the shade other people were wide awake,
+and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback and in all sorts of
+vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither
+to the right hand nor the left and knew not that he was there; some
+merely glanced that way without admitting the slumberer among their
+busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept, and several
+whose hearts were brimming full of scorn ejected their venomous
+superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was
+near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the
+young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw
+him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening’s discourse
+as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside.
+
+But censure, praise, merriment, scorn and indifference were all one—or,
+rather, all nothing—to David Swan. He had slept only a few moments when
+a brown carriage drawn by a handsome pair of horses bowled easily along
+and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of David’s
+resting-place. A linch-pin had fallen out and permitted one of the
+wheels to slide off. The damage was slight and occasioned merely a
+momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning
+to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were
+replacing the wheel the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath
+the maple trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain and David Swan
+asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest sleeper
+usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the gout
+would allow, and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown
+lest David should start up all of a sudden.
+
+“How soundly he sleeps!” whispered the old gentleman. “From what a
+depth he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on without
+an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income, for it would
+suppose health and an untroubled mind.”
+
+“And youth besides,” said the lady. “Healthy and quiet age does not
+sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his than our wakefulness.”
+
+The longer they looked, the more did this elderly couple feel
+interested in the unknown youth to whom the wayside and the maple shade
+were as a secret chamber with the rich gloom of damask curtains
+brooding over him. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon
+his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside so as to intercept
+it, and, having done this little act of kindness, she began to feel
+like a mother to him.
+
+“Providence seems to have laid him here,” whispered she to her husband,
+“and to have brought us hither to find him, after our disappointment in
+our cousin’s son. Methinks I can see a likeness to our departed Henry.
+Shall we waken him?”
+
+“To what purpose?” said the merchant, hesitating. “We know nothing of
+the youth’s character.”
+
+“That open countenance!” replied his wife, in the same hushed voice,
+yet earnestly. “This innocent sleep!”
+
+While these whispers were passing, the sleeper’s heart did not throb,
+nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least token
+of interest. Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let fall a
+burden of gold. The old merchant had lost his only son, and had no heir
+to his wealth except a distant relative with whose conduct he was
+dissatisfied. In such cases people sometimes do stranger things than to
+act the magician and awaken a young man to splendor who fell asleep in
+poverty.
+
+“Shall we not waken him?” repeated the lady, persuasively.
+
+“The coach is ready, sir,” said the servant, behind.
+
+The old couple started, reddened and hurried away, mutually wondering
+that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very
+ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage and
+occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for unfortunate
+men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap.
+
+The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two when a pretty
+young girl came along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how
+her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry
+kind of motion that caused—is there any harm in saying it?—her garter
+to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth—if silk it were—was
+relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple
+trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring. Blushing as
+red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman’s
+bedchamber, and for such a purpose too, she was about to make her
+escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A monster of a
+bee had been wandering overhead—buzz, buzz, buzz—now among the leaves,
+now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark
+shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David
+Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted as she
+was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief,
+brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How
+sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath and
+a deeper blush she stole a glance at the youthful stranger for whom she
+had been battling with a dragon in the air.
+
+“He is handsome!” thought she, and blushed redder yet.
+
+How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him that,
+shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder and allow him to
+perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile of
+welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul,
+according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his own,
+and whom in all his vague but passionate desires he yearned to meet.
+Her only could he love with a perfect love, him only could she receive
+into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly blushing in
+the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its happy lustre would
+never gleam upon his life again.
+
+“How sound he sleeps!” murmured the girl. She departed, but did not
+trip along the road so lightly as when she came.
+
+Now, this girl’s father was a thriving country merchant in the
+neighborhood, and happened at that identical time to be looking out for
+just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside
+acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become the father’s
+clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here, again, had good
+fortune—the best of fortunes—stolen so near that her garments brushed
+against him, and he knew nothing of the matter.
+
+The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the
+maple shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were
+drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had
+a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their
+living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of
+other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of
+villainy on a game of cards which was to have been decided here under
+the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues
+whispered to his fellow:
+
+“Hist! Do you see that bundle under his head?”
+
+The other villain nodded, winked and leered.
+
+“I’ll bet you a horn of brandy,” said the first, “that the chap has
+either a pocketbook or a snug little hoard of small change stowed away
+amongst his shirts. And if not there, we will find it in his pantaloons
+pocket.”
+
+“But how if he wakes?” said the other.
+
+His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a
+dirk and nodded.
+
+“So be it!” muttered the second villain.
+
+They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the
+dagger toward his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath
+his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled and ghastly with guilt and
+fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken
+for fiends should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains glanced
+aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as
+reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect,
+even when asleep on his mother’s breast.
+
+“I must take away the bundle,” whispered one.
+
+“If he stirs, I’ll strike,” muttered the other.
+
+But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the
+maple trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then
+at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
+
+“Pshaw!” said one villain. “We can do nothing now. The dog’s master
+must be close behind.”
+
+“Let’s take a drink and be off,” said the other.
+
+The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew
+forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single
+discharge. It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed
+upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with
+so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness that
+they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few hours
+they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the
+recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their
+souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
+slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung
+over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was
+withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour’s
+repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which
+many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred, now moved his lips
+without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres
+of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder
+along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David’s
+slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his ideas
+about him.
+
+“Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?” shouted he.
+
+“Room on top!” answered the driver.
+
+Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so much
+as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew
+not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters,
+nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor that one of
+Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all in the brief
+hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we hear not the
+airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen. Does it not
+argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and unexpected
+events thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should
+still be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even
+partially available?
+
+
+
+
+SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE
+
+
+So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with
+wearied knees—earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
+far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith,
+where man never breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal
+azure melts away from the eye and appears only a deepened shade of
+nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What
+clouds are gathering in the golden west with direful intent against the
+brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon? They are ponderous
+air-ships, black as death and freighted with the tempest, and at
+intervals their thunder—the signal-guns of that unearthly
+squadron—rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps of
+fleecy vapor—methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole day
+long—seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired pilgrims
+through the sky. Perhaps—for who can tell?—beautiful spirits are
+disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the
+brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light and laughing
+faces fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or where the
+floating mass so imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament a
+slender foot and fairy limb resting too heavily upon the frail support
+may be thrust through and suddenly withdrawn, while longing fancy
+follows them in vain. Yonder, again, is an airy archipelago where the
+sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space. Every one
+of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in radiance which
+the slightest pressure might disengage in silvery profusion like water
+wrung from a sea-maid’s hair. Bright they are as a young man’s visions,
+and, like them, would be realized in dullness, obscurity and tears. I
+will look on them no more.
+
+In three parts of the visible circle whose centre is this spire I
+discern cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving
+lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising
+ground that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the sea,
+stretching away toward a viewless boundary, blue and calm except where
+the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface and is gone.
+Hitherward a broad inlet penetrates far into the land; on the verge of
+the harbor formed by its extremity is a town, and over it am I, a
+watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. Oh that the multitude of chimneys
+could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray in smoky whispers the
+secrets of all who since their first foundation have assembled at the
+hearths within! Oh that the Limping Devil of Le Sage would perch beside
+me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of roofs, uncover every
+chamber and make me familiar with their inhabitants! The most desirable
+mode of existence might be that of a spiritualized Paul Pry hovering
+invisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into
+their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity and shade from
+their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of
+these things are possible; and if I would know the interior of brick
+walls or the mystery of human bosoms, I can but guess.
+
+Yonder is a fair street extending north and south. The stately mansions
+are placed each on its carpet of verdant grass, and a long flight of
+steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental trees—the
+broadleafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending, the graceful
+but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the names—grow
+thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the sun are
+intercepted by these green citizens and by the houses, so that one side
+of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole extent there
+is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper end, and he,
+unless distance and the medium of a pocket spyglass do him more than
+justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He saunters slowly forward,
+slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending his eyes upon
+the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a glance before him.
+Certainly he has a pensive air. Is he in doubt or in debt? Is he—if the
+question be allowable—in love? Does he strive to be melancholy and
+gentlemanlike, or is he merely overcome by the heat? But I bid him
+farewell for the present. The door of one of the houses—an aristocratic
+edifice with curtains of purple and gold waving from the windows—is now
+opened, and down the steps come two ladies swinging their parasols and
+lightly arrayed for a summer ramble. Both are young, both are pretty;
+but methinks the left-hand lass is the fairer of the twain, and, though
+she be so serious at this moment, I could swear that there is a
+treasure of gentle fun within her. They stand talking a little while
+upon the steps, and finally proceed up the street. Meantime, as their
+faces are now turned from me, I may look elsewhere.
+
+Upon that wharf and down the corresponding street is a busy contrast to
+the quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has its
+centre there, and many a man is wasting the summer afternoon in labor
+and anxiety, in losing riches or in gaining them, when he would be
+wiser to flee away to some pleasant country village or shaded lake in
+the forest or wild and cool sea-beach. I see vessels unlading at the
+wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground abundantly as at
+the bottom of the sea—that market whence no goods return, and where
+there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of sales. Here
+the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and sailors ply
+the block and tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying their toil
+with cries long-drawn and roughly melodious till the bales and
+puncheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance a group of
+gentlemen are assembled round the door of a warehouse. Grave seniors be
+they, and I would wager—if it were safe, in these times, to be
+responsible for any one—that the least eminent among them might vie
+with old Vincentio, that incomparable trafficker of Pisa. I can even
+select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly personage in
+somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair the superfluous whiteness of
+which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are wafted
+on some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and his name,
+I will venture to say, though I know it not, is a familiar sound among
+the far-separated merchants of Europe and the Indies.
+
+But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking again
+to the long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls have
+encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition,
+he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard
+to his companions by placing himself on the inner side of the pavement,
+nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a steeple-top the part of
+Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged the golden apple.
+
+In two streets converging at right angles toward my watch-tower I
+distinguish three different processions. One is a proud array of
+voluntary soldiers in bright uniform, resembling, from the height
+whence I look down, the painted veterans that garrison the windows of a
+toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart. Their regular advance, their
+nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets and musket-barrels, the
+roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon
+piercing through,—these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful
+though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
+ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping
+a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously
+aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as
+slight differences are scarcely perceptible from a church-spire, one
+might be tempted to ask, “Which are the boys?” or, rather, “Which the
+men?” But, leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which,
+though sadder in outward show, may excite identical reflections in the
+thoughtful mind. It is a funeral—a hearse drawn by a black and bony
+steed and covered by a dusty pall, two or three coaches rumbling over
+the stones, their drivers half asleep, a dozen couple of careless
+mourners in their every-day attire. Such was not the fashion of our
+fathers when they carried a friend to his grave. There is now no
+doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King
+of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and
+philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a
+proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the
+military boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full
+in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that
+regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to
+the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their
+ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive
+curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the steeple
+and pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the lightning
+glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the thunder rattles
+heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid. Verily, the shower is
+near, and I tremble for the young man and the girls, who have now
+disappeared from the long and shady street.
+
+How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
+beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling
+them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life and the
+recent dead are in the chambers of these many mansions. The full of
+hope, the happy, the miserable and the desperate dwell together within
+the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over which my eyes roam
+so coldly guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a
+debased and trodden virtue; guilt is on the very edge of commission,
+and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the
+criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts
+struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them distinctness, they
+would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the raindrops are descending.
+
+The clouds within a little time have gathered over all the sky, hanging
+heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At
+intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers,
+disappears, and then comes the thunder, travelling slowly after its
+twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through the
+darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies to rebel against
+the approaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the funeral has
+already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry homeward—all that
+have a home—while a few lounge by the corners or trudge on desperately
+at their leisure. In a narrow lane which communicates with the shady
+street I discern the rich old merchant putting himself to the top of
+his speed lest the rain should convert his hair-powder to a paste.
+Unhappy gentleman! By the slow vehemence and painful moderation
+wherewith he journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its
+thrilling tenderness in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid
+pace, come three other of my acquaintance, the two pretty girls and the
+young man unseasonably interrupted in their walk. Their footsteps are
+supported by the risen dust, the wind lends them its velocity, they fly
+like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestuous breeze. The
+ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that any one were
+at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward, laughing in the
+angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has chanced. At the corner
+where the narrow lane enters into the street they come plump against
+the old merchant, whose tortoise-motion has just brought him to that
+point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the darkness of the whole air
+gathers speedily upon his visage, and there is a pause on both sides.
+Finally he thrusts aside the youth with little courtesy, seizes an arm
+of each of the two girls, and plods onward like a magician with a prize
+of captive fairies. All this is easy to be understood. How disconsolate
+the poor lover stands, regardless of the rain that threatens an
+exceeding damage to his well-fashioned habiliments, till he catches a
+backward glance of mirth from a bright eye, and turns away with
+whatever comfort it conveys!
+
+The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm lets
+loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the
+chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous
+shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops
+descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke. There
+is a rush and roar as of a river through the air, and muddy streams
+bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam into the
+kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa sink. I
+love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult which I am
+powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my
+brow and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I
+will descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam
+breaks out in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness or
+boils up in far-distant points like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies
+of a flood; and let me look once more at the green plain and little
+hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is striding in
+robes of mist, and at the town whose obscured and desolate streets
+might beseem a city of the dead; and, turning a single moment to the
+sky, now gloomy as an author’s prospects, I prepare to resume my
+station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of azure has widened
+in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage and go rejoicing
+through the tempest, and on yonder darkest cloud, born like hallowed
+hopes of the glory of another world and the trouble and tears of this,
+brightens forth the rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS
+
+
+In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen’s reveries
+were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met
+together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful in
+form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an
+untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her
+years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of ill-favored
+aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit that even the space
+since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human
+existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortal could observe
+them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down in the midst
+of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically circular, two or
+three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that a stately cedar
+might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous
+upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate
+hollow, within which there was nothing but the brown grass of October
+and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen long ago and lay
+mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One of these masses
+of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close beside a pool
+of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin. Such scenes as
+this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of a power of evil
+and his plighted subjects, and here at midnight or on the dim verge of
+evening they were said to stand round the mantling pool disturbing its
+putrid waters in the performance of an impious baptismal rite. The
+chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding the three hill-tops,
+whence a paler tint stole down their sides into the hollow.
+
+“Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass,” said the aged crone,
+“according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
+me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here.”
+
+As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance
+like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast
+her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return
+with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.
+
+“I am stranger in this land, as you know,” said she, at length. “Whence
+I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me with whom my
+fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for ever. There
+is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I have come hither
+to inquire of their welfare.”
+
+“And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the
+ends of the earth?” cried the old woman, peering into the lady’s face.
+“Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold, and
+the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wish be
+granted.”
+
+“I will do your bidding though I die,” replied the lady, desperately.
+
+The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw
+aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companion
+to draw near.
+
+“Kneel down,” she said, “and lay your forehead on my knees.”
+
+She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling
+burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of her
+garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old
+woman’s knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady’s face, so
+that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer,
+in the midst of which she started and would have arisen.
+
+“Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon
+me!” she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself
+and was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar in
+infancy and unforgotten through many wanderings and in all the
+vicissitudes of her heart and fortune, were mingling with the accents
+of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct—not
+rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book
+which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening
+light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices
+strengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and the
+conversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed like
+himself became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those
+strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three
+hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a
+chamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular
+vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of the
+embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vivid
+as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old
+people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful, and
+their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a wanderer
+they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her and leaving shame
+and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave. They alluded
+also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk their
+voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully
+among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was
+she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.
+
+“A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it,” remarked the
+old woman, smiling in the lady’s face.
+
+“And did you also hear them?” exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
+humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
+
+“Yea, and we have yet more to hear,” replied the old woman, “wherefore
+cover thy face quickly.”
+
+Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer
+that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pauses
+of her breath strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually
+increasing, so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew.
+Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound and were succeeded by
+the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a
+wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming
+altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth. Chains
+were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the scourge
+resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and became
+substantial to the listener’s ear, till she could distinguish every
+soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly into
+funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed up
+like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the
+fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this
+wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken
+career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious
+voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his
+feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company
+whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought
+an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted their
+laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman’s
+perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart
+made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek,
+the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful
+and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine trees on those
+three lonely hills.
+
+The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her
+face.
+
+“Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a mad-house?”
+inquired the latter.
+
+“True, true!” said the lady to herself; “there is mirth within its
+walls, but misery, misery without.”
+
+“Wouldst thou hear more?” demanded the old woman.
+
+“There is one other voice I would fain listen to again,” replied the
+lady, faintly.
+
+“Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get
+thee hence before the hour be past.”
+
+The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep
+shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were rising
+thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to weave
+her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of a bell
+stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that had
+travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die
+in the air. The lady shook upon her companion’s knees as she heard that
+boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into the tone
+of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower and
+bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to
+the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom appointed in
+turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly, slowly on, as
+of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on the ground, so
+that the ear could measure the length of their melancholy array. Before
+them went the priest, reading the burial-service, while the leaves of
+his book were rustling in the breeze. And though no voice but his was
+heard to speak aloud, still there were revilings and anathemas,
+whispered but distinct, from women and from men, breathed against the
+daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of her parents, the wife who had
+betrayed the trusting fondness of her husband, the mother who had
+sinned against natural affection and left her child to die. The
+sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a thin vapor, and
+the wind, that just before had seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned
+sadly round the verge of the hollow between three hills. But when the
+old woman stirred the kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.
+
+“Here has been a sweet hour’s sport!” said the withered crone,
+chuckling to herself.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOLL-GATHERER’S DAY
+
+A SKETCH OF TRANSITORY LIFE
+
+Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the
+current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no
+undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare
+of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the observer to run
+about the earth, to leave the track of his footsteps far and wide, to
+mingle himself with the action of numberless vicissitudes, and,
+finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing spirit on all that he
+has seen and felt. But there are natures too indolent or too sensitive
+to endure the dust, the sunshine or the rain, the turmoil of moral and
+physical elements, to which all the wayfarers of the world expose
+themselves. For such a man how pleasant a miracle could life be made to
+roll its variegated length by the threshold of his own hermitage, and
+the great globe, as it were, perform its revolutions and shift its
+thousand scenes before his eyes without whirling him onward in its
+course! If any mortal be favored with a lot analogous to this, it is
+the toll-gatherer. So, at least, have I often fancied while lounging on
+a bench at the door of a small square edifice which stands between
+shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs
+and flows an arm of the sea, while above, like the life-blood through a
+great artery, the travel of the north and east is continually
+throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid bench, I amuse myself with a
+conception, illustrated by numerous pencil-sketches in the air, of the
+toll-gatherer’s day.
+
+In the morning—dim, gray, dewy summer’s morn—the distant roll of
+ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend’s slumbers,
+creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and
+gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change
+from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing
+wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The
+timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman
+stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by the
+glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is seen
+the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles
+long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels, and the huge
+hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but half
+awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from
+the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter
+of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the
+same headlong, restless rate all through the quiet night. The bridge
+resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on without a pause,
+merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the sleepy passengers,
+who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a cordial in the briny air.
+The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and they forget how wearily
+the darkness toiled away. And behold now the fervid day in his bright
+chariot, glittering aslant over the waves, nor scorning to throw a
+tribute of his golden beams on the toll-gatherer’s little hermitage.
+The old man looks eastward, and (for he is a moralizer) frames a simile
+of the stage-coach and the sun.
+
+While the world is rousing itself we may glance slightly at the scene
+of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood—a spot not of
+earth, but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound
+among the massive beams beneath. Over the door is a weatherbeaten board
+inscribed with the rates of toll in letters so nearly effaced that the
+gilding of the sunshine can hardly make them legible. Beneath the
+window is a wooden bench on which a long succession of weary wayfarers
+have reposed themselves. Peeping within-doors, we perceive the
+whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and
+advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a
+wandering caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer, glorified
+by the early sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may announce, of
+quiet soul and thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, who of the wisdom
+which the passing world scatters along the wayside has gathered a
+reasonable store.
+
+Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon
+the sky. Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer’s practised
+ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number of its
+wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with their iron
+tramp. Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth betimes to
+take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his wife with
+their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between them. The
+bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes and
+carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty with
+yesterday’s journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled with
+a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse and
+driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a whole
+summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome
+maidens! Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man who as
+he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon
+the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of
+pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad in
+black, with a meditative brow, as of one who, whithersoever his steed
+might bear him, would still journey through a mist of brooding thought.
+He is a country preacher going to labor at a protracted meeting. The
+next object passing townward is a butcher’s cart canopied with its arch
+of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a “sauceman” driving a wagon full of
+new potatoes, green ears of corn, beets, carrots, turnips and summer
+squashes, and next two wrinkled, withered witch-looking old gossips in
+an antediluvian chaise drawn by a horse of former generations and going
+to peddle out a lot of huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a
+wheelbarrow-load of lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly
+onward, covered with green canvas and conveying the contributions of a
+whole herd of cows, in large tin canisters.
+
+But let all these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that
+causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the travellers
+brought sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome influence all
+along the road. It is a barouche of the newest style, the varnished
+panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the landscape, and
+show a picture, likewise, of our friend with his visage broadened, so
+that his meditative smile is transformed to grotesque merriment. Within
+sits a youth fresh as the summer morn, and beside him a young lady in
+white with white gloves upon her slender hands and a white veil flowing
+down over her face. But methinks her blushing cheek burns through the
+snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in front. And who are these
+on whom, and on all that appertains to them, the dust of earth seems
+never to have settled? Two lovers whom the priest has blessed this
+blessed morn and sent them forth, with one of the bride-maids, on the
+matrimonial tour.—Take my blessing too, ye happy ones! May the sky not
+frown upon you nor clouds bedew you with their chill and sullen rain!
+May the hot sun kindle no fever in your hearts! May your whole life’s
+pilgrimage be as blissful as this first day’s journey, and its close be
+gladdened with even brighter anticipations than those which hallow your
+bridal-night! They pass, and ere the reflection of their joy has faded
+from his face another spectacle throws a melancholy shadow over the
+spirit of the observing man. In a close carriage sits a fragile figure
+muffled carefully and shrinking even from the mild breath of summer.
+She leans against a manly form, and his arm enfolds her as if to guard
+his treasure from some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when he
+shall strive to embrace that loved one, he will press only desolation
+to his heart.
+
+And now has Morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sun
+rolls blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his face
+with. The horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave their
+glistening sides in short quick pantings when the reins are tightened
+at the toll-house. Glisten, too, the faces of the travellers. Their
+garments are thickly bestrewn with dust; their whiskers and hair look
+hoary; their throats are choked with the dusty atmosphere which they
+have left behind them. No air is stirring on the road. Nature dares
+draw no breath lest she should inhale a stifling cloud of dust. “A hot
+and dusty day!” cry the poor pilgrims as they wipe their begrimed
+foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the river bears along with
+it.—“Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!” answers the sympathetic toll-gatherer.
+They start again to pass through the fiery furnace, while he re-enters
+his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with a pail of briny water from
+the stream beneath. He thinks within himself that the sun is not so
+fierce here as elsewhere, and that the gentle air doth not forget him
+in these sultry days. Yes, old friend, and a quiet heart will make a
+dog-day temperate. He hears a weary footstep, and perceives a traveller
+with pack and staff, who sits down upon the hospitable bench and
+removes the hat from his wet brow. The toll-gatherer administers a cup
+of cold water, and, discovering his guest to be a man of homely sense,
+he engages him in profitable talk, uttering the maxims of a philosophy
+which he has found in his own soul, but knows not how it came there.
+And as the wayfarer makes ready to resume his journey he tells him a
+sovereign remedy for blistered feet.
+
+Now comes the noontide hour—of all the hours, nearest akin to midnight,
+for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world
+begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of
+the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The
+draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner laden with wood
+from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably right athwart the
+bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a throng of impatient
+travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig with the top
+thrown back, both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of forecastle
+oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly-dressed gentleman and
+lady, he from a tailor’s shop-board and she from a milliner’s back
+room—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest
+of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer’s day? Here is a
+tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders like a
+travelling meteor or opposition sun, and on the other side a seller of
+spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone
+bottles. Here conic a party of ladies on horseback, in green ridings
+habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there a flock of sheep for the
+market, pattering over the bridge with a multitude nous clatter of
+their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a hand-organ on his shoulder,
+and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On this side, heralded by a
+blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train of wagons conveying all
+the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a company of summer soldiers
+marching from village to village on a festival campaign, attended by
+the “brass band.” Now look at the scene, and it presents an emblem of
+the mysterious confusion, the apparently insolvable riddle, in which
+individuals, or the great world itself, seem often to be involved. What
+miracle shall set all things right again?
+
+But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm;
+the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge
+vacant from end to end. “And thus,” muses the toll-gatherer, “have I
+found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at a
+stand.” The sage old man!
+
+Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor
+across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly
+among the timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff
+the freshening breeze. One or two let down long lines and haul up
+flapping flounders or cunners or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others,
+and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on their
+cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed floating
+upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily along the
+bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.—Rest, rest, thou
+weary world! for to-morrow’s round of toil and pleasure will be as
+wearisome as to-day’s has been, yet both shall bear thee onward a day’s
+march of eternity.—Now the old toll-gatherer looks seaward and discerns
+the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the stars, too, kindling
+in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of
+heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal
+travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like
+a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon.
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN
+
+
+At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a hundred
+miles from home. The morning after my arrival—a September morning, but
+warm and bright as any in July—I rambled into a wood of oaks with a few
+walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The
+ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young
+saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track which I chanced
+to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of grass as freshly
+green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak.
+One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played like a goldfish in
+the water.
+
+From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
+a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of
+which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated
+hue—reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand,
+which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate the
+spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water
+violently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain or
+breaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living
+creature were about to emerge—the naiad of the spring, perhaps, in the
+shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss, a
+belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How
+would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her sitting
+on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples and
+throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on
+grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with morning
+dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful housewife, to
+clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy wood, and old
+acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left by cattle in
+drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like a treasury
+of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he would find
+only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spot where he
+had seen her.
+
+Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should have
+been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
+mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo!
+another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct
+in all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect of
+a fair young girl with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression
+laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance,
+till it seemed just what a fountain would be if, while dancing merrily
+into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through the dim
+rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy twigs,
+the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was diffused
+among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness and
+became a glory round that head so beautiful.
+
+My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus
+tenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was
+the face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or
+faded into nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.
+
+My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend where
+that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,
+waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest motion,
+or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus have I
+often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in hopes to
+wile it back. Deep were my musings as to the race and attributes of
+that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the daughter of my
+fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under the lids of
+children’s eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that one moment and
+then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain, or fairy or
+woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of some
+forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good truth, had
+a lovely girl with a warm heart and lips that would bear pressure
+stolen softly behind me and thrown her image into the spring?
+
+I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a
+spell upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the haunted
+spring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling and the sunbeam
+glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog, the hermit
+of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled snout and made
+himself invisible—all except a pair of long legs—beneath a stone.
+Methought he had a devilish look. I could have slain him as an
+enchanter who kept the mysterious beauty imprisoned in the fountain.
+
+Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and the
+church-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees
+insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of
+radiance hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadow
+falling to the east. The afternoon being far declined, the sunshine was
+almost pensive and the shade almost cheerful; glory and gloom were
+mingled in the placid light, as if the spirits of the Day and Evening
+had met in friendship under those trees and found themselves akin. I
+was admiring the picture when the shape of a young girl emerged from
+behind the clump of oaks. My heart knew her: it was the vision, but so
+distant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbued
+with the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that my
+spirit sunk within me, sadder than before. How could I ever reach her?
+
+While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves. In a
+moment the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching a portion
+of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearing like a
+mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance. A rainbow
+vivid as Niagara’s was painted in the air. Its southern limb came down
+before the group of trees and enveloped the fair vision as if the hues
+of heaven were the only garment for her beauty. When the rainbow
+vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no longer there. Was her
+existence absorbed in nature’s loveliest phenomenon, and did her pure
+frame dissolve away in the varied light? Yet I would not despair of her
+return, for, robed in the rainbow, she was the emblem of Hope.
+
+Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded to the
+parting moment. By the spring and in the wood and on the hill and
+through the village, at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magic
+hour of sunset, when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but
+in vain. Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared not
+in them. I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro or sat
+in solitude like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven and could take
+no more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner world where my thoughts
+lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of them. Without
+intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a romance,
+conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my
+own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and
+despair had their end in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of my early
+youth with manhood’s colder gift, the power of expression, your hearts,
+sweet ladies, should flutter at my tale.
+
+In the middle of January I was summoned home. The day before my
+departure, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the vision, I
+found that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and
+a glare of winter sunshine on the hill of the rainbow. “Let me hope,”
+thought I, “or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the whole
+world as desolate as this snowy hill.” Most of the day was spent in
+preparing for the journey, which was to commence at four o’clock the
+next morning. About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, I
+descended from my chamber to the sitting-room to take leave of the old
+clergyman and his family with whom I had been an inmate. A gust of wind
+blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry.
+
+According to their invariable custom—so pleasant a one when the fire
+blazes cheerfully—the family were sitting in the parlor with no other
+light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman’s scanty
+stipend compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation of
+his fires was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would
+smoulder away from morning till night with a dull warmth and no flame.
+This evening the heap of tan was newly put on and surmounted with three
+sticks of red oak full of moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine that
+had not yet kindled. There was no light except the little that came
+sullenly from two half-burnt brands, without even glimmering on the
+andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister’s arm-chair, and
+also where his wife sat with her knitting-work, and how to avoid his
+two daughters—one a stout country lass, and the other a consumptive
+girl. Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next to that of
+the son, a learned collegian who had come home to keep school in the
+village during the winter vacation. I noticed that there was less room
+than usual to-night between the collegian’s chair and mine.
+
+As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for some
+time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the regular
+click of the matron’s knitting-needles. At times the fire threw out a
+brief and dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man’s glasses and
+hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint to portray
+the individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts? Dreamy as the
+scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in which departed people
+who had known and loved each other here would hold communion in
+eternity? We were aware of each other’s presence, not by sight nor
+sound nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be so
+among the dead?
+
+The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing a
+remark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous
+and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice that
+made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded. Had I
+ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so many
+old recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things familiar
+yet unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her features who
+had spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor? Whom had my heart
+recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened to catch her gentle
+breathing, and strove by the intensity of my gaze to picture forth a
+shape where none was visible.
+
+Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow, and
+where the darkness had been, there was she—the vision of the fountain.
+A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow and
+appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze and
+be gone. Yet her cheek was rosy and lifelike, and her features, in the
+bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my
+recollection of them. She knew me. The mirthful expression that had
+laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance when I beheld her
+faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and dimpling there now. One
+moment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the heap of tan upon
+the kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of the
+light, and gave her back to me no more!
+
+Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be
+revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire and
+had left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and
+returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an angel,
+it is what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein consists
+the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids, to make
+angels of yourselves.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY’S SHOW-BOX
+
+A MORALITY
+
+What is guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast
+interest whether the soul may contract such stains in all their depth
+and flagrancy from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon,
+but which physically have never had existence. Must the fleshly hand
+and visible frame of man set its seal to the evil designs of the soul,
+in order to give them their entire validity against the sinner? Or,
+while none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly
+tribunal, will guilty thoughts—of which guilty deeds are no more than
+shadows,—will these draw down the full weight of a condemning sentence
+in the supreme court of eternity? In the solitude of a midnight chamber
+or in a desert afar from men or in a church while the body is kneeling
+the soul may pollute itself even with those crimes which we are
+accustomed to deem altogether carnal. If this be true, it is a fearful
+truth.
+
+Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary example. A venerable
+gentleman—one Mr. Smith—who had long been regarded as a pattern of
+moral excellence was warming his aged blood with a glass or two of
+generous wine. His children being gone forth about their worldly
+business and his grandchildren at school, he sat alone in a deep
+luxurious arm-chair with his feet beneath a richly-carved mahogany
+table. Some old people have a dread of solitude, and when better
+company may not be had rejoice even to hear the quiet breathing of a
+babe asleep upon the carpet. But Mr. Smith, whose silver hair was the
+bright symbol of a life unstained except by such spots as are
+inseparable from human nature—he had no need of a babe to protect him
+by its purity, nor of a grown person to stand between him and his own
+soul. Nevertheless, either manhood must converse with age, or womanhood
+must soothe him with gentle cares, or infancy must sport around his
+chair, or his thoughts will stray into the misty region of the past and
+the old man be chill and sad. Wine will not always cheer him.
+
+Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the
+brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures
+entering the room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and
+aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back; and
+Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an
+inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm;
+and lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in a dusky mantle
+which concealed both face and form. But Mr. Smith had a shrewd idea
+that it was Conscience. How kind of Fancy, Memory and Conscience to
+visit the old gentleman just as he was beginning to imagine that the
+wine had neither so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as when
+himself and the liquor were less aged! Through the dim length of the
+apartment, where crimson curtains muffled the glare of sunshine and
+created a rich obscurity, the three guests drew near the silver-haired
+old man. Memory, with a finger between the leaves of her huge volume,
+placed herself at his right hand; Conscience, with her face still
+hidden in the dusky mantle, took her station on the left, so as to be
+next his heart; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon the table
+with the magnifying-glass convenient to his eye.
+
+We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many
+pictures which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box
+with the semblances of living scenes. One was a moonlight picture, in
+the background a lowly dwelling, and in front, partly shadowed by a
+tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two youthful figures,
+male and female. The young man stood with folded arms, a haughty smile
+upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his eye as he glanced downward
+at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate at his feet, evidently
+sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly allowed her to
+lift her clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not lift.
+But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on which it was
+depicted, nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed,
+appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man. He was the
+personification of triumphant scorn.
+
+Now, strange to say, as old Mr. Smith peeped through the
+magnifying-glass, which made the objects start out from the canvas with
+magical deception, he began to recognize the farmhouse, the tree and
+both the figures of the picture. The young man in times long past had
+often met his gaze within the looking-glass; the girl was the very
+image of his first love—his cottage-love, his Martha Burroughs. Mr.
+Smith was scandalized. “Oh, vile and slanderous picture!” he exclaims.
+“When have I triumphed over ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded in
+her teens to David Tomkins, who won her girlish love and long enjoyed
+her affection as a wife? And ever since his death she has lived a
+reputable widow!”
+
+Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling
+them to and fro with uncertain fingers, until among the earlier pages
+she found one which had reference to this picture. She reads it close
+to the old gentleman’s ear: it is a record merely of sinful thought
+which never was embodied in an act, but, while Memory is reading,
+Conscience unveils her face and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr.
+Smith. Though not a death-blow, the torture was extreme.
+
+The exhibition proceeded. One after another Fancy displayed her
+pictures, all of which appeared to have been painted by some malicious
+artist on purpose to vex Mr. Smith. Not a shadow of proof could have
+been adduced in any earthly court that he was guilty of the slightest
+of those sins which were thus made to stare him in the face. In one
+scene there was a table set out, with several bottles and glasses half
+filled with wine, which threw back the dull ray of an expiring lamp.
+There had been mirth and revelry until the hand of the clock stood just
+at midnight, when Murder stepped between the boon-companions. A young
+man had fallen on the floor, and lay stone dead with a ghastly wound
+crushed into his temple, while over him, with a delirium of mingled
+rage and horror in his countenance, stood the youthful likeness of Mr.
+Smith. The murdered youth wore the features of Edward Spencer. “What
+does this rascal of a painter mean?” cries Mr. Smith, provoked beyond
+all patience. “Edward Spencer was my earliest and dearest friend, true
+to me as I to him through more than half a century. Neither I nor any
+other ever murdered him. Was he not alive within five years, and did he
+not, in token of our long friendship, bequeath me his gold-headed cane
+and a mourning-ring?”
+
+Again had Memory been turning over her volume, and fixed at length upon
+so confused a page that she surely must have scribbled it when she was
+tipsy. The purport was, however, that while Mr. Smith and Edward
+Spencer were heating their young blood with wine a quarrel had flashed
+up between them, and Mr. Smith, in deadly wrath, had flung a bottle at
+Spencer’s head. True, it missed its aim and merely smashed a
+looking-glass; and the next morning, when the incident was imperfectly
+remembered, they had shaken hands with a hearty laugh. Yet, again,
+while Memory was reading, Conscience unveiled her face, struck a dagger
+to the heart of Mr. Smith and quelled his remonstrance with her iron
+frown. The pain was quite excruciating.
+
+Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch, and in
+colors so faint and pale, that the subjects could barely be
+conjectured. A dull, semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the
+surface of the canvas, into which the figures seemed to vanish while
+the eye sought most earnestly to fix them. But in every scene, however
+dubiously portrayed, Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own
+lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror. After poring several
+minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable
+pictures, he began to see that the painter had intended to represent
+him, now in the decline of life, as stripping the clothes from the
+backs of three half-starved children. “Really, this puzzles me!” quoth
+Mr. Smith, with the irony of conscious rectitude. “Asking pardon of the
+painter, I pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave. A man of
+my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their
+clothes! Ridiculous!”
+
+But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a
+page which with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear. It was not
+altogether inapplicable to the misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had
+been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries, on the ground of
+a legal quibble, to commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children,
+joint-heirs to a considerable estate. Fortunately, before he was quite
+decided, his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice.
+As Memory ceased to read Conscience again thrust aside her mantle, and
+would have struck her victim with the envenomed dagger only that he
+struggled and clasped his hands before his heart. Even then, however,
+he sustained an ugly gash.
+
+Why should we follow Fancy through the whole series of those awful
+pictures? Painted by an artist of wondrous power and terrible
+acquaintance with the secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the
+never-perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr.
+Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to
+nothingness, give valid evidence against him at the day of judgment? Be
+that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly
+penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture and left
+the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too
+keen to be endured, bellowed aloud with impatient agony, and suddenly
+discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a
+silver-haired and highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the
+crimsoned-curtained room, with no box of pictures on the table, but
+only a decanter of most excellent Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed
+to fester with the venom of the dagger.
+
+Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might have argued the
+matter with Conscience and alleged many reasons wherefore she should
+not smite him so pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should be
+somewhat in the following fashion. A scheme of guilt, till it be put in
+execution, greatly resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale.
+The latter, in order to produce a sense of reality in the reader’s
+mind, must be conceived with such proportionate strength by the author
+as to seem in the glow of fancy more like truth, past, present or to
+come, than purely fiction. The prospective sinner, on the other hand,
+weaves his plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a perfect certainty
+that it will be executed. There is a dreaminess diffused about his
+thoughts; in a dream, as it were, he strikes the death-blow into his
+victim’s heart and starts to find an indelible blood-stain on his hand.
+Thus a novel-writer or a dramatist, in creating a villain of romance
+and fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in
+projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other
+halfway between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is
+accomplished that Guilt clenches its gripe upon the guilty heart and
+claims it for his own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and
+acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousandfold
+more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that
+men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while
+its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice and its
+results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it. They may take
+the steps which lead to crime, impelled by the same sort of mental
+action as in working out a mathematical problem, yet be powerless with
+compunction at the final moment. They knew not what deed it was that
+they deemed themselves resolved to do. In truth, there is no such thing
+in man’s nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil,
+except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, therefore, that
+all the dreadful consequences of sin will not be incurred unless the
+act have set its seal upon the thought.
+
+Yet, with the slight fancy-work which we have framed, some sad and
+awful truths are interwoven. Man must not disclaim his brotherhood even
+with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart has
+surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity. He must feel
+that when he shall knock at the gate of heaven no semblance of an
+unspotted life can entitle him to entrance there. Penitence must kneel
+and Mercy come from the footstool of the throne, or that golden gate
+will never open.
+
+
+
+
+DR. HEIDEGGER’S EXPERIMENT
+
+
+That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable
+friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded
+gentlemen—Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne—and a
+withered gentlewoman whose name was the widow Wycherly. They were all
+melancholy old creatures who had been unfortunate in life, and whose
+greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves.
+Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant,
+but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little
+better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years
+and his health and substance in the pursuit of sinful pleasures which
+had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout and divers other
+torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man
+of evil fame—or, at least, had been so till time had buried him from
+the knowledge of the present generation and made him obscure instead of
+infamous. As for the widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a
+great beauty in her day, but for a long while past she had lived in
+deep seclusion on account of certain scandalous stories which had
+prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance
+worth mentioning that each of these three old gentlemen—Mr. Medbourne,
+Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne—were early lovers of the widow
+Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other’s
+throats for her sake. And before proceeding farther I will merely hint
+that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be
+a little beside themselves, as is not infrequently the case with old
+people when worried either by present troubles or woeful recollections.
+
+“My dear old friends,” said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated,
+“I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments
+with which I amuse myself here in my study.”
+
+If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger’s study must have been a very
+curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber festooned with
+cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood
+several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with
+rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with
+little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a
+bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities,
+Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult
+cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall
+and narrow oaken closet with its door ajar, within which doubtfully
+appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass,
+presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame.
+Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that
+the spirits of all the doctor’s deceased patients dwelt within its
+verge and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward.
+The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length
+portrait of a young lady arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk,
+satin and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half
+a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this
+young lady, but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had
+swallowed one of her lover’s prescriptions and died on the
+bridal-evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be
+mentioned: it was a ponderous folio volume bound in black leather, with
+massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody
+could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of
+magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it merely to brush away
+the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the
+young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor and several ghastly
+faces had peeped forth from the mirror, while the brazen head of
+Hippocrates frowned and said, “Forbear!”
+
+Such was Dr. Heidegger’s study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a
+small round table as black as ebony stood in the centre of the room,
+sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate
+workmanship. The sunshine came through the window between the heavy
+festoons of two faded damask curtains and fell directly across this
+vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen
+visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne-glasses
+were also on the table.
+
+“My dear old friends,” repeated Dr. Heidegger, “may I reckon on your
+aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?”
+
+Now, Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman whose eccentricity
+had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these
+fables—to my shame be it spoken—might possibly be traced back to mine
+own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale should
+startle the reader’s faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a
+fiction-monger.
+
+When the doctor’s four guests heard him talk of his proposed
+experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of
+a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the
+microscope, or some similar nonsense with which he was constantly in
+the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply
+Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned with the same
+ponderous folio bound in black leather which common report affirmed to
+be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume and
+took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose,
+though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish
+hue and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the
+doctor’s hands.
+
+“This rose,” said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh—“this same withered and
+crumbling flower—blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by
+Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to wear it in my
+bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured
+between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible
+that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?”
+
+“Nonsense!” said the widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head.
+“You might as well ask whether an old woman’s wrinkled face could ever
+bloom again.”
+
+“See!” answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase and threw the
+faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly
+on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture.
+Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and
+dried petals stirred and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if
+the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber, the slender stalk
+and twigs of foliage became green, and there was the rose of half a
+century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her
+lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its delicate red leaves
+curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three
+dewdrops were sparkling.
+
+“That is certainly a very pretty deception,” said the doctor’s
+friends—carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at
+a conjurer’s show. “Pray, how was it effected?”
+
+“Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth?” asked Dr. Heidegger,
+“which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or
+three centuries ago?”
+
+“But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?” said the widow Wycherly.
+
+“No,” answered Dr. Heidegger, “for he never sought it in the right
+place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is
+situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from
+Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias
+which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as
+violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of
+mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in
+the vase.”
+
+“Ahem!” said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor’s
+story; “and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame?”
+
+“You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel,” replied Dr.
+Heidegger.—“And all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
+much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
+For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
+hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
+merely watch the progress of the experiment.”
+
+While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four
+champagne-glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was
+apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles
+were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses and bursting
+in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
+perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and
+comfortable properties, and, though utter sceptics as to its
+rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
+Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.
+
+“Before you drink, my respectable old friends,” said he, “it would be
+well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
+draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time
+through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be if,
+with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue
+and wisdom to all the young people of the age!”
+
+The doctor’s four venerable friends made him no answer except by a
+feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea that,
+knowing how closely Repentance treads behind the steps of Error, they
+should ever go astray again.
+
+“Drink, then,” said the doctor, bowing; “I rejoice that I have so well
+selected the subjects of my experiment.”
+
+With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
+if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it,
+could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
+woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure
+was, but had been the offspring of Nature’s dotage, and always the
+gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat stooping round
+the doctor’s table without life enough in their souls or bodies to be
+animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off
+the water and replaced their glasses on the table.
+
+Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
+the party—not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
+generous wine—together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
+brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
+suffusion on their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them
+look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some
+magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
+inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their
+brows. The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a
+woman again.
+
+“Give us more of this wondrous water,” cried they, eagerly. “We are
+younger, but we are still too old. Quick! give us more!”
+
+“Patience, patience!” quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the
+experiment with philosophic coolness. “You have been a long time
+growing old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an hour.
+But the water is at your service.” Again he filled their glasses with
+the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn
+half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren.
+
+While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor’s four
+guests snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the contents
+at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was passing
+down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole
+systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among
+their silvery locks: they sat around the table three gentlemen of
+middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.
+
+“My dear widow, you are charming!” cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes
+had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting
+from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.
+
+The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew’s compliments were
+not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the
+mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet
+her gaze.
+
+Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that
+the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating
+qualities—unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a
+lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of
+years. Mr. Gascoigne’s mind seemed to run on political topics, but
+whether relating to the past, present or future could not easily be
+determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these
+fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about
+patriotism, national glory and the people’s right; now he muttered some
+perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously
+that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret; and now,
+again, he spoke in measured accents and a deeply-deferential tone, as
+if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel
+Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle-song and
+ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered
+toward the buxom figure of the widow Wycherly. On the other side of the
+table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents
+with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East
+Indies with ice by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs.
+As for the widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and
+simpering to her own image and greeting it as the friend whom she loved
+better than all the world besides. She thrust her face close to the
+glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow’s-foot had
+indeed vanished; she examined whether the snow had so entirely melted
+from her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At
+last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the
+table.
+
+“My dear old doctor,” cried she, “pray favor me with another glass.”
+
+“Certainly, my dear madam—certainly,” replied the complaisant doctor.
+“See! I have already filled the glasses.”
+
+There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this wonderful water,
+the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface,
+resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds.
+
+It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than
+ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase and
+rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor’s venerable figure.
+He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair with a gray
+dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time
+whose power had never been disputed save by this fortunate company.
+Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they
+were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage. But the
+next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their
+veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its
+miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only
+as the trouble of a dream from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh
+gloss of the soul, so early lost and without which the world’s
+successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw
+its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created
+beings in a new-created universe.
+
+“We are young! We are young!” they cried, exultingly.
+
+Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
+characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all. They
+were a group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant
+frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their gayety
+was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had
+so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned
+attire—the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men
+and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across
+the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles
+astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages
+of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair and strove
+to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted
+mirthfully and leaped about the room.
+
+The widow Wycherly—if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow—tripped
+up to the doctor’s chair with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.
+
+“Doctor, you dear old soul,” cried she, “get up and dance with me;” and
+then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what a
+queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.
+
+“Pray excuse me,” answered the doctor, quietly. “I am old and
+rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago. But either of these
+gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner.”
+
+“Dance with me, Clara,” cried Colonel Killigrew.
+
+“No, no! I will be her partner,” shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
+
+“She promised me her hand fifty years ago,” exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.
+
+They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his
+passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third
+buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the
+widow’s cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm
+breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage
+herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a
+livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the
+prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the
+chamber and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror
+is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered
+grand-sires ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a
+shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their burning passions proved
+them so.
+
+Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither
+granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to
+interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize,
+they grappled fiercely at one another’s throats. As they struggled to
+and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand
+fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across
+the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old in the
+decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered
+lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of Dr.
+Heidegger.
+
+“Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!” exclaimed the doctor. “I
+really must protest against this riot.”
+
+They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were
+calling them back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and
+darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in
+his carved armchair holding the rose of half a century, which he had
+rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion
+of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats—the more readily
+because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they
+were.
+
+“My poor Sylvia’s rose!” ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the
+light of the sunset clouds. “It appears to be fading again.”
+
+And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower
+continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the
+doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of
+moisture which clung to its petals.
+
+“I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness,” observed he,
+pressing the withered rose to his withered lips.
+
+While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor’s snowy
+head and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange
+dullness—whether of the body or spirit they could not tell—was creeping
+gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that
+each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a deepening furrow
+where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a
+lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four
+aged people sitting with their old friend Dr. Heidegger?
+
+“Are we grown old again so soon?” cried they, dolefully.
+
+In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more
+transient than that of wine; the delirium which it created had
+effervesced away. Yes, they were old again. With a shuddering impulse
+that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands
+before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it
+could be no longer beautiful.
+
+“Yes, friends, ye are old again,” said Dr. Heidegger, “and, lo! the
+Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not;
+for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to
+bathe my lips in it—no, though its delirium were for years instead of
+moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me.”
+
+But the doctor’s four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.
+They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida and quaff at
+morning, noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.
+
+
+
+
+Legends of the Province-House
+
+
+
+
+I.
+HOWE’S MASQUERADE
+
+
+One afternoon last summer, while walking along Washington street, my
+eye was attracted by a sign-board protruding over a narrow archway
+nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign represented the front of
+a stately edifice which was designated as the “OLD PROVINCE HOUSE, kept
+by Thomas Waite.” I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose, long
+entertained, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old royal
+governors of Massachusetts, and, entering the arched passage which
+penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few steps
+transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small and
+secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the square
+front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted by a
+cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his
+bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock
+on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for
+seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver
+of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel’s watch over the
+city.
+
+The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to
+have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red
+freestone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron
+ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a
+balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to
+that beneath. These letters and figures—“16 P.S. 79”—are wrought into
+the ironwork of the balcony, and probably express the date of the
+edifice, with the initials of its founder’s name.
+
+A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on
+the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this
+apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levees with
+vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the counsellors, the
+judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of the
+province thronged to do them honor. But the room in its present
+condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled
+wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from
+the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
+block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never
+visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches
+which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most
+venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch
+tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture, and,
+for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside
+this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue tile. A bar
+in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles, cigar-boxes
+and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump and a
+soda-fount, extends along one side of the room.
+
+At my entrance an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest
+which satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold
+good liquor, though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by
+the old governors. After sipping a glass of port-sangaree prepared by
+the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy successor
+and representative of so many historic personages to conduct me over
+their time-honored mansion. He readily complied, but, to confess the
+truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagination in order to
+find aught that was interesting in a house which, without its historic
+associations, would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually
+favored by the custom of decent city boarders and old-fashioned country
+gentlemen. The chambers, which were probably spacious in former times,
+are now cut up by partitions and subdivided into little nooks, each
+affording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table
+of a single lodger: The great staircase, however, may be termed,
+without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. It
+winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each
+flight terminating in a square landing-place, whence the ascent is
+continued toward the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in
+the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the
+staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars, from top
+to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty
+shoes, of many a governor have trodden as the wearers mounted to the
+cupola which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the
+surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon with several windows, and
+a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself
+with imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker
+Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked
+the approaches of Washington’s besieging army, although the buildings
+since erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every object save
+the steeple of the Old South, which seems almost within arm’s length.
+Descending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the
+ponderous white-oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of
+modern houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick
+walls, the materials of which were imported from Holland, and the
+timbers of the mansion, are still as sound as ever, but, the floors and
+other interior parts being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut
+the whole and build a new house within the ancient frame-and brickwork.
+Among other inconveniences of the present edifice, mine host mentioned
+that any jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of
+the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that beneath it.
+
+We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony where in
+old times it was doubtless the custom of the king’s representative to
+show himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up
+hats with stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days the
+front of the Province House looked upon the street, and the whole site
+now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present
+court-yard, was laid out in grass-plats overshadowed by trees and
+bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic edifice
+hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one of
+the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses sewing and chatting
+and laughing, with now and then a careless glance toward the balcony.
+Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly
+gentleman above mentioned—the smack of whose lips had spoken so
+favorably for Mr. Waite’s good liquor—was still lounging in his chair.
+He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the
+house who might be supposed to have his regular score at the bar, his
+summer seat at the open window and his prescriptive corner at the
+winter’s fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to address
+him with a remark calculated to draw forth his historical
+reminiscences, if any such were in his mind, and it gratified me to
+discover that, between memory and tradition, the old gentleman was
+really possessed of some very pleasant gossip about the Province House.
+The portion of his talk which chiefly interested me was the outline of
+the following legend. He professed to have received it at one or two
+removes from an eye-witness, but this derivation, together with the
+lapse of time, must have afforded opportunities for many variations of
+the narrative; so that, despairing of literal and absolute truth, I
+have not scrupled to make such further changes as seemed conducive to
+the reader’s profit and delight.
+
+
+At one of the entertainments given at the province-house during the
+latter part of the siege of Boston there passed a scene which has never
+yet been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the British army and
+the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected within
+the beleaguered town, had been invited to a masqued ball, for it was
+the policy for Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger of the
+period and the desperate aspect of the siege under an ostentation of
+festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members of the
+provincial court circle might be believed, was the most gay and
+gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the government. The
+brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with figures that seemed
+to have stepped from the dark canvas of historic portraits or to have
+flitted forth from the magic pages of romance, or at least to have
+flown hither from one of the London theatres without a change of
+garments. Steeled knights of the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen
+Elizabeth and high-ruffed ladies of her court were mingled with
+characters of comedy, such as a parti-colored Merry Andrew jingling his
+cap and bells, a Falstaff almost as provocative of laughter as his
+prototype, and a Don Quixote with a bean-pole for a lance and a pot-lid
+for a shield.
+
+But the broadest merriment was excited by a group of figures
+ridiculously dressed in old regimentals which seemed to have been
+purchased at a military rag-fair or pilfered from some receptacle of
+the cast-off clothes of both the French and British armies. Portions of
+their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the
+coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by sword,
+ball or bayonet as long ago as Wolfe’s victory. One of these worthies—a
+tall, lank figure brandishing a rusty sword of immense
+longitude—purported to be no less a personage than General George
+Washington, and the other principal officers of the American army, such
+as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented by
+similar scarecrows. An interview in the mock-heroic style between the
+rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief was received with
+immense applause, which came loudest of all from the loyalists of the
+colony.
+
+There was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, eying these
+antics sternly and scornfully at once with a frown and a bitter smile.
+It was an old man formerly of high station and great repute in the
+province, and who had been a very famous soldier in his day. Some
+surprise had been expressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe’s known
+Whig principles, though now too old to take an active part in the
+contest, should have remained in Boston during the siege, and
+especially that he should consent to show himself in the mansion of Sir
+William Howe. But thither he had come with a fair granddaughter under
+his arm, and there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern
+old figure, the best-sustained character in the masquerade, because so
+well representing the antique spirit of his native land. The other
+guests affirmed that Colonel Joliffe’s black puritanical scowl threw a
+shadow round about him, although, in spite of his sombre influence,
+their gayety continued to blaze higher, like—an ominous comparison—the
+flickering brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little while to burn.
+
+Eleven strokes full half an hour ago had pealed from the clock of the
+Old South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new
+spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited which should put a
+fitting close to the splendid festivities of the night.
+
+“What new jest has Your Excellency in hand?” asked the Reverend Mather
+Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had not kept him from the
+entertainment. “Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than beseems
+my cloth at your Homeric confabulation with yonder ragamuffin general
+of the rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must throw off my
+clerical wig and band.”
+
+“Not so, good Dr. Byles,” answered Sir William Howe; “if mirth were a
+crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new
+foolery, I know no more about it than yourself—perhaps not so much.
+Honestly, now, doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of some
+of your countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade?”
+
+“Perhaps,” slyly remarked the granddaughter of Colonel Joliffe, whose
+high spirit had been stung by many taunts against New England—“perhaps
+we are to have a masque of allegorical figures—Victory with trophies
+from Lexington and Bunker Hill, Plenty with her overflowing horn to
+typify the present abundance in this good town, and Glory with a wreath
+for His Excellency’s brow.”
+
+Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one
+of his darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard.
+He was spared the necessity of a retort by a singular interruption. A
+sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a
+full band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing, not
+such a festal strain as was suited to the occasion, but a slow
+funeral-march. The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets
+poured forth a wailing breath which at once hushed the merriment of the
+auditors, filling all with wonder and some with apprehension. The idea
+occurred to many that either the funeral procession of some great
+personage had halted in front of the province-house, or that a corpse
+in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to be
+borne from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe
+called in a stern voice to the leader of the musicians, who had
+hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies.
+The man was drum-major to one of the British regiments.
+
+“Dighton,” demanded the general, “what means this foolery? Bid your
+band silence that dead march, or, by my word, they shall have
+sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, sirrah!”
+
+“Please, Your Honor,” answered the drum-major, whose rubicund visage
+had lost all its color, “the fault is none of mine. I and my band are
+all here together, and I question whether there be a man of us that
+could play that march without book. I never heard it but once before,
+and that was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King George II.”
+
+“Well, well!” said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure; “it is
+the prelude to some masquerading antic. Let it pass.”
+
+A figure now presented itself, but among the many fantastic masks that
+were dispersed through the apartments none could tell precisely from
+whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge
+and having the aspect of a steward or principal domestic in the
+household of a nobleman or great English landholder. This figure
+advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and, throwing both its
+leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side and looked back toward
+the grand staircase, as if expecting some person to descend. At the
+same time, the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful summons.
+The eyes of Sir William Howe and his guests being directed to the
+staircase, there appeared on the uppermost landing-place, that was
+discernible from the bottom, several personages descending toward the
+door. The foremost was a man of stern visage, wearing a steeple-crowned
+hat and a skull-cap beneath it, a dark cloak and huge wrinkled boots
+that came halfway up his legs. Under his arm was a rolled-up banner
+which seemed to be the banner of England, but strangely rent and torn;
+he had a sword in his right hand and grasped a Bible in his left. The
+next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad
+ruff, over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet and a
+doublet and hose of black satin; he carried a roll of manuscript in his
+hand. Close behind these two came a young man of very striking
+countenance and demeanor with deep thought and contemplation on his
+brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his eye; his garb, like that
+of his predecessors, was of an antique fashion, and there was a stain
+of blood upon his ruff. In the same group with these were three or four
+others, all men of dignity and evident command, and bearing themselves
+like personages who were accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. It
+was the idea of the beholders that these figures went to join the
+mysterious funeral that had halted in front of the province-house, yet
+that supposition seemed to be contradicted by the air of triumph with
+which they waved their hands as they crossed the threshold and vanished
+through the portal.
+
+“In the devil’s name, what is this?” muttered Sir William Howe to a
+gentleman beside him. “A procession of the regicide judges of King
+Charles the martyr?”
+
+“These,” said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence almost for the first
+time that evening—“these, if I interpret them aright, are the Puritan
+governors, the rulers of the old original democracy of
+Massachusetts—Endicott with the banner from which he had torn the
+symbol of subjection, and Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane and Dudley,
+Haynes, Bellingham and Leverett.”
+
+“Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his ruff?” asked Miss
+Joliffe.
+
+“Because in after-years,” answered her grandfather, “he laid down the
+wisest head in England upon the block for the principles of liberty.”
+
+“Will not Your Excellency order out the guard?” whispered Lord Percy,
+who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general.
+“There may be a plot under this mummery.”
+
+“Tush! we have nothing to fear,” carelessly replied Sir William Howe.
+“There can be no worse treason in the matter than a jest, and that
+somewhat of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best
+policy would be to laugh it off. See! here come more of these gentry.”
+
+Another group of characters had now partly descended the staircase. The
+first was a venerable and white-bearded patriarch who cautiously felt
+his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and
+stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man’s
+shoulder, came a tall soldier-like figure equipped with a plumed cap of
+steel, a bright breastplate and a long sword, which rattled against the
+stairs. Next was seen a stout man dressed in rich and courtly attire,
+but not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion of a
+seaman’s walk, and, chancing to stumble on the staircase, he suddenly
+grew wrathful and was heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by a
+noble-looking personage in a curled wig such as are represented in the
+portraits of Queen Anne’s time and earlier, and the breast of his coat
+was decorated with an embroidered star. While advancing to the door he
+bowed to the right hand and to the left in a very gracious and
+insinuating style, but as he crossed the threshold, unlike the early
+Puritan governors, he seemed to wring his hands with sorrow.
+
+“Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. Byles,” said Sir William
+Howe. “What worthies are these?”
+
+“If it please Your Excellency, they lived somewhat before my day,”
+answered the doctor; “but doubtless our friend the colonel has been
+hand and glove with them.”
+
+“Their living faces I never looked upon,” said Colonel Joliffe,
+gravely; “although I have spoken face to face with many rulers of this
+land, and shall greet yet another with an old man’s blessing ere I die.
+But we talk of these figures. I take the venerable patriarch to be
+Bradstreet, the last of the Puritans, who was governor at ninety or
+thereabouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, as any New
+England schoolboy will tell you, and therefore the people cast him down
+from his high seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William Phipps,
+shepherd, cooper, sea-captain and governor. May many of his countrymen
+rise as high from as low an origin! Lastly, you saw the gracious earl
+of Bellamont, who ruled us under King William.”
+
+“But what is the meaning of it all?” asked Lord Percy.
+
+“Now, were I a rebel,” said Miss Joliffe, half aloud, “I might fancy
+that the ghosts of these ancient governors had been summoned to form
+the funeral procession of royal authority in New England.”
+
+Several other figures were now seen at the turn of the staircase. The
+one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty expression
+of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was evidently
+the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long continuance in high
+stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a greater than
+himself. A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet and
+embroidered uniform cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn by
+the duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubicund tinge, which, together
+with the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover of the
+wine-cup and good-fellowship; notwithstanding which tokens, he appeared
+ill at ease, and often glanced around him as if apprehensive of some
+secret mischief. Next came a portly gentleman wearing a coat of shaggy
+cloth lined with silken velvet; he had sense, shrewdness and humor in
+his face and a folio volume under his arm, but his aspect was that of a
+man vexed and tormented beyond all patience and harassed almost to
+death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a dignified person
+dressed in a purple velvet suit with very rich embroidery; his demeanor
+would have possessed much stateliness, only that a grievous fit of the
+gout compelled him to hobble from stair to stair with contortions of
+face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the staircase, he
+shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him steadfastly until
+the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, made a gesture of
+anguish and despair and vanished into the outer gloom, whither the
+funeral music summoned him.
+
+“Governor Belcher—my old patron—in his very shape and dress!” gasped
+Dr. Byles. “This is an awful mockery.”
+
+“A tedious foolery, rather,” said Sir William Howe, with an air of
+indifference. “But who were the three that preceded him?”
+
+“Governor Dudley, a cunning politician; yet his craft once brought him
+to a prison,” replied Colonel Joliffe. “Governor Shute, formerly a
+colonel under Marlborough, and whom the people frightened out of the
+province, and learned Governor Burnett, whom the legislature tormented
+into a mortal fever.”
+
+“Methinks they were miserable men—these royal governors of
+Massachusetts,” observed Miss Joliffe. “Heavens! how dim the light
+grows!”
+
+It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which illuminated the
+staircase now burned dim and duskily; so that several figures which
+passed hastily down the stairs and went forth from the porch appeared
+rather like shadows than persons of fleshly substance.
+
+Sir William Howe and his guests stood at the doors of the contiguous
+apartments watching the progress of this singular pageant with various
+emotions of anger, contempt or half-acknowledged fear, but still with
+an anxious curiosity. The shapes which now seemed hastening to join the
+mysterious procession were recognized rather by striking peculiarities
+of dress or broad characteristics of manner than by any perceptible
+resemblance of features to their prototypes. Their faces, indeed, were
+invariably kept in deep shadow, but Dr. Byles and other gentlemen who
+had long been familiar with the successive rulers of the province were
+heard to whisper the names of Shirley, of Pownall, of Sir Francis
+Bernard and of the well-remembered Hutchinson, thereby confessing that
+the actors, whoever they might be, in this spectral march of governors
+had succeeded in putting on some distant portraiture of the real
+personages. As they vanished from the door, still did these shadows
+toss their arms into the gloom of night with a dread expression of woe.
+Following the mimic representative of Hutchinson came a military figure
+holding before his face the cocked hat which he had taken from his
+powdered head, but his epaulettes and other insignia of rank were those
+of a general officer, and something in his mien reminded the beholders
+of one who had recently been master of the province-house and chief of
+all the land.
+
+“The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking-glass!” exclaimed Lord
+Percy, turning pale.
+
+“No, surely,” cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysterically; “it could not
+be Gage, or Sir William would have greeted his old comrade in arms.
+Perhaps he will not suffer the next to pass unchallenged.”
+
+“Of that be assured, young lady,” answered Sir William Howe, fixing his
+eyes with a very marked expression upon the immovable visage of her
+grandfather. “I have long enough delayed to pay the ceremonies of a
+host to these departing guests; the next that takes his leave shall
+receive due courtesy.”
+
+A wild and dreary burst of music came through the open door. It seemed
+as it the procession, which had been gradually filling up its ranks,
+were now about to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing trumpets
+and roll of the muffled drums were a call to some loiterer to make
+haste. Many eyes, by an irresistible impulse, were turned upon Sir
+William Howe, as if it were he whom the dreary music summoned to the
+funeral of departed power.
+
+“See! here comes the last,” whispered Miss Joliffe, pointing her
+tremulous finger to the staircase.
+
+A figure had come into view as if descending the stairs, although so
+dusky was the region whence it emerged some of the spectators fancied
+that they had seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself amid the
+gloom. Downward the figure came with a stately and martial tread, and,
+reaching the lowest stair, was observed to be a tall man booted and
+wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn up around the face so as
+to meet the napped brim of a laced hat; the features, therefore, were
+completely hidden. But the British officers deemed that they had seen
+that military cloak before, and even recognized the frayed embroidery
+on the collar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which
+protruded from the folds of the cloak and glittered in a vivid gleam of
+light. Apart from these trifling particulars there were characteristics
+of gait and bearing which impelled the wondering guests to glance from
+the shrouded figure to Sir William Howe, as if to satisfy themselves
+that their host had not suddenly vanished from the midst of them. With
+a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they saw the general draw his
+sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had
+stepped one pace upon the floor.
+
+“Villain, unmuffle yourself!” cried he. “You pass no farther.”
+
+The figure, without blenching a hair’s-breadth from the sword which was
+pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the
+cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators to
+catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough.
+The sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild
+amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the
+figure and let fall his sword upon the floor. The martial shape again
+drew the cloak about his features and passed on, but, reaching the
+threshold with his back toward the spectators, he was seen to stamp his
+foot and shake his clenched hands in the air. It was afterward affirmed
+that Sir William Howe had repeated that selfsame gesture of rage and
+sorrow when for the last time, and as the last royal governor, he
+passed through the portal of the province-house.
+
+“Hark! The procession moves,” said Miss Joliffe.
+
+The music was dying away along the street, and its dismal strains were
+mingled with the knell of midnight from the steeple of the Old South
+and with the roar of artillery which announced that the beleaguered
+army of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height than
+before. As the deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear Colonel
+Joliffe raised himself to the full height of his aged form and smiled
+sternly on the British general.
+
+“Would Your Excellency inquire further into the mystery of the
+pageant?” said he.
+
+“Take care of your gray head!” cried Sir William Howe, fiercely, though
+with a quivering lip. “It has stood too long on a traitor’s shoulders.”
+
+“You must make haste to chop it off, then,” calmly replied the colonel,
+“for a few hours longer, and not all the power of Sir William Howe, nor
+of his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall. The empire
+of Britain in this ancient province is at its last gasp to-night;
+almost while I speak it is a dead corpse, and methinks the shadows of
+the old governors are fit mourners at its funeral.”
+
+With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak, and, drawing his
+granddaughter’s arm within his own, retired from the last festival that
+a British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts Bay. It
+was supposed that the colonel and the young lady possessed some secret
+intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that night. However
+this might be, such knowledge has never become general. The actors in
+the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even that wild
+Indian hand who scattered the cargoes of the tea-ships on the waves and
+gained a place in history, yet left no names. But superstition, among
+other legends of this mansion, repeats the wondrous tale that on the
+anniversary night of Britain’s discomfiture the ghosts of the ancient
+governors of Massachusetts still glide through the portal of the
+Province House. And last of all comes a figure shrouded in a military
+cloak, tossing his clenched hands into the air and stamping his
+iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone steps with a semblance of
+feverish despair, but without the sound of a foot-tramp.
+
+
+When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentleman were hushed, I
+drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving with the best
+energy of my imagination to throw a tinge of romance and historic
+grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a
+scent of cigar-smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way
+of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale.
+Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were woefully disturbed by the rattling
+of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch which Mr. Thomas Waite was
+mingling for a customer. Nor did it add to the picturesque appearance
+of the panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline stage was
+suspended against them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some
+far-descended governor. A stage-driver sat at one of the windows
+reading a penny paper of the day—the Boston _Times_—and presenting a
+figure which could nowise be brought into any picture of “Times in
+Boston” seventy or a hundred years ago. On the window-seat lay a bundle
+neatly done up in brown paper, the direction of which I had the idle
+curiosity to read: “MISS SUSAN HUGGINS, at the PROVINCE HOUSE.” A
+pretty chambermaid, no doubt. In truth, it is desperately hard work
+when we attempt to throw the spell of hoar antiquity over localities
+with which the living world and the day that is passing over us have
+aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the stately staircase down which the
+procession of the old governors had descended, and as I emerged through
+the venerable portal whence their figures had preceded me, it gladdened
+me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. Then, diving through the narrow
+archway, a few strides transported me into the densest throng of
+Washington street.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT
+
+
+The old legendary guest of the Province House abode in my remembrance
+from midsummer till January. One idle evening last winter, confident
+that he would be found in the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I
+resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to deserve well of my country
+by snatching from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of history. The
+night was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by almost a gale of
+wind which whistled along Washington street, causing the gaslights to
+flare and flicker within the lamps.
+
+As I hurried onward my fancy was busy with a comparison between the
+present aspect of the street and that which it probably wore when the
+British governors inhabited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick
+edifices in those times were few till a succession of destructive fires
+had swept, and swept again, the wooden dwellings and warehouses from
+the most populous quarters of the town. The buildings stood insulated
+and independent, not, as now, merging their separate existences into
+connected ranges with a front of tiresome identity, but each possessing
+features of its own, as if the owner’s individual taste had shaped it,
+and the whole presenting a picturesque irregularity the absence of
+which is hardly compensated by any beauties of our modern architecture.
+Such a scene, dimly vanishing from the eye by the ray of here and there
+a tallow candle glimmering through the small panes of scattered
+windows, would form a sombre contrast to the street as I beheld it with
+the gaslights blazing from corner to corner, flaming within the shops
+and throwing a noonday brightness through the huge plates of glass. But
+the black, lowering sky, as I turned my eyes upward, wore, doubtless,
+the same visage as when it frowned upon the ante-Revolutionary New
+Englanders. The wintry blast had the same shriek that was familiar to
+their ears. The Old South Church, too, still pointed its antique spire
+into the darkness and was lost between earth and heaven, and, as I
+passed, its clock, which had warned so many generations how transitory
+was their lifetime, spoke heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to
+myself. “Only seven o’clock!” thought I. “My old friend’s legends will
+scarcely kill the hours ’twixt this and bedtime.”
+
+Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the courtyard, the confined
+precincts of which were made visible by a lantern over the portal of
+the Province House. On entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected,
+the old tradition-monger seated by a special good fire of anthracite,
+compelling clouds of smoke from a corpulent cigar. He recognized me
+with evident pleasure, for my rare properties as a patient listener
+invariably make me a favorite with elderly gentlemen and ladies of
+narrative propensites. Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired mine host
+to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey-punch, which was speedily
+prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom, a dark-red
+stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of nutmeg strewn
+over all. As we touched our glasses together, my legendary friend made
+himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I rejoiced at the oddity
+of the name, because it gave his image and character a sort of
+individuality in my conception. The old gentleman’s draught acted as a
+solvent upon his memory, so that it overflowed with tales, traditions,
+anecdotes of famous dead people and traits of ancient manners, some of
+which were childish as a nurse’s lullaby, while others might have been
+worth the notice of the grave historian. Nothing impressed me more than
+a story of a black mysterious picture which used to hang in one of the
+chambers of the Province House, directly above the room where we were
+now sitting. The following is as correct a version of the fact as the
+reader would be likely to obtain from any other source, although,
+assuredly, it has a tinge of romance approaching to the marvellous.
+
+
+In one of the apartments of the province-house there was long preserved
+an ancient picture the frame of which was as black as ebony, and the
+canvas itself so dark with age, damp and smoke that not a touch of the
+painter’s art could be discerned. Time had thrown an impenetrable veil
+over it and left to tradition and fable and conjecture to say what had
+once been there portrayed. During the rule of many successive governors
+it had hung, by prescriptive and undisputed right, over the mantel
+piece of the same chamber, and it still kept its place when
+Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the administration of the
+province on the departure of Sir Francis Bernard.
+
+The lieutenant-governor sat one afternoon resting his head against the
+carved back of his stately arm-chair and gazing up thoughtfully at the
+void blackness of the picture. It was scarcely a time for such inactive
+musing, when affairs of the deepest moment required the ruler’s
+decision; for within that very hour Hutchinson had received
+intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet bringing three regiments
+from Halifax to overawe the insubordination of the people. These troops
+awaited his permission to occupy the fortress of Castle William and the
+town itself, yet, instead of affixing his signature to an official
+order, there sat the lieutenant-governor so carefully scrutinizing the
+black waste of canvas that his demeanor attracted the notice of two
+young persons who attended him. One, wearing a military dress of buff,
+was his kinsman, Francis Lincoln, the provincial captain of Castle
+William; the other, who sat on a low stool beside his chair, was Alice
+Vane, his favorite niece. She was clad entirely in white—a pale,
+ethereal creature who, though a native of New England, had been
+educated abroad and seemed not merely a stranger from another clime,
+but almost a being from another world. For several years, until left an
+orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny Italy, and there had
+acquired a taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and painting which she
+found few opportunities of gratifying in the undecorated dwellings of
+the colonial gentry. It was said that the early productions of her own
+pencil exhibited no inferior genius, though perhaps the rude atmosphere
+of New England had cramped her hand and dimmed the glowing colors of
+her fancy. But, observing her uncle’s steadfast gaze, which appeared to
+search through the mist of years to discover the subject of the
+picture, her curiosity was excited.
+
+“Is it known, my dear uncle,” inquired she, “what this old picture once
+represented? Possibly, could it be made visible, it might prove a
+masterpiece of some great artist; else why has it so long held such a
+conspicuous place?”
+
+As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom—for he was as attentive to
+all the humors and caprices of Alice as if she had been his own
+best-beloved child—did not immediately reply, the young captain of
+Castle William took that office upon himself.
+
+“This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin,” said he, “has been an
+heirloom in the province-house from time immemorial. As to the painter,
+I can tell you nothing; but if half the stories told of it be true, not
+one of the great Italian masters has ever produced so marvellous a
+piece of work as that before you.”
+
+Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and
+fantasies which, as it was impossible to refute them by ocular
+demonstration, had grown to be articles of popular belief in reference
+to this old picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the
+best-accredited, accounts stated it to be an original and authentic
+portrait of the evil one, taken at a witch-meeting near Salem, and that
+its strong and terrible resemblance had been confirmed by several of
+the confessing wizards and witches at their trial in open court. It was
+likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the
+blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public
+calamity to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for
+instance, had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of General
+Abercrombie’s shameful and bloody defeat under the walls of
+Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the province-house had caught
+glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at morning or evening
+twilight, or in the depths of night while raking up the fire that
+glimmered on the hearth beneath, although, if any were, bold enough to
+hold a torch before the picture, it would appear as black and
+undistinguishable as ever. The oldest inhabitant of Boston recollected
+that his father—in whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out of
+sight—had once looked upon it, but would never suffer himself to be
+questioned as to the face which was there represented. In connection
+with such stories, it was remarkable that over the top of the frame
+there were some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating that a veil
+had formerly hung down before the picture until the duskiness of time
+had so effectually concealed it. But, after all, it was the most
+singular part of the affair that so many of the pompous governors of
+Massachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to remain in the
+state-chamber of the province-house.
+
+“Some of these fables are really awful,” observed Alice Vane, who had
+occasionally shuddered as well as smiled while her cousin spoke. “It
+would be almost worth while to wipe away the black surface of the
+canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so formidable as those
+which fancy paints instead of it.”
+
+“But would it be possible,” inquired her cousin,” to restore this dark
+picture to its pristine hues?”
+
+“Such arts are known in Italy,” said Alice.
+
+The lieutenant-governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood,
+and listened with a smile to the conversation of his young relatives.
+Yet his voice had something peculiar in its tones when he undertook the
+explanation of the mystery.
+
+“I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you
+are so fond,” remarked he, “but my antiquarian researches have long
+since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture—if picture it
+can be called—which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the face
+of the long-buried man whom it once represented. It was the portrait of
+Edward Randolph, the founder of this house, a person famous in the
+history of New England.”
+
+“Of that Edward Randolph,” exclaimed Captain Lincoln, “who obtained the
+repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our forefathers had
+enjoyed almost democratic privileges—he that was styled the arch-enemy
+of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation as the
+destroyer of our liberties?”
+
+“It was the same Randolph,” answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in his
+chair. “It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium.”
+
+“Our annals tell us,” continued the captain of Castle William, “that
+the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went and
+wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its
+effect was seen, likewise, in the manner of his death. They say, too,
+that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward and was
+visible on the wretched man’s countenance, making it too horrible to be
+looked upon. If so, and if this picture truly represented his aspect,
+it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over it.”
+
+“These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how
+little of historic truth lies at the bottom,” said the
+lieutenant-governor. “As regards the life and character of Edward
+Randolph, too implicit credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather,
+who—I must say it, though some of his blood runs in my veins—has filled
+our early history with old women’s tales as fanciful and extravagant as
+those of Greece or Rome.”
+
+“And yet,” whispered Alice Vane, “may not such fables have a moral? And
+methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not
+without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the
+province-house. When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were
+well that they should be reminded of the awful weight of a people’s
+curse.”
+
+The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a moment at his niece, as
+if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own breast
+which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue. He knew,
+indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education, retained the
+native sympathies of a New England girl.
+
+“Peace, silly child!” cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever
+before addressed the gentle Alice. “The rebuke of a king; is more to be
+dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude.—Captain
+Lincoln, it is decided: the fortress of Castle William must be occupied
+by the royal troops. The two remaining regiments shall be billeted in
+the town or encamped upon the Common. It is time, after years of
+tumult, and almost rebellion, that His Majesty’s government should have
+a wall of strength about it.”
+
+“Trust, sir—trust yet a while to the loyalty of the people,” said
+Captain Lincoln, “nor teach them that they can ever be on other terms
+with British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as when they fought
+side by side through the French war. Do not convert the streets of your
+native town into a camp. Think twice before you give up old Castle
+William, the key of the province, into other keeping than that of
+true-born New Englanders.”
+
+“Young man, it is decided,” repeated Hutchinson, rising from his chair.
+“A British officer will be in attendance this evening to receive the
+necessary instructions for the disposal of the troops. Your presence
+also will be required. Till then, farewell.”
+
+With these words the lieutenant-governor hastily left the room, while
+Alice and her cousin more slowly followed, whispering together, and
+once pausing to glance back at the mysterious picture. The captain of
+Castle William fancied that the girl’s air and mien were such as might
+have belonged to one of those spirits of fable—fairies or creatures of
+a more antique mythology—who sometimes mingled their agency with mortal
+affairs, half in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal or woe.
+As he held the door for her to pass Alice beckoned to the picture and
+smiled.
+
+“Come forth, dark and evil shape!” cried she. “It is thine hour.”
+
+In the evening Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson sat in the same chamber
+where the foregoing scene had occurred, surrounded by several persons
+whose various interests had summoned them together. There were the
+selectmen of Boston—plain patriarchal fathers of the people, excellent
+representatives of the old puritanical founders whose sombre strength
+had stamped so deep an impress upon the New England character.
+Contrasting with these were one or two members of council, richly
+dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered waistcoats and other
+magnificence of the time, and making a somewhat ostentatious display of
+courtier-like ceremonial. In attendance, likewise, was a major of the
+British army, awaiting the lieutenant-governor’s orders for the landing
+of the troops, which still remained on board the transports. The
+captain of Castle William stood beside Hutchinson’s chair, with folded
+arms, glancing rather haughtily at the British officer by whom he was
+soon to be superseded in his command. On a table in the centre of the
+chamber stood a branched silver candlestick, throwing down the glow of
+half a dozen waxlights upon a paper apparently ready for the
+lieutenant-governor’s signature.
+
+Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one of the window-curtains,
+which fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen the white drapery of
+a lady’s robe. It may appear strange that Alice Vane should have been
+there at such a time, but there was something so childlike, so wayward,
+in her singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, that her
+presence did not surprise the few who noticed it. Meantime, the
+chairman of the selectmen was addressing to the lieutenant-governor a
+long and solemn protest against the reception of the British troops
+into the town.
+
+“And if Your Honor,” concluded this excellent but somewhat prosy old
+gentleman, “shall see fit to persist in bringing these mercenary
+sworders and musketeers into our quiet streets, not on our heads be the
+responsibility. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one drop
+of blood be shed, that blood shall be an eternal stain upon Your
+Honor’s memory. You, sir, have written with an able pen the deeds of
+our forefathers; the more to be desired is it, therefore, that yourself
+should deserve honorable mention as a true patriot and upright ruler
+when your own doings shall be written down in history.”
+
+“I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural desire to stand well
+in the annals of my country,” replied Hutchinson, controlling his
+impatience into courtesy, “nor know I any better method of attaining
+that end than by withstanding the merely temporary spirit of mischief
+which, with your pardon, seems to have infected older men than myself.
+Would you have me wait till the mob shall sack the province-house as
+they did my private mansion? Trust me, sir, the time may come when you
+will be glad to flee for protection to the king’s banner, the raising
+of which is now so distasteful to you.”
+
+“Yes,” said the British major, who was impatiently expecting the
+lieutenant-governor’s orders. “The demagogues of this province have
+raised the devil, and cannot lay him again. We will exorcise him in
+God’s name and the king’s.”
+
+“If you meddle with the devil, take care of his claws,” answered the
+captain of Castle William, stirred by the taunt against his countrymen.
+
+“Craving your pardon, young sir,” said the venerable selectman, “let
+not an evil spirit enter into your words. We will strive against the
+oppressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers would have done.
+Like them, moreover, we will submit to whatever lot a wise Providence
+may send us—always after our own best exertions to amend it.”
+
+“And there peep forth the devil’s claws!” muttered Hutchinson, who well
+understood the nature of Puritan submission. “This matter shall be
+expedited forthwith. When there shall be a sentinel at every corner and
+a court of guard before the town-house, a loyal gentleman may venture
+to walk abroad. What to me is the outcry of a mob in this remote
+province of the realm? The king is my master, and England is my
+country; upheld by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the rabble
+and defy them.”
+
+He snatched a pen and was about to affix his signature to the paper
+that lay on the table, when the captain of Castle William placed his
+hand upon his shoulder. The freedom of the action, so contrary to the
+ceremonious respect which was then considered due to rank and dignity,
+awakened general surprise, and in none more than in the
+lieutenant-governor himself. Looking angrily up, he perceived that his
+young relative was pointing his finger to the opposite wall.
+Hutchinson’s eye followed the signal, and he saw what had hitherto been
+unobserved—that a black silk curtain was suspended before the
+mysterious picture, so as completely to conceal it. His thoughts
+immediately recurred to the scene of the preceding afternoon, and in
+his surprise, confused by indistinct emotions, yet sensible that his
+niece must have had an agency in this phenomenon, he called loudly upon
+her:
+
+“Alice! Come hither, Alice!”
+
+No sooner had he spoken than Alice Vane glided from her station, and,
+pressing one hand across her eyes, with the other snatched away the
+sable curtain that concealed the portrait. An exclamation of surprise
+burst from every beholder, but the lieutenant-governor’s voice had a
+tone of horror.
+
+“By Heaven!” said he, in a low inward murmur, speaking rather to
+himself than to those around him; “if the spirit of Edward Randolph
+were to appear among us from the place of torment, he could not wear
+more of the terrors of hell upon his face.”
+
+“For some wise end,” said the aged selectman, solemnly, “hath
+Providence scattered away the mist of years that had so long hid this
+dreadful effigy. Until this hour no living man hath seen what we
+behold.”
+
+Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste
+of canvas now appeared a visible picture-still dark, indeed, in its
+hues and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief. It was a
+half-length figure of a gentleman in a rich but very old-fashioned
+dress of embroidered velvet, with a broad ruff and a beard, and wearing
+a hat the brim of which overshadowed his forehead. Beneath this cloud
+the eyes had a peculiar glare which was almost lifelike. The whole
+portrait started so distinctly out of the background that it had the
+effect of a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and
+awe-stricken spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can
+convey an idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous
+guilt and exposed to the bitter hatred and laughter and withering scorn
+of a vast surrounding multitude. There was the struggle of defiance,
+beaten down and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The
+torture of the soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as
+if the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had
+been all the time acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of
+expression, till now it gloomed forth again and threw its evil omen
+over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was
+the portrait of Edward Randolph as he appeared when a people’s curse
+had wrought its influence upon his nature.
+
+“’Twould drive me mad, that awful face,” said Hutchinson, who seemed
+fascinated by the contemplation of it.
+
+“Be warned, then,” whispered Alice. “He trampled on a people’s rights.
+Behold his punishment, and avoid a crime like his.”
+
+The lieutenant-governor actually trembled for an instant, but, exerting
+his energy—which was not, however, his most characteristic feature—he
+strove to shake off the spell of Randolph’s countenance.
+
+“Girl,” cried he, laughing bitterly, as he turned to Alice, “have you
+brought hither your painter’s art, your Italian spirit of intrigue,
+your tricks of stage-effect, and think to influence the councils of
+rulers and the affairs of nations by such shallow contrivances? See
+here!”
+
+“Stay yet a while,” said the selectman as Hutchinson again snatched the
+pen; “for if ever mortal man received a warning from a tormented soul,
+Your Honor is that man.”
+
+“Away!” answered Hutchinson, fiercely. “Though yonder senseless picture
+cried ‘Forbear!rsquo; it should not move me!”
+
+Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face—which seemed at that
+moment to intensify the horror of its miserable and wicked look—he
+scrawled on the paper, in characters that betokened it a deed of
+desperation, the name of Thomas Hutchinson. Then, it is said, he
+shuddered, as if that signature had granted away his salvation.
+
+“It is done,” said he, and placed his hand upon his brow.
+
+“May Heaven forgive the deed!” said the soft, sad accents of Alice
+Vane, like the voice of a good spirit flitting away.
+
+When morning came, there was a stifled whisper through the household,
+and spreading thence about the town, that the dark mysterious picture
+had started from the wall and spoken face to face with
+Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson. If such a miracle had been wrought,
+however, no traces of it remained behind; for within the antique frame
+nothing could be discerned save the impenetrable cloud which had
+covered the canvas since the memory of man. If the figure had, indeed,
+stepped forth, it had fled back, spirit-like, at the day-dawn, and
+hidden itself behind a century’s obscurity. The truth probably was that
+Alice Vane’s secret for restoring the hues of the picture had merely
+effected a temporary renovation. But those who in that brief interval
+had beheld the awful visage of Edward Randolph desired no second
+glance, and ever afterward trembled at the recollection of the scene,
+as if an evil spirit had appeared visibly among them. And, as for
+Hutchinson, when, far over the ocean, his dying-hour drew on, he gasped
+for breath and complained that he was choking with the blood of the
+Boston Massacre, and Francis Lincoln, the former captain of Castle
+William, who was standing at his bedside, perceived a likeness in his
+frenzied look to that of Edward Randolph. Did his broken spirit feel at
+that dread hour the tremendous burden of a people’s curse?
+
+
+At the conclusion of this miraculous legend I inquired of mine host
+whether the picture still remained in the chamber over our heads, but
+Mr. Tiffany informed me that it had long since been removed, and was
+supposed to be hidden in some out-of-the-way corner of the New England
+Museum. Perchance some curious antiquary may light upon it there, and,
+with the assistance of Mr. Howorth, the picture-cleaner, may supply a
+not unnecessary proof of the authenticity of the facts here set down.
+
+During the progress of the story a storm had been gathering abroad and
+raging and rattling so loudly in the upper regions of the Province
+House that it seemed as if all the old governors and great men were
+running riot above stairs while Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them below.
+In the course of generations, when many people have lived and died in
+an ancient house, the whistling of the wind through its crannies and
+the creaking of its beams and rafters become strangely like the tones
+of the human voice, or thundering laughter, or heavy footsteps treading
+the deserted chambers. It is as if the echoes of half a century were
+revived. Such were the ghostly sounds that roared and murmured in our
+ears when I took leave of the circle round the fireside of the Province
+House and, plunging down the doorsteps, fought my way homeward against
+a drifting snow-storm.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+LADY ELEANORE’S MANTLE
+
+
+Mine excellent friend the landlord of the Province House was pleased
+the other evening to invite Mr. Tiffany and myself to an oyster-supper.
+This slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he handsomely observed,
+was far less than the ingenious tale-teller, and I, the humble
+note-taker of his narratives, had fairly earned by the public notice
+which our joint lucubrations had attracted to his establishment. Many a
+cigar had been smoked within his premises, many a glass of wine or more
+potent _aqua vitæ_ had been quaffed, many a dinner had been eaten, by
+curious strangers who, save for the fortunate conjunction of Mr.
+Tiffany and me, would never have ventured through that darksome avenue
+which gives access to the historic precincts of the Province House. In
+short, if any credit be due to the courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas
+Waite, we had brought his forgotten mansion almost as effectually into
+public view as if we had thrown down the vulgar range of shoe-shops and
+dry-good stores which hides its aristocratic front from Washington
+street. It may be unadvisable, however, to speak too loudly of the
+increased custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite should find it difficult
+to renew the lease on so favorable terms as heretofore.
+
+Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. Tiffany nor myself felt
+any scruple in doing full justice to the good things that were set
+before us. If the feast were less magnificent than those same panelled
+walls had witnessed in a bygone century; if mine host presided with
+somewhat less of state than might have befitted a successor of the
+royal governors; if the guests made a less imposing show than the
+bewigged and powdered and embroidered dignitaries who erst banqueted at
+the gubernatorial table and now sleep within their armorial tombs on
+Copp’s Hill or round King’s Chapel,—yet never, I may boldly say, did a
+more comfortable little party assemble in the province-house from Queen
+Anne’s days to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered more
+interesting by the presence of a venerable personage whose own actual
+reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe, and even
+supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two of Hutchinson. He was one
+of that small, and now all but extinguished, class whose attachment to
+royalty, and to the colonial institutions and customs that were
+connected with it, had never yielded to the democratic heresies of
+after-times. The young queen of Britain has not a more loyal subject in
+her realm—perhaps not one who would kneel before her throne with such
+reverential love—as this old grandsire whose head has whitened beneath
+the mild sway of the republic which still in his mellower moments he
+terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices so obstinate have not made him an
+ungentle or impracticable companion. If the truth must be told, the
+life of the aged loyalist has been of such a scrambling and unsettled
+character—he has had so little choice of friends and been so often
+destitute of any—that I doubt whether he would refuse a cup of kindness
+with either Oliver Cromwell or John Hancock, to say nothing of any
+democrat now upon the stage. In another paper of this series I may
+perhaps give the reader a closer glimpse of his portrait.
+
+Our host in due season uncorked a bottle of Madeira of such exquisite
+perfume and admirable flavor that he surely must have discovered it in
+an ancient bin down deep beneath the deepest cellar where some jolly
+old butler stored away the governor’s choicest wine and forgot to
+reveal the secret on his death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost and a
+libation to his memory! This precious liquor was imbibed by Mr. Tiffany
+with peculiar zest, and after sipping the third glass it was his
+pleasure to give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet raked
+from the storehouse where he keeps such matters. With some suitable
+adornments from my own fancy, it ran pretty much as follows.
+
+
+Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government of
+Massachusetts Bay—now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago—a young
+lady of rank and fortune arrived from England to claim his protection
+as her guardian. He was her distant relative, but the nearest who had
+survived the gradual extinction of her family; so that no more eligible
+shelter could be found for the rich and high-born Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe than within the province-house of a Transatlantic colony.
+The consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as a mother to her
+childhood, and was now anxious to receive her in the hope that a
+beautiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril from
+the primitive society of New England than amid the artifices and
+corruptions of a court. If either the governor or his lady had
+especially consulted their own comfort, they would probably have sought
+to devolve the responsibility on other hands, since with some noble and
+splendid traits of character Lady Eleanore was remarkable for a harsh,
+unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her hereditary and
+personal advantages, which made her almost incapable of control.
+Judging from many traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar temper was
+hardly less than a monomania; or if the acts which it inspired were
+those of a sane person, it seemed due from Providence that pride so
+sinful should be followed by as severe a retribution. That tinge of the
+marvellous which is thrown over so many of these half-forgotten legends
+has probably imparted an additional wildness to the strange story of
+Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe.
+
+The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at Newport, whence
+Lady Eleanore was conveyed to Boston in the governor’s coach, attended
+by a small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage,
+with its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled through
+Cornhill surrounded by the prancing steeds of half a dozen cavaliers
+with swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their holsters.
+Through the large glass windows of the coach, as it rolled along, the
+people could discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely combining
+an almost queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty of a maiden in
+her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the ladies of the
+province that their fair rival was indebted for much of the
+irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress—an
+embroidered mantle—which had been wrought by the most skilful artist in
+London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the
+present occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress,
+being clad in a riding-habit of velvet which would have appeared stiff
+and ungraceful on any other form.
+
+The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade
+came to a pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced
+the province-house from the public street. It was an awkward
+coincidence that the bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a
+funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome peal with which it was
+customary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers, Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if calamity had
+come embodied in her beautiful person.
+
+“A very great disrespect!” exclaimed Captain Langford, an English
+officer who had recently brought despatches to Governor Shute. “The
+funeral should have been deferred lest Lady Eleanore’s spirits be
+affected by such a dismal welcome.”
+
+“With your pardon, sir,” replied Dr. Clarke, a physician and a famous
+champion of the popular party, “whatever the heralds may pretend, a
+dead beggar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers
+high privileges.”
+
+These remarks-were interchanged while the speakers waited a passage
+through the crowd which had gathered on each side of the gateway,
+leaving an open avenue to the portal of the province-house. A black
+slave in livery now leaped from behind the coach and threw open the
+door, while at the same moment Governor Shute descended the flight of
+steps from his mansion to assist Lady Eleanore in alighting. But the
+governor’s stately approach was anticipated in a manner that excited
+general astonishment. A pale young man with his black hair all in
+disorder rushed from the throng and prostrated himself beside the
+coach, thus offering his person as a footstool for Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe to tread upon. She held back an instant, yet with an
+expression as if doubting whether the young man were worthy to bear the
+weight of her footstep rather than dissatisfied to receive such awful
+reverence from a fellow-mortal.
+
+“Up, sir!” said the governor, sternly, at the same time lifting his
+cane over the intruder. “What means the Bedlamite by this freak?”
+
+“Nay,” answered Lady Eleanore, playfully, but with more scorn than pity
+in her tone; “Your Excellency shall not strike him. When men seek only
+to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily
+granted—and so well deserved!” Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam on
+a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form and extended her
+hand to meet that of the governor.
+
+There was a brief interval during which Lady Eleanore retained this
+attitude, and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of aristocracy
+and hereditary pride trampling on human sympathies and the kindred of
+nature than these two figures presented at that moment. Yet the
+spectators were so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did pride
+seem to the existence of such a creature, that they gave a simultaneous
+acclamation of applause.
+
+“Who is this insolent young fellow?” inquired Captain Langford, who
+still remained beside Dr. Clarke. “If he be in his senses, his
+impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be
+secured from further inconvenience by his confinement.”
+
+“His name is Jervase Helwyse,” answered the doctor—“a youth of no birth
+or fortune, or other advantages save the mind and soul that nature gave
+him; and, being secretary to our colonial agent in London, it was his
+misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved her, and her
+scorn has driven him mad.”
+
+“He was mad so to aspire,” observed the English officer.
+
+“It may be so,” said Dr. Clarke, frowning as he spoke; “but I tell you,
+sir, I could wellnigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if no
+signal humiliation overtake this lady who now treads so haughtily into
+yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our
+common nature, which envelops all human souls; see if that nature do
+not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring her level
+with the lowest.”
+
+“Never!” cried Captain Langford, indignantly—“neither in life nor when
+they lay her with her ancestors.”
+
+Not many days afterward the governor gave a ball in honor of Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony received
+invitations, which were distributed to their residences far and near by
+messengers on horseback bearing missives sealed with all the formality
+of official despatches. In obedience to the summons, there was a
+general gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the wide door of the
+province-house had seldom given admittance to more numerous and
+honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore’s ball. Without
+much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed
+splendid, for, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone
+in rich silks and satins outspread over wide-projecting hoops, and the
+gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery laid unsparingly upon the purple
+or scarlet or sky-blue velvet which was the material of their coats and
+waistcoats. The latter article of dress was of great importance, since
+it enveloped the wearer’s body nearly to the knees and was perhaps
+bedizened with the amount of his whole year’s income in golden flowers
+and foliage. The altered taste of the present day—a taste symbolic of a
+deep change in the whole system of society—would look upon almost any
+of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous, although that evening the
+guests sought their reflections in the pier-glasses and rejoiced to
+catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd. What a pity that one
+of the stately mirrors has not preserved a picture of the scene which
+by the very traits that were so transitory might have taught us much
+that would be worth knowing and remembering!
+
+Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us some
+faint idea of a garment already noticed in this legend—the Lady
+Eleanore’s embroidered mantle, which the gossips whispered was invested
+with magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace to her
+figure each time that she put it on! Idle fancy as it is, this
+mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around my image of her, partly from
+its fabled virtues and partly because it was the handiwork of a dying
+woman, and perchance owed the fantastic grace of its conception to the
+delirium of approaching death.
+
+After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe
+stood apart from the mob of guests, insulating herself within a small
+and distinguished circle to whom she accorded a more cordial favor than
+to the general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance vividly
+over the scene, bringing out its brilliant points in strong relief, but
+she gazed carelessly, and with now and then an expression of weariness
+or scorn tempered with such feminine grace that her auditors scarcely
+perceived the moral deformity of which it was the utterance. She beheld
+the spectacle not with vulgar ridicule, as disdaining to be pleased
+with the provincial mockery of a court-festival, but with the deeper
+scorn of one whose spirit held itself too high to participate in the
+enjoyment of other human souls. Whether or no the recollections of
+those who saw her that evening were influenced by the strange events
+with which she was subsequently connected, so it was that her figure
+ever after recurred to them as marked by something wild and unnatural,
+although at the time the general whisper was of her exceeding beauty
+and of the indescribable charm which her mantle threw around her. Some
+close observers, indeed, detected a feverish flush and alternate
+paleness of countenance, with a corresponding flow and revulsion of
+spirits, and once or twice a painful and helpless betrayal of
+lassitude, as if she were on the point of sinking to the ground. Then,
+with a nervous shudder, she seemed to arouse her energies, and threw
+some bright and playful yet half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation.
+There was so strange a characteristic in her manners and sentiments
+that it astonished every right-minded listener, till, looking in her
+face, a lurking and incomprehensible glance and smile perplexed them
+with doubts both as to her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe’s circle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen
+remained in it. These were Captain Langford, the English officer before
+mentioned; a Virginian planter who had come to Massachusetts on some
+political errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a
+British earl; and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor Shute,
+whose obsequiousness had won a sort of tolerance from Lady Eleanore.
+
+At different periods of the evening the liveried servants of the
+province-house passed among the guests bearing huge trays of
+refreshments and French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe,
+who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of champagne,
+had sunk back into a large damask chair, apparently overwearied either
+with the excitement of the scene or its tedium; and while, for an
+instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter and music, a young man
+stole forward and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his hand
+on which was a chased silver goblet filled to the brim with wine, which
+he offered as reverentially as to a crowned queen—or, rather, with the
+awful devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol. Conscious that
+some one touched her robe, Lady Eleanore started, and unclosed her eyes
+upon the pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of Jervase Helwyse.
+
+“Why do you haunt me thus?” said she, in a languid tone, but with a
+kindlier feeling than she ordinarily permitted herself to express.
+“They tell me that I have done you harm.”
+
+“Heaven knows if that be so,” replied the young man, solemnly. “But,
+Lady Eleanore, in requital of that harm, if such there be, and for your
+own earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of this
+holy wine and then to pass the goblet round among the guests. And this
+shall be a symbol that you have not sought to withdraw yourself from
+the chain of human sympathies, which whoso would shake off must keep
+company with fallen angels.”
+
+“Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental vessel?” exclaimed
+the Episcopal clergyman.
+
+This question drew the notice of the guests to the silver cup, which
+was recognized as appertaining to the communion-plate of the Old South
+Church, and, for aught that could be known, it was brimming over with
+the consecrated wine.
+
+“Perhaps it is poisoned,” half whispered the governor’s secretary.
+
+“Pour it down the villain’s throat!” cried the Virginian, fiercely.
+
+“Turn him out of the house!” cried Captain Langford, seizing Jervase
+Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder that the sacramental cup was
+overturned and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore’s mantle.
+“Whether knave, fool or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the fellow
+should go at large.”
+
+“Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm,” said Lady Eleanore, with
+a faint and weary smile. “Take him out of my sight, if such be your
+pleasure, for I can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at him,
+whereas, in all decency and conscience, it would become me to weep for
+the mischief I have wrought.”
+
+But while the bystanders were attempting to lead away the unfortunate
+young man he broke from them and with a wild, impassioned earnestness
+offered a new and equally strange petition to Lady Eleanore. It was no
+other than that she should throw off the mantle, which while he pressed
+the silver cup of wine upon her she had drawn more closely around her
+form, so as almost to shroud herself within it.
+
+“Cast it from you,” exclaimed Jervase Helwyse, clasping his hands in an
+agony of entreaty. “It may not yet be too late. Give the accursed
+garment to the flames.”
+
+But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the rich folds of the
+embroidered mantle over her head in such a fashion as to give a
+completely new aspect to her beautiful face, which, half hidden, half
+revealed, seemed to belong to some being of mysterious character and
+purposes.
+
+“Farewell, Jervase Helwyse!” said she. “Keep my image in your
+remembrance as you behold it now.”
+
+“Alas, lady!” he replied, in a tone no longer wild, but sad as a
+funeral-bell; “we must meet shortly when your face may wear another
+aspect, and that shall be the image that must abide within me.” He made
+no more resistance to the violent efforts of the gentlemen and servants
+who almost dragged him out of the apartment and dismissed him roughly
+from the iron gate of the province-house.
+
+Captain Langford, who had been very active in this affair, was
+returning to the presence of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he
+encountered the physician, Dr. Clarke, with whom he had held some
+casual talk on the day of her arrival. The doctor stood apart,
+separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the room, but eying her
+with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him
+credit for the discovery of some deep secret.
+
+“You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly
+maiden,” said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician’s hidden
+knowledge.
+
+“God forbid!” answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave smile; “and if you be
+wise, you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who
+shall be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder stands the
+governor, and I have a word or two for his private ear. Good-night!” He
+accordingly advanced to Governor Shute and addressed him in so low a
+tone that none of the bystanders could catch a word of what he said,
+although the sudden change of His Excellency’s hitherto cheerful visage
+betokened that the communication could be of no agreeable import. A
+very few moments afterward it was announced to the guests that an
+unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to put a premature close
+to the festival.
+
+The ball at the province-house supplied a topic of conversation for the
+colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might still
+longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of
+all-engrossing interest thrust it for a time from the public
+recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic which in
+that age, and long before and afterward, was wont to slay its hundreds
+and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which
+we speak it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that it
+has left its traces—its pitmarks, to use an appropriate figure—on the
+history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown into confusion
+by its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the disease
+seemed to confine itself to the higher circles of society, selecting
+its victims from among the proud, the well-born and the wealthy,
+entering unabashed into stately chambers and lying down with the
+slumberers in silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests of the
+province-house—even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe had
+deemed not unworthy of her favor—were stricken by this fatal scourge.
+It was noticed with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling that the four
+gentlemen—the Virginian, the British officer, the young clergyman and
+the governor’s secretary—who had been her most devoted attendants on
+the evening of the ball were the foremost on whom the plague-stroke
+fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be
+exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no longer
+conferred like a noble’s star or an order of knighthood. It threaded
+its way through the narrow and crooked streets, and entered the low,
+mean, darksome dwellings and laid its hand of death upon the artisans
+and laboring classes of the town. It compelled rich and poor to feel
+themselves brethren then, and stalking to and fro across the Three
+Hills with a fierceness which made it almost a new pestilence, there
+was that mighty conqueror—that scourge and horror of our
+forefathers—the small-pox.
+
+We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore by
+contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must
+remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of
+the Asiatic cholera striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic and
+marching like Destiny upon cities far remote which flight had already
+half depopulated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing
+as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven’s vital air lest it be
+poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the grip of
+the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now followed
+in the track of the disease or ran before it throughout the town.
+Graves were hastily dug and the pestilential relics as hastily covered,
+because the dead were enemies of the living and strove to draw them
+headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public councils
+were suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices now
+that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the ruler’s mansion.
+Had an enemy’s fleet been hovering on the coast or his armies trampling
+on our soil, the people would probably have committed their defence to
+that same direful conqueror who had wrought their own calamity and
+would permit no interference with his sway. This conqueror had a symbol
+of his triumphs: it was a blood-red flag that fluttered in the tainted
+air over the door of every dwelling into which the small-pox had
+entered.
+
+Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the
+province-house, for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps
+back, had all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back to
+a lady’s luxurious chamber, to the proudest of the proud, to her that
+was so delicate and hardly owned herself of earthly mould, to the
+haughty one who took her stand above human sympathies—to Lady Eleanore.
+There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had lurked in that
+gorgeous mantle which threw so strange a grace around her at the
+festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the delirious
+brain of a woman on her death-bed and was the last toil of her
+stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its
+golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far
+and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore and cried out that
+her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that between them both this
+monstrous evil had been born. At times their rage and despair took the
+semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red flag of the
+pestilence was hoisted over another and yet another door, they clapped
+their hands and shouted through the streets in bitter mockery: “Behold
+a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!”
+
+One day in the midst of these dismal times a wild figure approached the
+portal of the province-house, and, folding his arms, stood
+contemplating the scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook
+fitfully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At
+length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade, he
+took down the flag, and entered the mansion waving it above his head.
+At the foot of the staircase he met the governor, booted and spurred,
+with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of setting
+forth upon a journey.
+
+“Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?” exclaimed Shute, extending
+his cane to guard himself from contact. “There is nothing here but
+Death; back, or you will meet him.”
+
+“Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence,” cried
+Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. “Death and the pestilence,
+who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through the
+streets to-night, and I must march before them with this banner.”
+
+“Why do I waste words on the fellow?” muttered the governor, drawing
+his cloak across his mouth. “What matters his miserable life, when none
+of us are sure of twelve hours’ breath?—On, fool, to your own
+destruction!”
+
+He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the
+staircase, but on the first landing-place was arrested by the firm
+grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up with a madman’s
+impulse to struggle with and rend asunder his opponent, he found
+himself powerless beneath a calm, stern eye which possessed the
+mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height. The person whom
+he had now encountered was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties of
+whose sad profession had led him to the province-house, where he was an
+infrequent guest in more prosperous times.
+
+“Young man, what is your purpose?” demanded he.
+
+“I seek the Lady Eleanore,” answered Jervase Helwyse, submissively.
+
+“All have fled from her,” said the physician. “Why do you seek her now?
+I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold of
+that fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such a curse to our
+shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore, that her breath has filled the air
+with poison, that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land
+from the folds of her accursed mantle?”
+
+“Let me look upon her,” rejoined the mad youth, more wildly. “Let me
+behold her in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the
+pestilence. She and Death sit on a throne together; let me kneel down
+before them.”
+
+“Poor youth!” said Dr. Clarke, and, moved by a deep sense of human
+weakness, a smile of caustic humor curled his lip even then. “Wilt thou
+still worship the destroyer and surround her image with fantasies the
+more magnificent the more evil she has wrought? Thus man doth ever to
+his tyrants. Approach, then. Madness, as I have noted, has that good
+efficacy that it will guard you from contagion, and perhaps its own
+cure may be found in yonder chamber.” Ascending another flight of
+stairs, he threw open a door and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he
+should enter.
+
+The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cherished a delusion that his
+haughty mistress sat in state, unharmed herself by the pestilential
+influence which as by enchantment she scattered round about her. He
+dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into
+superhuman splendor. With such anticipations he stole reverentially to
+the door at which the physician stood, but paused upon the threshold,
+gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened chamber.
+
+“Where is the Lady Eleanore?” whispered he.
+
+“Call her,” replied the physician.
+
+“Lady Eleanore! princess! queen of Death!” cried Jervase Helwyse,
+advancing three steps into the chamber. “She is not here. There, on
+yonder table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore
+upon her bosom. There”—and he shuddered—“there hangs her mantle, on
+which a dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where
+is the Lady Eleanore?”
+
+Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed and a
+low moan was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began
+to distinguish as a woman’s voice complaining dolefully of thirst. He
+fancied, even, that he recognized its tones.
+
+“My throat! My throat is scorched,” murmured the voice. “A drop of
+water!”
+
+“What thing art thou?” said the brain-stricken youth, drawing near the
+bed and tearing asunder its curtains. “Whose voice hast thou stolen for
+thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore could be
+conscious of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap of diseased mortality, why
+lurkest thou in my lady’s chamber?”
+
+“Oh, Jervase Helwyse,” said the voice—and as it spoke the figure
+contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face—“look not now on
+the woman you once loved. The curse of Heaven hath stricken me because
+I would not call man my brother nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in
+pride as in a mantle and scorned the sympathies of nature, and
+therefore has Nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful
+sympathy. You are avenged, they are all avenged, Nature is avenged; for
+I am Eleanore Rochcliffe.”
+
+The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom
+of his heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined life and love
+that had been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jervase
+Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched girl, and the chamber
+echoed, the curtains of the bed were shaken, with his outburst of
+insane merriment.
+
+“Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!” he cried. “All have been her
+victims; who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?” Impelled by
+some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched the fatal mantle
+and rushed from the chamber and the house.
+
+That night a procession passed by torchlight through the streets,
+bearing in the midst the figure of a woman enveloped with a
+richly-embroidered mantle, while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse
+waving the red flag of the pestilence. Arriving opposite the
+province-house, the mob burned the effigy, and a strong wind came and
+swept away the ashes. It was said that from that very hour the
+pestilence abated, as if its sway had some mysterious connection, from
+the first plague-stroke to the last, with Lady Elcanore’s mantle. A
+remarkable uncertainty broods over that unhappy lady’s fate. There is a
+belief, however, that in a certain chamber of this mansion a female
+form may sometimes be duskily discerned shrinking into the darkest
+corner and muffling her face within an embroidered mantle. Supposing
+the legend true, can this be other than the once proud Lady Eleanore?
+
+
+Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no little Warmth of
+applause upon this narrative, in which we had all been deeply
+interested; for the reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the
+effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in the present case, we
+may repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who tells it. For
+my own part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the
+foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the
+more faithfully had he professed himself an eyewitness of the doings
+and sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might
+demand documentary evidence, or even require him to produce the
+embroidered mantle, forgetting that—Heaven be praised!—it was consumed
+to ashes.
+
+But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer,
+began to talk, in his turn, about the traditions of the Province House,
+and hinted that he, if it were agreeable, might add a few reminiscences
+to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to dread a rival,
+immediately besought him to favor us with a specimen; my own
+entreaties, of course, were urged to the same effect; and our venerable
+guest, well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited only the return
+of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth to provide
+accommodations for several new arrivals. Perchance the public—but be
+this as its own caprice and ours shall settle the matter—may read the
+result in another tale of the Province House.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+OLD ESTHER DUDLEY
+
+
+Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as Mr. Tiffany and myself
+expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story to which
+the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw lit to
+moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then, turning his
+face toward our coal-fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into
+the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally he poured forth a great
+fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had imbibed, while it
+warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his
+heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel which we could
+hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore winters.
+His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than those of a
+younger man—or, at least, the same degree of feeling manifested itself
+by more visible effects than if his judgment and will had possessed the
+potency of meridian life. At the pathetic passages of his narrative he
+readily melted into tears. When a breath of indignation swept across
+his spirit, the blood flushed his withered visage even to the roots of
+his white hair, and he shook his clinched fist at the trio of peaceful
+auditors, seeming to fancy enemies in those who felt very kindly toward
+the desolate old soul. But ever and anon, sometimes in the midst of his
+most earnest talk, this ancient person’s intellect would wander
+vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in hand and groping for it amid
+misty shadows. Then would he cackle forth a feeble laugh and express a
+doubt whether his wits—for by that phrase it pleased our ancient friend
+to signify his mental powers—were not getting a little the worse for
+wear.
+
+Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist’s story required more
+revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series
+which have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment
+and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight—or perchance more
+than slight—metamorphosis in its transmission to the reader through the
+medium of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch
+with no involution of plot nor any great interest of events, yet
+possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over
+the mind which the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the
+loiterer in its court-yard.
+
+
+The hour had come—the hour of defeat and humiliation—when Sir William
+Howe was to pass over the threshold of the province-house and embark,
+with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board
+the British fleet. He bade his servants and military attendants go
+before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of the mansion to
+quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom as with a
+death-throb. Preferable then would he have deemed his fate had a
+warrior’s death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a grave
+within the soil which the king had given him to defend. With an ominous
+perception that as his departing footsteps echoed adown the staircase
+the sway of Britain was passing for ever from New England, he smote his
+clenched hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had flung the
+shame of a dismembered empire upon him.
+
+“Would to God,” cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, “that
+the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the floor
+should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
+his trust.”
+
+The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.
+
+“Heaven’s cause and the king’s are one,” it said. “Go forth, Sir
+William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in
+triumph.”
+
+Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith
+that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged
+woman leaning on a gold-headed staff was standing betwixt him and the
+door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years
+in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from it as
+the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an ancient
+and once eminent family which had fallen into poverty and decay and
+left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the king, nor
+any shelter except within the walls of the province-house. An office in
+the household with merely nominal duties had been assigned to her as a
+pretext for the payment of a small pension, the greater part of which
+she expended in adorning herself with an antique magnificence of
+attire. The claims of Esther Dudley’s gentle blood were acknowledged by
+all the successive governors, and they treated her with the punctilious
+courtesy which it was her foible to demand, not always with success,
+from a neglectful world. The only actual share which she assumed in the
+business of the mansion was to glide through its passages and public
+chambers late at night to see that the servants had dropped no fire
+from their flaring torches nor left embers crackling and blazing on the
+hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of walking her rounds in
+the hush of midnight that caused the superstition of the times to
+invest the old woman with attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that
+she had entered the portal of the province-house—none knew whence—in
+the train of the first royal governor, and that it was her fate to
+dwell there till the last should have departed.
+
+But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.
+
+“Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?” asked he, with some
+severity of tone. “It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of
+the king.”
+
+“Not so, if it please Your Excellency,” answered the time-stricken
+woman. “This roof has sheltered me long; I will not pass from it until
+they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there
+for old Esther Dudley save the province-house or the grave?”
+
+“Now, Heaven forgive me!” said Sir William Howe to himself. “I was
+about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg.—Take this,
+good Mistress Dudley,” he added, putting a purse into her hands. “King
+George’s head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will
+continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock
+their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the
+province-house can now afford.”
+
+“While the burden of life remains upon me I will have no other shelter
+than this roof,” persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the
+floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve; “and when Your
+Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome
+you.”
+
+“My poor old friend!” answered the British general, and all his manly
+and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears.
+“This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king
+entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune—perchance in
+disgrace—to return no more. And you, whose present being is
+incorporated with the past, who have seen governor after governor in
+stately pageantry ascend these steps, whose whole life has been an
+observance of majestic ceremonies and a worship of the king,—how will
+you endure the change? Come with us; bid farewell to a land that has
+shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government at
+Halifax.”
+
+“Never! never!” said the pertinacious old dame. “Here will I abide, and
+King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal
+province.”
+
+“Beshrew the old fool!” muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient of
+her obstinacy and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been
+betrayed. “She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could
+exist nowhere but in this musty edifice.—Well, then, Mistress Dudley,
+since you will needs tarry, I give the province-house in charge to you.
+Take this key, and keep it safe until myself or some other royal
+governor shall demand it of you.” Smiling bitterly at himself and her,
+he took the heavy key of the province-house, and, delivering it into
+the old lady’s hands, drew his cloak around him for departure.
+
+As the general glanced back at Esther Dudley’s antique figure he deemed
+her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative
+of the decayed past—of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions,
+faith and feelings all fallen into oblivion or scorn, of what had once
+been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then
+Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his clenched hands together in
+the fierce anguish of his spirit, and old Esther Dudley was left to
+keep watch in the lonely province-house, dwelling there with Memory;
+and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still it was Memory in
+disguise.
+
+The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the British
+troops did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold. There was
+not for many years afterward a governor of Massachusetts, and the
+magistrates who had charge of such matters saw no objection to Esther
+Dudley’s residence in the province-house, especially as they must
+otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises, which
+with her was a labor of love; and so they left her the undisturbed
+mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange were the fables
+which the gossips whispered about her in all the chimney-corners of the
+town.
+
+Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left in the
+mansion, there was a tall antique mirror which was well worthy of a
+tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one. The gold
+of its heavily-wrought frame was tarnished, and its surface so blurred
+that the old woman’s figure, whenever she paused before it, looked
+indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the general belief that Esther
+could cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty, with the beautiful
+ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the Indian chiefs who had
+come up to the province-house to hold council or swear allegiance, the
+grim provincial warriors, the severe clergymen—in short, all the
+pageantry of gone days, all the figures that ever swept across the
+broad-plate of glass in former times,—she could cause the whole to
+reappear and people the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old
+life. Such legends as these, together with the singularity of her
+isolated existence, her age and the infirmity that each added winter
+flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley the object both of fear and pity,
+and it was partly the result of either sentiment that, amid all the
+angry license of the times, neither wrong nor insult ever fell upon her
+unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much haughtiness in her demeanor
+toward intruders—among whom she reckoned all persons acting under the
+new authorities—that it was really an affair of no small nerve to look
+her in the face. And, to do the people justice, stern republicans as
+they had now become, they were well content that the old gentlewoman,
+in her hoop-petticoat and faded embroidery, should still haunt the
+palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the symbol of a departed
+system, embodying a history in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt year
+after year in the province-house, still reverencing all that others had
+flung aside, still faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable
+dame yet held her post, might be said to retain one true subject in New
+England and one spot of the empire that had been wrested from him.
+
+And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, “Not so.”
+Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to
+summon a black slave of Governor Shirley’s from the blurred mirror and
+send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those
+deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight
+or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the
+burial-grounds, knocking at the iron doors of tombs or upon the marble
+slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within, “My mistress,
+old Esther Dudley, bids you to the province-house at midnight;” and
+punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows
+of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys—all the grandees of a
+bygone generation—gliding beneath the portal into the well-known
+mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a
+shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is certain
+that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch though
+crestfallen old Tories who had lingered in the rebel town during those
+days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle containing
+liquor that a royal governor might have smacked his lips over they
+quaffed healths to the king and babbled treason to the republic,
+feeling as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung
+around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they stole
+timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob reviled
+them in the street.
+
+Yet Esther Dudley’s most frequent and favored guests were the children
+of the town. Toward them she was never stern. A kindly and loving
+nature hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky
+prejudices lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of
+gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted
+their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the
+province-house, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day
+there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop-petticoat,
+greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these
+little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious
+mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people
+had long ago forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as
+if they had gone astray into ancient times and become children of the
+past. At home, when their parents asked where they had loitered such a
+weary while and with whom they had been at play, the children would
+talk of all the departed worthies of the province as far back as
+Governor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would
+seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous
+personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had toyed
+with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats or roguishly pulled the
+long curls of their flowing wigs. “But Governor Belcher has been dead
+this many a year,” would the mother say to her little boy. “And did you
+really see him at the province-house?”—“Oh yes, dear mother—yes!” the
+half-dreaming child would answer. “But when old Esther had done
+speaking about him, he faded away out of his chair.” Thus, without
+affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand into the
+chambers of her own desolate heart and made childhood’s fancy discern
+the ghosts that haunted there.
+
+Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating
+her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley appears
+to have grown partially crazed. It was found that she had no right
+sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary war, but held
+a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious on every
+field and destined to be ultimately triumphant. Whenever the town
+rejoiced for a battle won by Washington or Gates or Morgan or Greene,
+the news, in passing through the door of the province-house as through
+the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange tale of
+the prowess of Howe, Clinton or Cornwallis. Sooner or later, it was her
+invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the footstool of
+the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that such was
+already the case. On one occasion she startled the townspeople by a
+brilliant illumination of the province-house with candles at every pane
+of glass and a transparency of the king’s initials and a crown of light
+in the great balcony-window. The figure of the aged woman in the most
+gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades was seen passing from
+casement to casement, until she paused before the balcony and
+flourished a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage actually
+gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal lamp.
+
+“What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther’s joy portend?”
+whispered a spectator. “It is frightful to see her gliding about the
+chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company.”
+
+“It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,” said another.
+
+“Pshaw! It is no such mystery,” observed an old man, after some brief
+exercise of memory. “Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the king of
+England’s birthday.”
+
+Then the people laughed aloud, and would have thrown mud against the
+blazing transparency of the king’s crown and initials, only that they
+pitied the poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck
+and ruin of the system to which she appertained.
+
+Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound
+upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward and
+countryward, watching for a British fleet or for the march of a grand
+procession with the king’s banner floating over it. The passengers in
+the street below would discern her anxious visage and send up a shout:
+“When the golden Indian on the province-house shall shoot his arrow,
+and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then look for a
+royal governor again!” for this had grown a by-word through the town.
+And at last, after long, long years, old Esther Dudley knew—or
+perchance she only dreamed—that a royal governor was on the eve of
+returning to the province-house to receive the heavy key which Sir
+William Howe had committed to her charge. Now, it was the fact that
+intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther’s version of it was
+current among the townspeople. She set the mansion in the best order
+that her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks and tarnished
+gold, stood long before the blurred mirror to admire her own
+magnificence. As she gazed the gray and withered lady moved her ashen
+lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within the
+mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the household friends of
+memory, and bidding them rejoice with her and come forth to meet the
+governor. And while absorbed in this communion Mistress Dudley heard
+the tramp of many footsteps in the street, and, looking out at the
+window, beheld what she construed as the royal governor’s arrival.
+
+“Oh, happy day! Oh, blessed, blessed hour!” she exclaimed. “Let me but
+bid him welcome within the portal, and my task in the province-house
+and on earth is done.” Then, with tottering feet which age and
+tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand
+staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went; so that the
+sound was as if a train of special courtiers were thronging from the
+dim mirror.
+
+And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the wide door should be flung
+open all the pomp and splendor of bygone times would pace majestically
+into the province-house and the gilded tapestry of the past would be
+brightened by the sunshine of the present. She turned the key, withdrew
+it from the lock, unclosed the door and stepped across the threshold.
+Advancing up the court-yard appeared a person of most dignified mien,
+with tokens, as Esther interpreted them, of gentle blood, high rank and
+long-accustomed authority even in his walk and every gesture. He was
+richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe, which, however, did not lessen
+the stateliness of his gait. Around and behind him were people in plain
+civic dresses and two or three war-worn veterans—evidently officers of
+rank—arrayed in a uniform of blue and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in
+the belief that had fastened its roots about her heart, beheld only the
+principal personage, and never doubted that this was the
+long-looked-for governor to whom she was to surrender up her charge. As
+he approached she involuntarily sank down on her knees and tremblingly
+held forth the heavy key.
+
+“Receive my trust! Take it quickly,” cried she, “for methinks Death is
+striving to snatch away my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank Heaven
+for this blessed hour! God save King George!”
+
+“That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment,”
+replied the unknown guest of the province-house, and, courteously
+removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. “Yet, in
+reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that
+any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge
+his sceptre, God save King George!”
+
+Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the key,
+gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger, and dimly and
+doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes
+half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry
+of the province, but the ban of the king had fallen upon him. How,
+then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from mercy, the
+monarch’s most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant had
+stood triumphantly against a kingdom’s strength, and his foot now trod
+upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps of the province-house,
+the people’s chosen governor of Massachusetts.
+
+“Wretch, wretch that I am!” muttered the old woman, with such a
+heartbroken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger’s eyes.
+“Have I bidden a traitor welcome?—Come, Death! come quickly!”
+
+“Alas, venerable lady!” said Governor Hancock, lending her his support
+with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen,
+“your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you.
+You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless—the
+principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting which another
+generation has flung aside—and you are a symbol of the past. And I and
+these around me—we represent a new race of men, living no longer in the
+past, scarcely in the present, but projecting our lives forward into
+the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it
+is our faith and principle to press onward—onward.—Yet,” continued he,
+turning to his attendants, “let us reverence for the last time the
+stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering past.”
+
+While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the
+helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his
+arm, but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient
+woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of the
+province-house fell from her grasp and clanked against the stone.
+
+“I have been faithful unto death,” murmured she. “God save the king!”
+
+“She hath done her office,” said Hancock, solemnly. “We will follow her
+reverently to the tomb of her ancestors, and then, my fellow-citizens,
+onward—onward. We are no longer children of the past.”
+
+As the old loyalist concluded his narrative the enthusiasm which had
+been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his
+wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul
+were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw
+out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward,
+compelling our eyes to grope for one another’s features by the dim glow
+of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying
+gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the
+province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight.
+And now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on
+the breeze, knolling the hourly knell of the past, crying out far and
+wide through the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as we sat in
+the dusky chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In that same
+mansion—in that very chamber—what a volume of history had been told off
+into hours by the same voice that was now trembling in the air! Many a
+governor had heard those midnight accents and longed to exchange his
+stately cares for slumber. And, as for mine host and Mr. Bela Tiffany
+and the old loyalist and me, we had babbled about dreams of the past
+until we almost fancied that the clock was still striking in a bygone
+century. Neither of us would have wondered had a hoop-petticoated
+phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber, walking her rounds
+in the hush of midnight as of yore, and motioned us to quench the
+fading embers of the fire and leave the historic precincts to herself
+and her kindred shades. But, as no such vision was vouchsafed, I
+retired unbidden, and would advise Mr. Tiffany to lay hold of another
+auditor, being resolved not to show my face in the Province House for a
+good while hence—if ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED MIND
+
+
+What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
+recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
+your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of your
+dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at
+them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you
+find yourself for a single instant wide awake in that realm of
+illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghostly
+inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their strangeness
+such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed. The distant
+sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You question with
+yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your waking ear from
+some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream. While
+yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang over the
+slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long
+murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed
+from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the strokes—one, two;
+and there they cease with a booming sound like the gathering of a third
+stroke within the bell.
+
+If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
+would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
+enough to take off the pressure of yesterday’s fatigue, while before
+you, till the sun comes from “Far Cathay” to brighten your window,
+there is almost the space of a summer night—one hour to be spent in
+thought with the mind’s eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and
+two in that strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and
+woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and
+appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty
+air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already
+vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged
+from the future. You have found an intermediate space where the
+business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers and
+becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he thinks
+nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take breath. Oh
+that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without growing
+older!
+
+Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion
+would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably
+awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe that
+the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frost-work, and that
+each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be time
+enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast.
+Seen through the clear portion of the glass where the silvery
+mountain-peaks of the frost-scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous
+object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the
+wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures
+on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty sky and the
+snow-covered roofs and the long vista of the frozen street, all white,
+and the distant water hardened into rock, might make you shiver even
+under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet look at that one
+glorious star! Its beams are distinguishable from all the rest, and
+actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with a radiance of
+deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an outline.
+
+You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the
+while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar
+atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You
+speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed like an
+oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and
+drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such as you now feel
+again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think
+how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins through
+the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy that they
+neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drifting over their little
+hillocks and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb. That
+gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude and throw its complexion
+over your wakeful hour.
+
+In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
+lights, the music and revelry, above may cause us to forget their
+existence and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But
+sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung
+wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive
+sensibility, but no active strength—when the imagination is a mirror
+imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or
+controlling them—then pray that your griefs may slumber and the
+brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late. A funeral
+train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling assume
+bodily shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye.
+There is your earliest sorrow, a pale young mourner wearing a sister’s
+likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in
+her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next
+appears a shade of ruined loveliness with dust among her golden hair
+and her bright garments all faded and defaced, stealing from your
+glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach: she was your fondest
+hope, but a delusive one; so call her Disappointment now. A sterner
+form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of iron
+authority; there is no name for him unless it be Fatality—an emblem of
+the evil influence that rules your fortunes, a demon to whom you
+subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and were bound
+his slave for ever by once obeying him. See those fiendish lineaments
+graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that
+living eye, the pointed finger touching the sore place in your heart!
+Do you remember any act of enormous folly at which you would blush even
+in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your shame.
+
+Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable,
+a fiercer tribe do not surround him—the devils of a guilty heart that
+holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the
+features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in woman’s
+garments with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down by
+your side? What if he should stand at your bed’s foot in the likeness
+of a corpse with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient without
+such guilt is this nightmare of the soul, this heavy, heavy sinking of
+the spirits, this wintry gloom about the heart, this indistinct horror
+of the mind blending itself with the darkness of the chamber.
+
+By a desperate effort you start upright, breaking from a sort of
+conscious sleep and gazing wildly round the bed, as if the fiends were
+anywhere but in your haunted mind. At the same moment the slumbering
+embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates the
+whole outer room and flickers through the door of the bedchamber, but
+cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches for whatever may
+remind you of the living world. With eager minuteness you take note of
+the table near the fireplace, the book with an ivory knife between its
+leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat and the fallen glove. Soon the
+flame vanishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though its image
+remains an instant in your mind’s eye when darkness has swallowed the
+reality. Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before,
+but not the same gloom within your breast.
+
+As your head falls back upon the pillow you think—in a whisper be it
+spoken—how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and fall
+of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a tenderer
+bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its peacefulness to
+your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were involving you in her
+dream. Her influence is over you, though she have no existence but in
+that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery spot on the borders of
+sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise before you in pictures,
+all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a pervading gladsomeness and
+beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons that glitter in the sun is
+succeeded by the merriment of children round the door of a schoolhouse
+beneath the glimmering shadow of old trees at the corner of a rustic
+lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a summer shower, and wander among
+the sunny trees of an autumnal wood, and look upward at the brightest
+of all rainbows overarching the unbroken sheet of snow on the American
+side of Niagara. Your mind struggles pleasantly between the dancing
+radiance round the hearth of a young man and his recent bride and the
+twittering flight of birds in spring about their new-made nest. You
+feel the merry bounding of a ship before the breeze, and watch the
+tuneful feet of rosy girls as they twine their last and merriest dance
+in a splendid ball-room, and find yourself in the brilliant circle of a
+crowded theatre as the curtain falls over a light and airy scene.
+
+With an involuntary start you seize hold on consciousness, and prove
+yourself but half awake by running a doubtful parallel between human
+life and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from
+mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly
+control, and are borne onward to another mystery. Now comes the peal of
+the distant clock with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge
+farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary
+death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen among
+the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without
+wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change—so
+undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to
+its eternal home.
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE UNCLE
+
+AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT
+
+Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
+comfortable, especially here where the old man sits in his old
+arm-chair; but on Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up
+the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss
+on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relicts of the Mermaid’s
+knee-timbers—the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and
+clearer, be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in
+the village and the light of our household mirth flash far across the
+bay to Nahant.
+
+And now come, Susan; come, my children. Draw your chairs round me, all
+of you. There is a dimness over your figures. You sit quivering
+indistinctly with each motion of the blaze, which eddies about you like
+a flood; so that you all have the look of visions or people that dwell
+only in the firelight, and will vanish from existence as completely as
+your own shadows when the flame shall sink among the embers.
+
+Hark! let me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a
+mile inland on a night like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but
+only an uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach, though
+by the almanac it is high tide at eight o’clock, and the billows must
+now be dashing within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man’s ears
+are failing him, and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind, else you
+would not all be so shadowy in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire.
+
+How strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present! To
+judge by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in
+another room. Yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old chest
+of drawers, nor Susan’s profile and mine in that gilt frame—nothing, in
+short, except this same fire, which glimmered on books, papers and a
+picture, and half discovered my solitary figure in a looking-glass. But
+it was paler than my rugged old self, and younger, too, by almost half
+a century.
+
+Speak to me, Susan; speak, my beloved ones; for the scene is glimmering
+on my sight again, and as it brightens you fade away. Oh, I should be
+loth to lose my treasure of past happiness and become once more what I
+was then—a hermit in the depths of my own mind, sometimes yawning over
+drowsy volumes and anon a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read;
+a man who had wandered out of the real world and got into its shadow,
+where his troubles, joys and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff
+that he hardly knew whether he lived or only dreamed of living. Thank
+Heaven I am an old man now and have done with all such vanities!
+
+Still this dimness of mine eyes!—Come nearer, Susan, and stand before
+the fullest blaze of the hearth. Now I behold you illuminated from head
+to foot, in your clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of gray
+hair across your forehead and a quiet smile about your mouth, while the
+eyes alone are concealed by the red gleam of the fire upon your
+spectacles. There! you made me tremble again. When the flame quivered,
+my sweet Susan, you quivered with it and grew indistinct, as if melting
+into the warm light, that my last glimpse of you might be as visionary
+as the first was, full many a year since. Do you remember it? You stood
+on the little bridge over the brook that runs across King’s Beach into
+the sea. It was twilight, the waves rolling in, the wind sweeping by,
+the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver moon brightening
+above the hill; and on the bridge were you, fluttering in the breeze
+like a sea-bird that might skim away at your pleasure. You seemed a
+daughter of the viewless wind, a creature of the ocean-foam and the
+crimson light, whose merry life was spent in dancing on the crests of
+the billows that threw up their spray to support your footsteps. As I
+drew nearer I fancied you akin to the race of mermaids, and thought how
+pleasant it would be to dwell with you among the quiet coves in the
+shadow of the cliffs, and to roam along secluded beaches of the purest
+sand, and, when our Northern shores grew bleak, to haunt the islands,
+green and lonely, far amid summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, after
+all this nonsense, to find you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly
+perplexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats.
+Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days,
+dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic
+hues before I could see her as she really was.
+
+Now, Susan, for a sober picture of our village. It was a small
+collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea
+with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm, or
+to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber which had
+been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner. There was just space
+for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a
+precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a
+waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The
+village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all were
+rude. Here stood a little old hovel, built, perhaps, of driftwood,
+there a row of boat-houses, and beyond them a two-story dwelling of
+dark and weatherbeaten aspect, the whole intermixed with one or two
+snug cottages painted white, a sufficiency of pig-styes and a
+shoemaker’s shop. Two grocery stores stood opposite each other in the
+centre of the village. These were the places of resort at their idle
+hours of a hardy throng of fishermen in red baize shirts, oilcloth
+trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg—true
+seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth.
+The wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt
+water to sun themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to see their
+lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish such as cling to
+rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows. When
+their fleet of boats was weather-bound, the butchers raised their
+price, and the spit was busier than the frying-pan; for this was a
+place of fish, and known as such to all the country round about. The
+very air was fishy, being perfumed with dead sculpins, hard-heads and
+dogfish strewn plentifully on the beach.—You see, children, the village
+is but little changed since your mother and I were young.
+
+How like a dream it was when I bent over a pool of water one pleasant
+morning and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me
+a fisherman! There was the tarpaulin, the baize shirt, the oilcloth
+trousers and seven-league boots, and there my own features, but so
+reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes that methought I had another
+face, and on other shoulders too. The seagulls and the loons and I had
+now all one trade: we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey
+beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds. Always when
+the east grew purple I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff,
+and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or perhaps
+beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge—a spot of
+peril to ships unpiloted—and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and
+tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of
+Scituate. Ere nightfall I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach,
+laden with red rock-cod or the white-bellied ones of deep water,
+haddock bearing the black marks of St. Peter’s fingers near the gills,
+the long-bearded hake whose liver holds oil enough for a midnight lamp,
+and now and then a mighty halibut with a back broad as my boat. In the
+autumn I toled and caught those lovely fish the mackerel. When the wind
+was high, when the whale-boats anchored off the Point nodded their
+slender masts at each other and the dories pitched and tossed in the
+surf, when Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off and the spray
+broke a hundred feet in the air round the distant base of Egg Rock,
+when the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the
+street of our village,—then I made a holiday on shore.
+
+Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett’s store, attentive to
+the yarns of Uncle Parker—uncle to the whole village by right of
+seniority, but of Southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His
+figure is before me now enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel—a lean old man
+of great height, but bent with years and twisted into an uncouth shape
+by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weatherworn, as if every
+gale for the better part of a century had caught him somewhere on the
+sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest—a shipmate of the Flying
+Dutchman. After innumerable voyages aboard men-of-war and merchantmen,
+fishing-schooners and chebacco-boats, the old salt had become master of
+a hand-cart, which he daily trundled about the vicinity, and sometimes
+blew his fish-horn through the streets of Salem. One of Uncle Parker’s
+eyes had been blown out with gunpowder, and the other did but glimmer
+in its socket. Turning it upward as he spoke, it was his delight to
+tell of cruises against the French and battles with his own shipmates,
+when he and an antagonist used to be seated astride of a sailor’s
+chest, each fastened down by a spike-nail through his trousers, and
+there to fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor
+of the hagden, a greasy and goose-like fowl which the sailors catch
+with hook and line on the Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an
+interminable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened
+himself amid polar snows with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of
+a West India schooner. And wrathfully did he shake his fist as he
+related how a party of Cape Cod men had robbed him and his companions
+of their lawful spoils and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica,
+leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of
+that wicked brotherhood who are said to tie lanterns to horses’ tails
+to mislead the mariner along the dangerous shores of the Cape.
+
+Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen with that old salt in the
+midst. One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an
+oil-barrel, a third lolls at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines,
+and another has planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of
+salt which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They are a
+likely set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the Pacific,
+and most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to Newfoundland; a
+few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and one or two have
+always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker used to say, they
+have all been christened in salt water and know more than men ever
+learn in the bushes. A curious figure, by way of contrast, is a
+fish-dealer from far up-country listening with eyes wide open to
+narratives that might startle Sinbad the Sailor.—Be it well with you,
+my brethren! Ye are all gone—some to your graves ashore and others to
+the depths of ocean—but my faith is strong that ye are happy; for
+whenever I behold your forms, whether in dream or vision, each departed
+friend is puffing his long nine, and a mug of the right blackstrap goes
+round from lip to lip.
+
+But where was the mermaid in those delightful times? At a certain
+window near the centre of the village appeared a pretty display of
+gingerbread men and horses, picture-books and ballads, small
+fish-hooks, pins, needles, sugarplums and brass thimbles—articles on
+which the young fishermen used to expend their money from pure
+gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the counter! A slender
+maiden, though the child of rugged parents, she had the slimmest of all
+waists, brown hair curling on her neck, and a complexion rather pale
+except when the sea-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became
+beauty-spots beneath her eyelids.—How was it, Susan, that you talked
+and acted so carelessly, yet always for the best, doing whatever was
+right in your own eyes, and never once doing wrong in mine, nor shocked
+a taste that had been morbidly sensitive till now? And whence had you
+that happiest gift of brightening every topic with an unsought gayety,
+quiet but irresistible, so that even gloomy spirits felt your sunshine
+and did not shrink from it? Nature wrought the charm. She made you a
+frank, simple, kind-hearted, sensible and mirthful girl. Obeying
+Nature, you did free things without indelicacy, displayed a maiden’s
+thoughts to every eye, and proved yourself as innocent as naked Eve.—It
+was beautiful to observe how her simple and happy nature mingled itself
+with mine. She kindled a domestic fire within my heart and took up her
+dwelling there, even in that chill and lonesome cavern hung round with
+glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth of feeling, while the
+influence of my mind made her contemplative. I taught her to love the
+moonlight hour, when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth as a
+great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow, while beyond Nahant the
+wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness which grew faint
+afar off without becoming gloomier. I held her hand and pointed to the
+long surf-wave as it rolled calmly on the beach in an unbroken line of
+silver; we were silent together till its deep and peaceful murmur had
+swept by us. When the Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the
+cliffs, I led the mermaid thither and told her that those huge gray,
+shattered rocks, and her native sea that raged for ever like a storm
+against them, and her own slender beauty in so stern a scene, were all
+combined into a strain of poetry. But on the Sabbath-eve, when her
+mother had gone early to bed and her gentle sister had smiled and left
+us, as we sat alone by the quiet hearth with household things around,
+it was her turn to make me feel that here was a deeper poetry, and that
+this was the dearest hour of all. Thus went on our wooing, till I had
+shot wild-fowl enough to feather our bridal-bed, and the daughter of
+the sea was mine.
+
+I built a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a gateway in the form
+of a Gothic arch by setting up a whale’s jaw-bones. We bought a heifer
+with her first calf, and had a little garden on the hillside to supply
+us with potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor, small and
+neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame, and with
+shells and pretty pebbles on the mantelpiece, selected from the sea’s
+treasury of such things on Nahant Beach. On the desk, beneath the
+looking-glass, lay the Bible, which I had begun to read aloud at the
+book of Genesis, and the singing-book that Susan used for her evening
+psalm. Except the almanac, we had no other literature. All that I heard
+of books was when an Indian history or tale of shipwreck was sold by a
+pedler or wandering subscription-man to some one in the village, and
+read through its owner’s nose to a slumbrous auditory.
+
+Like my brother-fishermen, I grew into the belief that all human
+erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and
+solemn phiz as he passed to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of sand
+might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England. In
+truth, I dreaded him.—When our children were old enough to claim his
+care, you remember, Susan, how I frowned, though you were pleased at
+this learned man’s encomiums on their proficiency. I feared to trust
+them even with the alphabet: it was the key to a fatal treasure. But I
+loved to lead them by their little hands along the beach and point to
+nature in the vast and the minute—the sky, the sea, the green earth,
+the pebbles and the shells. Then did I discourse of the mighty works
+and coextensive goodness of the Deity with the simple wisdom of a man
+whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep and his heart by
+the strong and pure affections of his evening home. Sometimes my voice
+lost itself in a tremulous depth, for I felt his eye upon me as I
+spoke. Once, while my wife and all of us were gazing at ourselves in
+the mirror left by the tide in a hollow of the sand, I pointed to the
+pictured heaven below and bade her observe how religion was strewn
+everywhere in our path, since even a casual pool of water recalled the
+idea of that home whither we were travelling to rest for ever with our
+children. Suddenly your image, Susan, and all the little faces made up
+of yours and mine, seemed to fade away and vanish around me, leaving a
+pale visage like my own of former days within the frame of a large
+looking-glass. Strange illusion!
+
+My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with the present and
+absorb the future, till the whole lies before me at a glance. My
+manhood has long been waning with a stanch decay; my earlier
+contemporaries, after lives of unbroken health, are all at rest without
+having known the weariness of later age; and now with a wrinkled
+forehead and thin white hair as badges of my dignity I have become the
+patriarch—the uncle—of the village. I love that name: it widens the
+circle of my sympathies; it joins all the youthful to my household in
+the kindred of affection.
+
+Like Uncle Parker, whose rheumatic bones were dashed against Egg Rock
+full forty years ago, I am a spinner of long yarns. Seated on the
+gunnel of a dory or on the sunny side of a boat-house, where the warmth
+is grateful to my limbs, or by my own hearth when a friend or two are
+there, I overflow with talk, and yet am never tedious. With a broken
+voice I give utterance to much wisdom. Such, Heaven be praised! is the
+vigor of my faculties that many a forgotten usage, and traditions
+ancient in my youth, and early adventures of myself or others hitherto
+effaced by things more recent, acquire new distinctness in my memory. I
+remember the happy days when the haddock were more numerous on all the
+fishing-grounds than sculpins in the surf—when the deep-water cod swam
+close in-shore, and the dogfish, with his poisonous horn, had not
+learnt to take the hook. I can number every equinoctial storm in which
+the sea has overwhelmed the street, flooded the cellars of the village
+and hissed upon our kitchen hearth. I give the history of the great
+whale that was landed on Whale Beach, and whose jaws, being now my
+gateway, will last for ages after my coffin shall have passed beneath
+them. Thence it is an easy digression to the halibut—scarcely smaller
+than the whale—which ran out six codlines and hauled my dory to the
+mouth of Boston harbor before I could touch him with the gaff.
+
+If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation, I tell how a
+friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark, and the
+sad, true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage who had been nine
+days missing, when his drowned body floated into the very pathway on
+Marble-head Neck that had often led him to the dwelling of his bride,
+as if the dripping corpse would have come where the mourner was. With
+such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil his vows! Another
+favorite story is of a crazy maiden who conversed with angels and had
+the gift of prophecy, and whom all the village loved and pitied, though
+she went from door to door accusing us of sin, exhorting to repentance
+and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake. If the young
+men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of
+pilots who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste, and
+could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount
+Desert guided only by the rote of the shore—the peculiar sound of the
+surf on each island, beach and line of rocks along the coast. Thus do I
+talk, and all my auditors grow wise while they deem it pastime.
+
+I recollect no happier portion of my life than this my calm old age. It
+is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley where late in the
+autumn the grass is greener than in August, and intermixed with golden
+dandelions that had not been seen till now since the first warmth of
+the year. But with me the verdure and the flowers are not frost-bitten
+in the midst of winter. A playfulness has revisited my mind—a sympathy
+with the young and gay, an unpainful interest in the business of
+others, a light and wandering curiosity—arising, perhaps, from the
+sense that my toil on earth is ended and the brief hour till bedtime
+may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied that there is a depth of
+feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one
+who has lived long and is soon to die.
+
+Show me anything that would make an infant smile, and you shall behold
+a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a
+pleasant hour in the sun watching the sports of the village children on
+the edge of the surf. Now they chase the retreating wave far down over
+the wet sand; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet; now it
+comes onward with threatening front, and roars after the laughing crew
+as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not an old man be merry
+too, when the great sea is at play with those little children? I
+delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party of young men
+and girls strolling along the beach after an early supper at the Point.
+Here, with handkerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap of eel-grass
+entangled in which is a dead skate so oddly accoutred with two legs and
+a long tail that they mistake him for a drowned animal. A few steps
+farther the ladies scream, and the gentlemen make ready to protect them
+against a young shark of the dogfish kind rolling with a lifelike
+motion in the tide that has thrown him up. Next they are smit with
+wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of live lobsters packed in
+rock-weed for the country-market. And when they reach the fleet of
+dories just hauled ashore after the day’s fishing, how do I laugh in my
+sleeve, and sometimes roar outright, at the simplicity of these young
+folks and the sly humor of the fishermen! In winter, when our village
+is thrown into a bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country
+dealers bargaining for frozen fish to be transported hundreds of miles
+and eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator
+in the throng. For I launch my boat no more.
+
+When the shore was solitary, I have found a pleasure that seemed even
+to exalt my mind in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls as
+they wheeled and hovered about each other with hoarse screams, one
+moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft till
+their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the
+summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of
+activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There
+I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from
+afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern steamboat;
+there, too, is the sun, going down, but not in gloom, and there the
+illimitable ocean mingling with the sky, to remind me of eternity.
+
+But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk
+that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing
+fireside. And never, even on the first Thanksgiving-night, when Susan
+and I sat alone with our hopes, nor the second, when a stranger had
+been sent to gladden us and be the visible image of our affection, did
+I feel such joy as now. All that belongs to me are here: Death has
+taken none, nor Disease kept them away, nor Strife divided them from
+their parents or each other; with neither poverty nor riches to disturb
+them, nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have kept New
+England’s festival round the patriarch’s board. For I am a patriarch.
+Here I sit among my descendants, in my old arm-chair and immemorial
+corner, while the firelight throws an appropriate glory round my
+venerable frame.—Susan! My children! Something whispers me that this
+happiest hour must be the final one, and that nothing remains but to
+bless you all and depart with a treasure of recollected joys to heaven.
+Will you meet me there? Alas! your figures grow indistinct, fading into
+pictures on the air, and now to fainter outlines, while the fire is
+glimmering on the walls of a familiar room, and shows the book that I
+flung down and the sheet that I left half written some fifty years ago.
+I lift my eyes to the looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless
+those be the mermaid’s features retiring into the depths of the mirror
+with a tender and melancholy smile.
+
+Ah! One feels a chilliness—not bodily, but about the heart—and,
+moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes.
+I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and
+terror after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or distant
+people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which had
+changed it to a palace.
+
+And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can
+create so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from
+youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real?
+Oh, the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the stern
+reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the wintry
+blast. Be this the moral, then: In chaste and warm affections, humble
+wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is health for the mind
+and quiet for the heart, the prospect of a happy life and the fairest
+hope of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST
+
+
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled
+it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the
+pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
+down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
+room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
+sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the image
+of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat knitting
+in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had
+found the “herb heart’s-ease” in the bleakest spot of all New England.
+This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the
+wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in the winter,
+giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on
+the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one,
+for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that the stones would
+often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
+
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all
+with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
+before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and
+lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
+them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
+were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
+traveller whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
+heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went moaning
+away from the door.
+
+Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
+with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery
+through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
+throbbing between Maine on one side and the Green Mountains and the
+shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew up
+before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but his
+staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
+might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of
+the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
+teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night, and,
+if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a
+kiss from the mountain-maid at parting. It was one of those primitive
+taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets
+with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard,
+therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family
+rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if about to welcome some one
+who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.
+
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
+melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild
+and bleak road at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he
+saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring
+forward to meet them all, from the old woman who wiped a chair with her
+apron to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and
+smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the
+eldest daughter.
+
+“Ah! this fire is the right thing,” cried he, “especially when there is
+such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed, for the Notch is
+just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
+blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.”
+
+“Then you are going toward Vermont?” said the master of the house as he
+helped to take a light knapsack off the young man’s shoulders.
+
+“Yes, to Burlington, and far enough beyond,” replied he. “I meant to
+have been at Ethan Crawford’s to-night, but a pedestrian lingers along
+such a road as this. It is no matter; for when I saw this good fire and
+all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for
+me and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you and make
+myself at home.”
+
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
+something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the
+steep side of the mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking
+such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice.
+The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their
+guest held his by instinct.
+
+“The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget
+him,” said the landlord, recovering himself. “He sometimes nods his
+head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree
+together pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of
+refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest.”
+
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear’s
+meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on a
+footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as
+freely together as if he belonged to their mountain-brood. He was of a
+proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and great,
+but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door and be like
+a brother or a son at the poor man’s fireside. In the household of the
+Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading
+intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth which they
+had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain-peaks and
+chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous
+abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been
+a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept
+himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions.
+The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness
+of unity among themselves and separation from the world at large which
+in every domestic circle should still keep a holy place where no
+stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled
+the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple
+mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free
+confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a
+common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+
+The secret of the young man’s character was a high and abstracted
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
+to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to
+hope, and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty that,
+obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,
+though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity
+should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would
+trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories
+faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his
+tomb with none to recognize him.
+
+“As yet,” cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
+with enthusiasm—“as yet I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the
+earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you—that a nameless
+youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his
+heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise,
+and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, ‘Who was he? Whither did
+the wanderer go?’ But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny.
+Then let Death come: I shall have built my monument.”
+
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid
+abstracted reverie which enabled the family to understand this young
+man’s sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
+sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had
+been betrayed.
+
+“You laugh at me,” said he, taking the eldest daughter’s hand and
+laughing himself. “You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to
+freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people
+might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be a
+noble pedestal for a man’s statue.”
+
+“It is better to sit here by this fire,” answered the girl, blushing,
+“and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.”
+
+“I suppose,” said her father, after a fit of musing, “there is
+something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
+turned that way, I might have felt just the same.—It is strange, wife,
+how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain
+never to come to pass.”
+
+“Perhaps they may,” observed the wife. “Is the man thinking what he
+will do when he is a widower?”
+
+“No, no!” cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. “When
+I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine too. But I was wishing
+we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton, or some other
+township round the White Mountains, but not where they could tumble on
+our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called
+squire and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a plain, honest
+man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown
+quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I
+might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around me. A
+slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one, with just my
+name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know
+that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.”
+
+“There, now!” exclaimed the stranger; “it is our nature to desire a
+monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+memory in the universal heart of man.”
+
+“We’re in a strange way to-night,” said the wife, with tears in her
+eyes. “They say it’s a sign of something when folks’ minds go
+a-wandering so. Hark to the children!”
+
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
+another room, but with an open door between; so that they could be
+heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have
+caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each
+other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when
+they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of
+addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I wish, mother,” cried he: “I want you and father
+and grandma’m, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away
+and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume.”
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the child’s notion of leaving a warm bed
+and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the
+Flume—a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch.
+
+The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along the road and
+stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
+men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song
+which resounded in broken notes between the cliffs, while the singers
+hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
+night.
+
+“Father,” said the girl, “they are calling you by name.”
+
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
+unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
+patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door, and, the
+lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
+singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
+from the heart of the mountain.
+
+“There, mother!” cried the boy, again; “they’d have given us a ride to
+the Flume.”
+
+Again they laughed at the child’s pertinacious fancy for a
+night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the
+daughter’s spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath
+that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little
+struggle to repress it. Then, starting and blushing, she looked quickly
+around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The
+stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
+
+“Nothing,” answered she, with a downcast smile; “only I felt lonesome
+just then.”
+
+“Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people’s
+hearts,” said he, half seriously. “Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
+For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and
+complains of lonesomeness at her mother’s side. Shall I put these
+feelings into words?”
+
+“They would not be a girl’s feelings any longer if they could be put
+into words,” replied the mountain-nymph, laughing, but avoiding his
+eye.
+
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
+hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be
+matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his, and the
+proud, contemplative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by
+simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
+the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings, of a
+maiden’s nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
+sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain
+of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their dwelling
+among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a sacred
+region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were passing.
+To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on their fire
+till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once
+again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about
+them fondly and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the
+children peeping from their bed apart, and here the father’s frame of
+strength, the mother’s subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth,
+the budding girl and the good old grandam, still knitting in the
+warmest place.
+
+The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy was
+the next to speak.
+
+“Old folks have their notions,” said she, “as well as young ones.
+You’ve been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one
+thing and another till you’ve set my mind a-wandering too. Now, what
+should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before
+she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I
+tell you.”
+
+“What is it, mother?” cried the husband and wife at once.
+
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer
+round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes
+some years before—a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and
+everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding-day. But
+this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used
+to be said in her younger days that if anything were amiss with a
+corpse—if only the ruff were not smooth or the cap did not set
+right—the corpse, in the coffin and beneath the clods, would strive to
+put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her
+nervous.
+
+“Don’t talk so, grandmother,” said the girl, shuddering.
+
+“Now,” continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
+strangely at her own folly, “I want one of you, my children, when your
+mother is dressed and in the coffin,—I want one of you to hold a
+looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
+myself and see whether all’s right?”
+
+“Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,” murmured the
+stranger-youth. “I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking
+and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
+ocean, that wide and nameless sepulchre?”
+
+For a moment the old woman’s ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
+of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
+of a blast, had grown broad, deep and terrible before the fated group
+were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
+foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
+were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
+glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without utterance or
+power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their
+lips:
+
+“The slide! The slide!”
+
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
+horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and
+sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in contemplation
+of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
+quitted their security and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
+Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract of ruin. Just
+before it reached the house the stream broke into two branches,
+shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity,
+blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its dreadful course.
+Long ere the thunder of that great slide had ceased to roar among the
+mountains the mortal agony had been endured and the victims were at
+peace. Their bodies were never found.
+
+The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
+chimney up the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
+the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
+had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would
+shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
+left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made
+to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has
+been told far and wide, and will for ever be a legend of these
+mountains. Poets have sung their fate.
+
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
+been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
+catastrophe of all its inmates; others denied that there were
+sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth
+with his dream of earthly immortality! His name and person utterly
+unknown, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be
+solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt,—whose was the
+agony of that death-moment?
+
+
+
+
+THE SISTER-YEARS
+
+
+Last night, between eleven and twelve o’clock, when the Old Year was
+leaving her final footprints on the borders of Time’s empire, she found
+herself in possession of a few spare moments, and sat down—of all
+places in the world—on the steps of our new city-hall. The wintry
+moonlight showed that she looked weary of body and sad of heart, like
+many another wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been exposed to
+much foul weather and rough usage, were in very ill condition, and, as
+the hurry of her journey had never before allowed her to take an
+instant’s rest, her shoes were so worn as to be scarcely worth the
+mending. But after trudging only a little distance farther this poor
+Old Year was destined to enjoy a long, long sleep. I forgot to mention
+that when she seated herself on the steps she deposited by her side a
+very capacious bandbox in which, as is the custom among travellers of
+her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this
+luggage, there was a folio book under her arm very much resembling the
+annual volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees and
+resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary,
+bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh and appeared to be
+taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence.
+
+While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to summon her to the
+innumerable sisterhood of departed years, there came a young maiden
+treading lightsomely on tip-toe along the street from the direction of
+the railroad dépôt. She was evidently a stranger, and perhaps had come
+to town by the evening train of cars. There was a smiling cheerfulness
+in this fair maiden’s face which bespoke her fully confident of a kind
+reception from the multitude of people with whom she was soon to form
+acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy for the season, and was
+bedizened with fluttering ribbons and other vanities which were likely
+soon to be rent away by the fierce storms or to fade in the hot
+sunshine amid which she was to pursue her changeful course. But still
+she was a wonderfully pleasant-looking figure, and had so much promise
+and such an indescribable hopefulness in her aspect that hardly anybody
+could meet her without anticipating some very desirable thing—the
+consummation of some long-sought good—from her kind offices. A few
+dismal characters there may be here and there about the world who have
+so often been trifled with by young maidens as promising as she that
+they have now ceased to pin any faith upon the skirts of the New Year.
+But, for my own part, I have great faith in her, and, should I live to
+see fifty more such, still from each of those successive sisters I
+shall reckon upon receiving something that will be worth living for.
+
+The New Year—for this young maiden was no less a personage—carried all
+her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight, which
+hung upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with great
+affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the city-hall,
+waiting for the signal to begin her rambles through the world. The two
+were own sisters, being both granddaughters of Time, and, though one
+looked so much older than the other, it was rather owing to hardships
+and trouble than to age, since there was but a twelvemonth’s difference
+between them.
+
+“Well, my dear sister,” said the New Year, after the first salutations,
+“you look almost tired to death. What have you been about during your
+sojourn in this part of infinite space?”
+
+“Oh, I have it all recorded here in my book of chronicles,” answered
+the Old Year, in a heavy tone. “There is nothing that would amuse you,
+and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your
+own personal experience. It is but tiresome reading.”
+
+Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio and glanced at
+them by the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of
+interest in her own biography, although its incidents were remembered
+without pleasure. The volume, though she termed it her book of
+chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the Salem _Gazette_
+for 1838; in the accuracy of which journal this sagacious Old Year had
+so much confidence that she deemed it needless to record her history
+with her own pen.
+
+“What have you been doing in the political way?” asked the New Year.
+
+“Why, my course here in the United States,” said the Old Year—“though
+perhaps I ought to blush at the confession—my political course, I must
+acknowledge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes inclining toward
+the Whigs, then causing the administration party to shout for triumph,
+and now again uplifting what seemed the almost prostrate banner of the
+opposition; so that historians will hardly know what to make of me in
+this respect. But the Loco-Focos—”
+
+“I do not like these party nicknames,” interrupted her sister, who
+seemed remarkably touchy about some points. “Perhaps we shall part in
+better humor if we avoid any political discussion.”
+
+“With all my heart,” replied the Old Year, who had already been
+tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind. “I care not if the
+name of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about banks and
+the sub-treasury, abolition, Texas, the Florida war, and a million of
+other topics which you will learn soon enough for your own comfort,—I
+care not, I say, if no whisper of these matters ever reaches my ears
+again. Yet they have occupied so large a share of my attention that I
+scarcely know what else to tell you. There has, indeed been a curious
+sort of war on the Canada border, where blood has streamed in the names
+of liberty and patriotism; but it must remain for some future, perhaps
+far-distant, year to tell whether or no those holy names have been
+rightfully invoked. Nothing so much depresses me in my view of mortal
+affairs as to see high energies wasted and human life and happiness
+thrown away for ends that appear oftentimes unwise, and still oftener
+remain unaccomplished. But the wisest people and the best keep a
+steadfast faith that the progress of mankind is onward and upward, and
+that the toil and anguish of the path serve to wear away the
+imperfections of the immortal pilgrim, and will be felt no more when
+they have done their office.”
+
+“Perhaps,” cried the hopeful New Year—“perhaps I shall see that happy
+day.”
+
+“I doubt whether it be so close at hand,” answered the Old Year,
+gravely smiling. “You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed
+consummation, and will turn for amusement—as has frequently been my own
+practice—to the affairs of some sober little city like this of Salem.
+Here we sit on the steps of the new city-hall which has been completed
+under my administration, and it would make you laugh to see how the
+game of politics of which the Capitol at Washington is the great
+chess-board is here played in miniature. Burning Ambition finds its
+fuel here; here patriotism speaks boldly in the people’s behalf and
+virtuous economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a
+lamplighter; here the aldermen range their senatorial dignity around
+the mayor’s chair of state and the common council feel that they have
+liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and
+policy, man’s tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his
+individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied
+almost as well here as on the theatre of nations, and with this great
+advantage—that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian scope
+still makes the beholder smile.”
+
+“Have you done much for the improvement of the city?” asked the New
+Year. “Judging from what little I have seen, it appears to be ancient
+and time-worn.”
+
+“I have opened the railroad,” said the elder Year, “and half a dozen
+times a day you will hear the bell which once summoned the monks of a
+Spanish convent to their devotions announcing the arrival or departure
+of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I
+first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a
+time. New faces throng in Essex street. Railroad-hacks and omnibuses
+rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of
+oyster-shops and other establishments for the accommodation of a
+transitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change awaits the
+venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be
+carried off by the free circulation of society. A peculiarity of
+character of which the inhabitants themselves are hardly sensible will
+be rubbed down and worn away by the attrition of foreign substances.
+Much of the result will be good; there will likewise be a few things
+not so good. Whether for better or worse, there will be a probable
+diminution of the moral influence of wealth, and the sway of an
+aristocratic class which from an era far beyond my memory has held
+firmer dominion here than in any other New England town.”
+
+The Old Year, having talked away nearly all of her little remaining
+breath, now closed her book of chronicles, and was about to take her
+departure, but her sister detained her a while longer by inquiring the
+contents of the huge bandbox which she was so painfully lugging along
+with her.
+
+“These are merely a few trifles,” replied the Old Year, “which I have
+picked up in my rambles and am going to deposit in the receptacle of
+things past and forgotten. We sisterhood of years never carry anything
+really valuable out of the world with us. Here are patterns of most of
+the fashions which I brought into vogue, and which have already lived
+out their allotted term; you will supply their place with others
+equally ephemeral. Here, put up in little china pots, like rouge, is a
+considerable lot of beautiful women’s bloom which the disconsolate fair
+ones owe me a bitter grudge for stealing. I have likewise a quantity of
+men’s dark hair, instead of which I have left gray locks or none at
+all. The tears of widows and other afflicted mortals who have received
+comfort during the last twelve months are preserved in some dozens of
+essence-bottles well corked and sealed. I have several bundles of
+love-letters eloquently breathing an eternity of burning passion which
+grew cold and perished almost before the ink was dry. Moreover, here is
+an assortment of many thousand broken promises and other broken ware,
+all very light and packed into little space. The heaviest articles in
+my possession are a large parcel of disappointed hopes which a little
+while ago were buoyant enough to have inflated Mr. Lauriat’s balloon.”
+
+“I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket,” remarked the New Year.
+“They are a sweet-smelling flower—a species of rose.”
+
+“They soon lose their perfume,” replied the sombre Old Year. “What else
+have you brought to insure a welcome from the discontented race of
+mortals?”
+
+“Why, to say the truth, little or nothing else,” said her sister, with
+a smile, “save a few new _Annuals_ and almanacs, and some New Year’s
+gifts for the children. But I heartily wish well to poor mortals, and
+mean to do all I can for their improvement and happiness.”
+
+“It is a good resolution,” rejoined the Old Year. “And, by the way, I
+have a plentiful assortment of good resolutions which have now grown so
+stale and musty that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only for
+fear that the city authorities would send Constable Mansfield with a
+warrant after me, I should toss them into the street at once. Many
+other matters go to make up the contents of my bandbox, but the whole
+lot would not fetch a single bid even at an auction of worn-out
+furniture; and as they are worth nothing either to you or anybody else,
+I need not trouble you with a longer catalogue.”
+
+“And must I also pick up such worthless luggage in my travels?” asked
+the New Year.
+
+“Most certainly, and well if you have no heavier load to bear,” replied
+the other. “And now, my dear sister, I must bid you farewell, earnestly
+advising and exhorting you to expect no gratitude nor good-will from
+this peevish, unreasonable, inconsiderate, ill-intending and
+worse-behaving world. However warmly its inhabitants may seem to
+welcome you, yet, do what you may and lavish on them what means of
+happiness you please, they will still be complaining, still craving
+what it is not in your power to give, still looking forward to some
+other year for the accomplishment of projects which ought never to have
+been formed, and which, if successful, would only provide new occasions
+of discontent. If these ridiculous people ever see anything tolerable
+in you, it will be after you are gone for ever.”
+
+“But I,” cried the fresh-hearted New Year—“I shall try to leave men
+wiser than I find them. I will offer them freely whatever good gifts
+Providence permits me to distribute, and will tell them to be thankful
+for what they have and humbly hopeful for more; and surely, if they are
+not absolute fools, they will condescend to be happy, and will allow me
+to be a happy year. For my happiness must depend on them.”
+
+“Alas for you, then, my poor sister!” said the Old Year, sighing, as
+she uplifted her burden. “We grandchildren of Time are born to trouble.
+Happiness, they say, dwells in the mansions of eternity, but we can
+only lead mortals thither step by step with reluctant murmurings, and
+ourselves must perish on the threshold. But hark! my task is done.”
+
+The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson’s church struck twelve;
+there was a response from Dr. Flint’s, in the opposite quarter of the
+city; and while the strokes were yet dropping into the air the Old Year
+either flitted or faded away, and not the wisdom and might of angels,
+to say nothing of the remorseful yearnings of the millions who had used
+her ill, could have prevailed with that departed year to return one
+step. But she, in the company of Time and all her kindred, must
+hereafter hold a reckoning with mankind. So shall it be, likewise, with
+the maidenly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to strike, arose from
+the steps of the city-hall and set out rather timorously on her earthly
+course.
+
+“A happy New Year!” cried a watchman, eying her figure very
+questionably, but without the least suspicion that he was addressing
+the New Year in person.
+
+“Thank you kindly,” said the New Year; and she gave the watchman one of
+the roses of hope from her basket. “May this flower keep a sweet smell
+long after I have bidden you good-bye!”
+
+Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets, and such
+as were awake at the moment heard her footfall and said, “The New Year
+is come!” Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they
+quaffed her health. She sighed, however, to perceive that the air was
+tainted—as the atmosphere of this world must continually be—with the
+dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to
+bury them. But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her coming,
+and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing emblematic flowers
+on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which some persons will
+gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others will trample under foot.
+The carrier-boy can only say further that early this morning she filled
+his basket with New Year’s addresses, assuring him that the whole city,
+with our new mayor and the aldermen and common council at its head,
+would make a general rush to secure copies. Kind patrons, will not you
+redeem the pledge of the New Year?
+
+
+
+
+SNOWFLAKES
+
+
+There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through the
+partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning of
+the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air
+and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the
+earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
+These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture which melt as they
+touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain. It is to be in
+good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three people visible on the
+sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude,
+which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless and
+blustering day. By nightfall—or, at least, before the sun sheds another
+glimmering smile upon us—the street and our little garden will be
+heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, already frozen for weeks
+past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid upon it, and
+to a Northern eye the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and
+acquire a beauty of its own when Mother Earth, like her children, shall
+have put on the fleecy garb of her winter’s wear. The cloud-spirits are
+slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime
+like hoar-frost over the brown surface of the street; the withered
+green of the grass-plat is still discernible, and the slated roofs of
+the houses do but begin to look gray instead of black. All the snow
+that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped
+up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually
+by silent and stealthy influences are great changes wrought. These
+little snow-particles which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through
+the air will bury the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor
+permit her to behold her sister Sky again for dreary months. We
+likewise shall lose sight of our mother’s familiar visage, and must
+content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener.
+
+Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down, pen
+in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an influence
+productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative thought in the
+atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a Southern clime may woo the
+Muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage reclining on banks of
+turf, while the sound of singing-birds and warbling rivulets chimes in
+with the music of his soul. In our brief summer I do not think, but
+only exist in the vague enjoyment of a dream. My hour of inspiration—if
+that hour ever comes—is when the green log hisses upon the hearth, and
+the bright flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high
+up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down among the growing
+heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in the gust and the
+snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelt hard against the window-panes,
+then I spread out my sheet of paper with the certainty that thoughts
+and fancies will gleam forth upon it like stars at twilight or like
+violets in May, perhaps to fade as soon. However transitory their glow,
+they at least shine amid the darksome shadow which the clouds of the
+outward sky fling through the room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently
+welcomed by me, her true-born son, be New England’s winter, which makes
+us one and all the nurslings of the storm and sings a familiar lullaby
+even in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth
+again and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.
+
+Slow and sure! He has the day—perchance the week—before him, and may
+take his own time to accomplish Nature’s burial in snow. A smooth
+mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry
+stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in
+all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand shivering in a
+shallow snowdrift, looking, poor things! as disconsolate as if they
+possessed a human consciousness of the dreary scene. This is a sad time
+for the shrubs that do not perish with the summer. They neither live
+nor die; what they retain of life seems but the chilling sense of
+death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in midwinter. The roofs of the
+houses are now all white, save where the eddying wind has kept them
+bare at the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity of the storm,
+we must fix upon some distant object—as yonder spire—and observe how
+the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the
+intervening space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured; then,
+again, we have a distinct but transient glimpse of the tall steeple,
+like a giant’s ghost; and now the dense wreaths sweep between, as if
+demons were flinging snowdrifts at each other in mid-air. Look next
+into the street, where we have an amusing parallel to the combat of
+those fancied demons in the upper regions. It is a snow-battle of
+schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war and military glory might be
+written in the form of a child’s story by describing the snow-ball
+fights of two rival schools, the alternate defeats and victories of
+each, and the final triumph of one party, or perhaps of neither! What
+pitched battles worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains! What storming
+of fortresses built all of massive snow-blocks! What feats of
+individual prowess and embodied onsets of martial enthusiasm! And when
+some well-contested and decisive victory had put a period to the war,
+both armies should unite to build a lofty monument of snow upon the
+battlefield and crown it with the victor’s statue hewn of the same
+frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter the passer-by would
+observe a shapeless mound upon the level common, and, unmindful of the
+famous victory, would ask, “How came it there? Who reared it? And what
+means it?” The shattered pedestal of many a battle-monument has
+provoked these questions when none could answer.
+
+Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there, lending our ears to
+the wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice and
+dictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to
+sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea,
+if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy,
+shall be the theme of the next page.
+
+How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter
+autumn which is Nature’s cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushes
+among the shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters the sear
+leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap
+themselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,
+“Winter is at hand.” Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and
+diligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice because each
+shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per
+ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the
+atmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the children look out of
+the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the
+air. It is stern Winter’s vesture. They crowd around the hearth and
+cling to their mother’s gown or press between their father’s knees,
+affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide flue
+of the chimney.
+
+It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, they
+shudder and exclaim, “Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reign
+already.” Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar
+sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity
+who tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his white
+mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed
+snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of the northern blast,
+and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path! There he
+lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the spot where Winter
+overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad
+lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary empire is
+established; all around stretches the desolation of the pole. Yet not
+ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter is our sire, though
+a stern and rough one)—not ungrateful even for the severities which
+have nourished our unyielding strength of character. And let us thank
+him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered by the music of merry bells; for
+the crackling and rustling hearth when the ruddy firelight gleams on
+hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of woman: for all the
+home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which flourish in a frozen
+soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven months of storm and
+bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen
+driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful
+and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often ere he will give
+up his empire old Winter rushes fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at
+the shrinking form of Spring, yet step by step he is compelled to
+retreat northward, and spends the summer month within the Arctic
+circle.
+
+Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the
+winter’s day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without
+abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser
+volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a
+layer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The garden
+is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of
+uncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it
+elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors of
+houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across
+a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen
+with the wind. And now the jingling of bells—a sluggish sound
+responsive to the horse’s toilsome progress through the unbroken
+drifts—announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behind and
+ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes a sledge
+laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper whom winter has
+surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles
+along the uneven street? A sable hearse bestrewn with snow is bearing a
+dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh how dreary is a burial
+in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor
+child!
+
+Evening—the early eve of December—begins to spread its deepening veil
+over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens and
+throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber,
+but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas! I
+shiver and think it time to be disconsolate, but, taking a farewell
+glance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snowbirds
+skimming lightsomely through the tempest and flitting from drift to
+drift as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer.
+Whence come they? Where do they build their nests and seek their food?
+Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth,
+instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm and fluttering
+on the dreary verge of the winter’s eve? I know not whence they come,
+nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock of
+snow-birds.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVEN VAGABONDS
+
+
+Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year, I
+came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three
+directions. Straight before me the main road extended its dusty length
+to Boston; on the left a branch went toward the sea, and would have
+lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles, while by the
+right-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada,
+visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of
+grass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object which, though
+locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver’s portable
+mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered wagon—or, more
+properly, a small house on wheels—with a door on one side and a window
+shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses munching provender out
+of the baskets which muzzled them were fastened near the vehicle. A
+delectable sound of music proceeded from the interior, and I
+immediately conjectured that this was some itinerant show halting at
+the confluence of the roads to intercept such idle travellers as
+myself. A shower had long been climbing up the western sky, and now
+hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a point of wisdom to
+seek shelter here.
+
+“Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?” cried I,
+approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the
+wagon.
+
+The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not the
+sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering showman,
+but a most respectable old personage whom I was sorry to have addressed
+in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored coat and small-clothes,
+with white top-boots, and exhibited the mild dignity of aspect and
+manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters, and sometimes
+in deacons, selectmen or other potentates of that kind. A small piece
+of silver was my passport within his premises, where I found only one
+other person, hereafter to be described.
+
+“This is a dull day for business,” said the old gentleman as he ushered
+me in; “but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being bound for
+the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
+
+Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New
+England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my
+description. The spectacle—for I will not use the unworthy term of
+“puppet-show”—consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on a
+miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind in the
+attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen
+standing ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a line
+across the stage, looking stern, grim and terrible enough to make it a
+pleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; and
+conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew in the pointed cap
+and motley coat of his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimic
+world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like that
+people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business and
+delights and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an
+eternal semblance of labor that was ended and pleasure that could be
+felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a
+barrel-organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening effect
+upon the figures and awoke them all to their proper occupations and
+amusements. By the selfsame impulse the tailor plied his needle, the
+blacksmith’s hammer descended upon the anvil and the dancers whirled
+away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke into platoons,
+retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of horse, who
+came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and trampling of
+hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while an old toper of
+inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle and took off a hearty
+swig. Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper and turn somersets,
+shaking his sides, nodding his head and winking his eyes in as lifelike
+a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense of all human affairs and
+making fun of the whole multitude beneath him. At length the old
+magician (for I compared the showman to Prospero entertaining his
+guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I might give utterance to
+my wonder.
+
+“What an admirable piece of work is this!” exclaimed I, lifting up my
+hands in astonishment.
+
+Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man’s
+gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom
+which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of
+vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
+most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations
+foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable
+circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this gray-headed
+showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable
+adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of
+Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the north and
+east, and halting now on the green before a village meeting-house and
+now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often must his heart have
+been gladdened by the delight of children as they viewed these animated
+figures, or his pride indulged by haranguing learnedly to grown men on
+the mechanical powers which produced such wonderful effects, or his
+gallantry brought into play—for this is an attribute which such grave
+men do not lack—by the visits of pretty maidens! And then with how
+fresh a feeling must he return at intervals to his own peculiar home!
+“I would I were assured of as happy a life as his,” thought I.
+
+Though the showman’s wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
+spectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person, at
+whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man of
+two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat with velvet
+collar were smart, though no longer new, while a pair of green
+spectacles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave him
+something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a
+sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow and drew
+my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he forthwith
+began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-sounding words and an
+ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myself one of the
+most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required some considerable
+powers of commendation in the salesman. There were several ancient
+friends of mine—the novels of those happy days when my affections
+wavered between the _Scottish Chiefs_ and _Thomas Thumb_—besides a few
+of later date whose merits had not been acknowledged by the public. I
+was glad to find that dear little venerable volume the _New England
+Primer_, looking as antique as ever, though in its thousandth new
+edition; a bundle of superannuated gilt picture-books made such a child
+of me that, partly for the glittering covers and partly for the
+fairy-tales within, I bought the whole, and an assortment of ballads
+and popular theatrical songs drew largely on my purse. To balance these
+expenditures, I meddled neither with sermons nor science nor morality,
+though volumes of each were there, nor with a _Life of Franklin_ in the
+coarsest of paper, but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the
+doctor himself in the court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris,
+nor with Webster’s spelling-book, nor some of Byron’s minor poems, nor
+half a dozen little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the
+collection might have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up
+at an evening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered
+pamphlet which the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I
+purchased it immediately at his own price; and then for the first time
+the thought struck me that I had spoken face to face with the veritable
+author of a printed book.
+
+The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to
+inquire which way he was travelling.
+
+“Oh,” said he, “I keep company with this old gentlemen here, and we are
+moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
+
+He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented a
+corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed, was
+a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the country
+where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly,
+and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the
+life of a book-pedler, especially when his character resembled that of
+the individual before me. At a high rate was to be reckoned the daily
+and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the present, in which he
+seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger and made him aware
+that a man of literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was
+travelling the country in a showman’s wagon. A more valuable yet not
+infrequent triumph might be won in his conversations with some elderly
+clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back-settlement of
+New England, who as he recruited his library from the pedler’s stock of
+sermons would exhort him to seek a college education and become the
+first scholar in his class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his
+sensations when, talking poetry while he sold spelling-books, he should
+charm the mind, and haply touch the heart, of a fair country
+schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a wearer of blue
+stockings which none but himself took pains to look at. But the scene
+of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted for the
+night and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar-room.
+Then would he recommend to the multifarious company, whether traveller
+from the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring squire, or
+the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler, works suited to each
+particular taste and capacity, proving, all the while, by acute
+criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his books was even
+exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he traverse the land,
+sometimes a herald before the march of Mind, sometimes walking arm in
+arm with awful Literature, and reaping everywhere a harvest of real and
+sensible popularity which the secluded bookworms by whose toil he lived
+could never hope for.
+
+“If ever I meddle with literature,” thought I, fixing myself in
+adamantine resolution, “it shall be as a travelling bookseller.”
+
+Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about us,
+and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,
+pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A
+sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
+halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosy
+face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if
+the sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and
+handsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than might
+have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into
+the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers
+stood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to those
+of my companions, and I was delighted with the more than hospitable—the
+even paternal—kindness of the old showman’s manner as he welcomed them,
+while the man of literature hastened to lead the merry-eyed girl to a
+seat on the long bench.
+
+“You are housed but just in time, my young friends,” said the master of
+the wagon; “the sky would have been down upon you within five minutes.”
+
+The young man’s reply marked him as a foreigner—not by any variation
+from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
+more caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with the language.
+
+“We knew that a shower was hanging over us,” said he, “and consulted
+whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill, but,
+seeing your wagon in the road—”
+
+“We agreed to come hither,” interrupted the girl, with a smile,
+“because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this.”
+
+I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy was narrowly
+inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,
+tall, agile and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls clustering
+round a dark and vivacious countenance which, if it had not greater
+expression, was at least more active and attracted readier notice, than
+the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first appearance he had been
+laden with a neat mahogany box of about two feet square, but very light
+in proportion to its size, which he had immediately unstrapped from his
+shoulders and deposited on the floor of the wagon.
+
+The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a
+brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which
+seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness, suited
+well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gay attire,
+combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green and a deep orange, was as
+proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born in it. This gay
+stranger was appropriately burdened with that mirth-inspiring
+instrument the fiddle, which her companion took from her hands, and
+shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us the previous company
+of the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for this could be no
+mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations, cattle-shows,
+commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober land; and there
+is a dear friend of mine who will smile when this page recalls to his
+memory a chivalrous deed performed by us in rescuing the show-box of
+such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted countrymen.
+
+“Come,” said I to the damsel of gay attire; “shall we visit all the
+wonders of the world together?”
+
+She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not much
+have troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
+words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
+in through its small round magnifying-window while the girl sat by my
+side and gave short descriptive sketches as one after another the
+pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together—at least, our
+imaginations did—full many a famous city in the streets of which I had
+long yearned to tread. Once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
+Barcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore me through the air to Sicily
+and bade me look up at blazing Ætna; then we took wing to Venice and
+sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anon she set me
+down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of Napoleon. But
+there was one scene—its locality she could not tell—which charmed my
+attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces and churches, because
+the fancy haunted me that I myself the preceding summer had beheld just
+such a humble meeting-house, in just such a pine-surrounded nook, among
+our own green mountains. All these pictures were tolerably executed,
+though far inferior to the girl’s touches of description; nor was it
+easy to comprehend how in so few sentences, and these, as I supposed,
+in a language foreign to her, she contrived to present an airy copy of
+each varied scene.
+
+When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I
+looked into my guide’s face.
+
+“‘Where are you going, my pretty maid?’” inquired I, in the words of an
+old song.
+
+“Ah!” said the gay damsel; “you might as well ask where the summer wind
+is going. We are wanderers here and there and everywhere. Wherever
+there is mirth our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day, indeed, the
+people have told us of a great frolic and festival in these parts; so
+perhaps we may be needed at what you call the camp-meeting at
+Stamford.”
+
+Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in my
+ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been her
+companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies
+cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two
+strangers the world was in its Golden Age—not that, indeed, it was less
+dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had no
+community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in
+their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their gladness,
+care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and Age,
+tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their
+sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade,
+would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves as these
+bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was
+throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them
+broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too,
+was an elastic foot as tireless as the wing of the bird of Paradise;
+mine was then an untroubled heart that would have gone singing on its
+delightful way.
+
+“Oh, maiden,” said I aloud, “why did you not come hither alone?”
+
+While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box the
+unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed
+pretty nearly of the old showman’s age, but much smaller, leaner and
+more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of
+gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance and a pair of
+diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
+puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman in a
+manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving that the
+damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded
+document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be
+a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand and signed by
+several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating that
+the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune and recommending
+him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous disbursements had
+left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of which, however, I
+offered to make the beggar a donation provided he would give me change
+for it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my face, and
+discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit, characteristic
+though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which takes pleasure in
+detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
+
+“Why, perhaps,” said the ragged old mendicant, “if the bank is in good
+standing, I can’t say but I may have enough about me to change your
+bill.”
+
+“It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank,” said I, “and better than the
+specie.”
+
+As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff
+leather bag tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was opened,
+there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins of all sorts
+and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw gleaming among them the golden
+plumage of that rare bird in our currency the American eagle. In this
+precious heap was my bank-note deposited, the rate of exchange being
+considerably against me.
+
+His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his
+pocket an old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed to
+fill the buff leather bag in more ways than one.
+
+“Come!” said he; “I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for
+twenty-five cents more I’ll tell you what it is.”
+
+I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling the
+cards and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to the
+prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting the
+shadowy events that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of his
+preternatural science by describing scenes through which I had already
+passed.
+
+Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a
+page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine and
+proceeded to relate in all its minute particulars what was then the
+most singular event of my life. It was one which I had no purpose to
+disclose till the general unfolding of all secrets, nor would it be a
+much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or fortunate conjecture
+if the beggar were to meet me in the street today and repeat word for
+word the page which I have here written.
+
+The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loth to
+make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began to
+converse with the other occupants of the wagon.
+
+“Well, old friend,” said the showman, “you have not yet told us which
+way your face is turned this afternoon.”
+
+“I am taking a trip northward this warm weather,” replied the conjurer,
+“across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and maybe
+into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of
+the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
+
+I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
+to the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the
+way.
+
+The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should
+pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of
+these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.
+
+“And the young lady too,” observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
+her profoundly, “and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
+jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my own
+enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend, if
+they could be prevailed upon to join our party.”
+
+This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
+those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had no
+title to be included in it.
+
+Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the
+four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover
+what enjoyments were peculiar to the old “straggler,” as the people of
+the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As
+he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was
+fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing some
+of the mental and moral characteristics—the lighter and more comic
+ones—of the devil in popular stories. Among them might be reckoned a
+love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for
+human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud.
+Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the
+consciousness—so insupportable to some minds—that his whole life was a
+cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the
+public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.
+Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent
+triumphs—as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out of
+the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a part
+of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some ostentatious
+gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than
+himself, or when—though he would not always be so decidedly
+diabolical—his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty
+living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field of
+enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve
+such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spirit by
+his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.
+
+All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
+had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to admit
+it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than
+to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor
+man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in “wandering up and
+down upon the earth,” and, indeed, a crafty disposition which operates
+not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnected tricks, could not have an
+adequate scope, unless naturally impelled to a continual change of
+scene and society.
+
+My reflections were here interrupted.
+
+“Another visitor!” exclaimed the old showman.
+
+The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
+roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beating
+violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
+people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the displeasure
+of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now an attempt to
+open the door, succeeded by a voice uttering some strange,
+unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and I
+suspected to be thieves’ Latin. However, the showman stepped forward
+and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our
+wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the
+forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment.
+It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort
+of cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock of
+blue cotton girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of
+knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments of silver,
+while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope had
+interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had
+worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrim of
+the storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When the first
+surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the Penobscot
+tribe, parties of which I had often seen in their summer excursions
+down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch canoes among the
+coasting-schooners, and build their wigwam beside some roaring
+mill-dam, and drive a little trade in basket-work where their fathers
+hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably wandering through the country
+toward Boston, subsisting on the careless charity of the people while
+he turned his archery to profitable account by shooting at cents which
+were to be the prize of his successful aim.
+
+The Indian had not long been seated ere our merry damsel sought to draw
+him into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up of sunshine in
+the month of May, for there was nothing so dark and dismal that her
+pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wild man, like a
+fir tree in his native forest, soon began to brighten into a sort of
+sombre cheerfulness. At length she inquired whether his journey had any
+particular end or purpose.
+
+“I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford,” replied the Indian.
+
+“And here are five more,” said the girl, “all aiming at the
+camp-meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we travel with light
+hearts; and, as for me, I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and am
+full of merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that
+there is never any sadness among them that keep me company. But oh, you
+would find it very dull indeed to go all the way to Stamford alone.”
+
+My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian
+would prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offered
+him; on the contrary, the girl’s proposal met with immediate acceptance
+and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation of enjoyment.
+
+I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether it flowed
+naturally from this combination of events or was drawn forth by a
+wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep
+music. I saw mankind in this weary old age of the world either enduring
+a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or, if they
+breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope but to
+wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life, among
+the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that had darkened
+the sunshine of today. But there were some full of the primeval
+instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years by
+the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits and new
+associates, and cared little, though their birthplace might have been
+here in New England, if the grave should close over them in Central
+Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits;
+unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre, they
+had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared the
+representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer during
+thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land.
+Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished around
+his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot of its
+fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind of their
+savage virtue and uncultured force, but here, untamable to the routine
+of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road as of old over the
+forest-leaves,—here was the Indian still.
+
+“Well,” said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, “here is
+an honest company of us—one, two, three, four, five, six—all going to
+the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like to
+know where this young gentleman may be going?”
+
+I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind that
+preferred its own folly to another’s wisdom, the open spirit that found
+companions everywhere—above all, the restless impulse that had so often
+made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments,—these were my claims to be
+of their society.
+
+“My friends,” cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, “I am
+going with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
+
+“But in what capacity?” asked the old showman, after a moment’s
+silence. “All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way.
+Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it,
+are a mere strolling gentleman.”
+
+I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me a propensity
+to their way of life she had not left me altogether destitute of
+qualifications for it, though I could not deny that my talent was less
+respectable, and might be less profitable, than the meanest of theirs.
+My design, in short, was to imitate the story-tellers of whom Oriental
+travellers have told us, and become an itinerant novelist, reciting my
+own extemporaneous fictions to such audiences as I could collect.
+
+“Either this,” said I, “is my vocation, or I have been born in vain.”
+
+The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take me
+as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of which
+undoubtedly would have given full scope to whatever inventive talent I
+might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words in opposition to my
+plan—influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousy of authorship, and
+partly by an apprehension that the _vivâ-voce_ practice would become
+general among novelists, to the infinite detriment of the book trade.
+
+Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.
+
+“‘Mirth,’” cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L’Allegro,
+“‘to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of thy crew!rsquo;”
+
+“Let us indulge the poor youth,” said Mirth, with a kindness which made
+me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to misinterpret her
+motives. “I have espied much promise in him. True, a shadow sometimes
+flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to follow in a moment.
+He is never guilty of a sad thought but a merry one is twin-born with
+it. We will take him with us, and you shall see that he will set us all
+a-laughing before we reach the camp-meeting at Stamford.” Her voice
+silenced the scruples of the rest and gained me admittance into the
+league; according to the terms of which, without a community of goods
+or profits, we were to lend each other all the aid and avert all the
+harm that might be in our power.
+
+This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe
+of us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual. The
+old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of
+the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book;
+tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in the
+spirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part more
+facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me. The
+young foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a master’s hand, and
+gave an inspiring echo to the showman’s melody. The bookish man and the
+merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance, the former enacting
+the double shuffle in a style which everybody must have witnessed ere
+election week was blotted out of time, while the girl, setting her arms
+akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed such light rapidity
+of foot and harmony of varying attitude and motion that I could not
+conceive how she ever was to stop, imagining at the moment that Nature
+had made her, as the old showman had made his puppets, for no earthly
+purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bellowed forth a succession of
+most hideous outcries, somewhat affrighting us till we interpreted them
+as the war-song with which, in imitation of his ancestors, he was
+prefacing the assault on Stamford. The conjurer, meanwhile, sat
+demurely in a corner extracting a sly enjoyment from the whole scene,
+and, like the facetious Merry Andrew, directing his queer glance
+particularly at me. As for myself, with great exhilaration of fancy, I
+began to arrange and color the incidents of a tale wherewith I proposed
+to amuse an audience that very evening; for I saw that my associates
+were a little ashamed of me, and that no time was to be lost in
+obtaining a public acknowledgment of my abilities.
+
+“Come, fellow-laborers,” at last said the old showman, whom we had
+elected president; “the shower is over, and we must be doing our duty
+by these poor souls at Stamford.”
+
+“We’ll come among them in procession, with music and dancing,” cried
+the merry damsel.
+
+Accordingly—for it must be understood that our pilgrimage was to be
+performed on foot—we sallied joyously out of the wagon, each of us,
+even the old gentleman in his white top-boots, giving a great skip as
+we came down the ladder. Above our heads there was such a glory of
+sunshine and splendor of clouds, and such brightness of verdure below,
+that, as I modestly remarked at the time, Nature seemed to have washed
+her face and put on the best of her jewelry and a fresh green gown in
+honor of our confederation. Casting our eyes northward, we beheld a
+horseman approaching leisurely and splashing through the little puddle
+on the Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his saddle with
+rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom the
+showman and the conjurer shortly recognized to be what his aspect
+sufficiently indicated—a travelling preacher of great fame among the
+Methodists. What puzzled us was the fact that his face appeared turned
+from, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stamford. However, as this new
+votary of the wandering life drew near the little green space where the
+guide-post and our wagon were situated, my six fellow-vagabonds and
+myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying out with united
+voices, “What news? What news from the camp-meeting at Stamford?”
+
+The missionary looked down in surprise at as singular a knot of people
+as could have been selected from all his heterogeneous auditors.
+Indeed, considering that we might all be classified under the general
+head of Vagabond, there was great diversity of character among the
+grave old showman, the sly, prophetic beggar, the fiddling foreigner
+and his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian and
+myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even
+fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of the
+preacher’s mouth.
+
+“Good people,” answered he, “the camp-meeting is broke up.”
+
+So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode westward.
+Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object, we were
+sundered at once to the four winds of heaven. The fortune-teller,
+giving a nod to all and a peculiar wink to me, departed on his Northern
+tour, chuckling within himself as he took the Stamford road. The old
+showman and his literary coadjutor were already tackling their horses
+to the wagon with a design to peregrinate south-west along the
+sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel took their laughing leave
+and pursued the eastern road, which I had that day trodden; as they
+passed away the young man played a lively strain and the girl’s happy
+spirit broke into a dance, and, thus dissolving, as it were, into
+sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant pair departed from my view.
+Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown across my mind, yet emulous of
+the light philosophy of my late companions, I joined myself to the
+Penobscot Indian and set forth toward the distant city.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE OLD MAID
+
+
+The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
+spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
+lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the
+ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed, falling between the
+heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But how
+quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a shroud
+the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a corpse in its
+burial-clothes.
+
+Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange
+fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt
+the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and a
+girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the moonbeams,
+or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as she bent
+over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed her living lips to
+the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from that long kiss her
+features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its anguish.
+Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive to
+her own. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had waved a second time
+betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another fair young girl
+unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside. There the two
+maidens stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between
+them. But she who had first entered was proud and stately, and the
+other a soft and fragile thing.
+
+“Away!” cried the lofty one. “Thou hadst him living; the dead is mine.”
+
+“Thine!” returned the other, shuddering. “Well hast thou spoken; the
+dead is thine.”
+
+The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
+but a wild-and mournful expression passed across the features of the
+gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head
+pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark
+locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had
+bewildered her.
+
+“Edith!” cried her rival.
+
+Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and, removing
+her cheek from the dead youth’s pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
+encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.
+
+“Wilt thou betray me?” said the latter, calmly.
+
+“Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent,” answered Edith. “Leave
+us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return and tell me
+of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest of sufferings
+more than death, we will both forgive thee.”
+
+“And what shall be the token?” asked the proud girl, as if her heart
+acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.
+
+“This lock of hair,” said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
+curls that lay heavily on the dead man’s brow.
+
+The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
+appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
+meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the
+motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and trembled ere
+she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon
+her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form fading into the moonlight?
+Scorning her own weakness, she went forth and perceived that a negro
+slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight, which he held between
+her face and his own and regarded her, as she thought, with an ugly
+expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave lighted
+her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion. The young
+clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and, bowing to the
+lady, passed in without a word.
+
+Years—many years—rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much older
+was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped their
+hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely woman
+had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the town as
+the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.” A taint of insanity had affected
+her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free from
+violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies
+unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures she had naught
+to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight except to
+follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in
+sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and proud
+thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them came
+the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called her
+shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but stood
+at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear of the
+procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the house of
+mourning and be the shadow of affliction and see that the dead were
+duly buried. So long had this been her custom that the inhabitants of
+the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as the coffin-pall
+or the very corpse itself, and augured ill of the sinner’s destiny
+unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding like a ghost
+behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal-party with her pale
+presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall just as the priest
+was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before her lover had been
+dead a year. Evil was the omen to that marriage. Sometimes she stole
+forth by moonlight and visited the graves of venerable integrity and
+wedded love and virgin innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a
+kind and faithful heart were mouldering. Over the hillocks of those
+favored dead would she stretch out her arms with a gesture as if she
+were scattering seeds, and many believed that she brought them from the
+garden of Paradise, for the graves which she had visited were green
+beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers from April to November.
+Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the tombstone. Thus wore
+away her long, sad, peaceful and fantastic life till few were so old as
+she, and the people of later generations wondered how the dead had ever
+been buried or mourners had endured their grief without the Old Maid in
+the Winding-Sheet. Still years went on, and still she followed funerals
+and was not yet summoned to her own festival of death.
+
+One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with business
+and bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of the
+church-spire, having left the housetops and loftiest trees in shadow.
+The scene was cheerful and animated in spite of the sombre shade
+between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants in white
+wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces of sea-captains, the foreign
+garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the disdainful port of natives of
+Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two
+back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests where axe had
+never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an
+embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes and
+courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious obeisances of the
+gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far
+from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from the pavement,
+surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of loneliness rather
+deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its site would have
+been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange or a brick block
+lettered all over with various signs, or the large house itself might
+have made a noble tavern with the “King’s Arms” swinging before it and
+guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But, owing to
+some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had been long
+without a tenant, decaying from year to year and throwing the stately
+gloom of its shadow over the busiest part of the town.
+
+Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that
+have been described was observed at a distance down the street.
+
+“I espy a strange sail yonder,” remarked a Liverpool captain—“that
+woman in the long white garment.”
+
+The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others who
+at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had attracted
+his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of conversation gave
+place to speculations in an undertone on this unwonted occurrence.
+
+“Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?” inquired some.
+
+They looked for the signs of death at every door—the sexton, the
+hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the
+woeful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt
+spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its
+bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in the
+light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to its
+home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral except the
+apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+“What may this portend?” asked each man of his neighbor.
+
+All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
+their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
+prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one whose
+presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet is
+to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on, while
+the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud and the
+humble stood aside that her white garment might not wave against them.
+It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity. Its wearer appeared very
+old, pale, emaciated and feeble, yet glided onward without the unsteady
+pace of extreme age. At one point of her course a little rosy boy burst
+forth from a door and ran with open arms toward the ghostly woman,
+seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips. She made a slight
+pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expression of no earthly
+sweetness, so that the child shivered and stood awestruck rather than
+affrighted while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have
+been polluted even by an infant’s touch; perhaps her kiss would have
+been death to the sweet boy within the year.
+
+“She is but a shadow,” whispered the superstitious. “The child put
+forth his arms and could not grasp her robe.”
+
+The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of
+the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron
+knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture that some
+old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the poor
+woman hither to visit the friends of her youth—all gone from their home
+long since and for ever unless their ghosts still haunted it, fit
+company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his
+gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.
+
+“None, madam,” said he, “have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
+agone—no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
+you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among
+themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin.”
+
+The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand and
+a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than
+ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer,
+and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now
+heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion which all conceived
+to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the
+pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more distinct
+on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell on
+the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance toward the
+church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that the
+people saw of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+“Who undid the door?” asked many.
+
+This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
+could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
+against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
+within was a negro and bore a singular resemblance to old Cæsar,
+formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
+before.
+
+“Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family,” said one, half
+seriously.
+
+“Let us wait here,” replied another; “more guests will knock at the
+door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open.”
+
+Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate or
+the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was
+wending his way homeward, when a coach—no common spectacle in those
+days—drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage,
+hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a footman behind
+and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front, the whole giving
+an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was something awful in the
+heavy rumbling of the wheels.
+
+The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the
+deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.
+
+“Whose grand coach is this?” asked a very inquisitive body.
+
+The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
+gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach
+door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day
+examined the shield of arms on the panel.
+
+“Azure, a lion’s head erased, between three flowers de luce,” said he,
+then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.
+The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long
+residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and
+wealth had given him no mean station. “He left no child,” continued the
+herald, “and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the coach
+appertains to his widow.”
+
+Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the speaker
+been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady who
+thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she
+emerged the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her figure
+dignified in spite of age and infirmity—a stately ruin, but with a look
+at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid features had an
+awe about them unlike that of the white Old Maid, but as of something
+evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed cane. The door
+swung open as she ascended, and the light of a torch glittered on the
+embroidery of her dress and gleamed on the pillars of the porch. After
+a momentary pause, a glance backward and then a desperate effort, she
+went in.
+
+The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step, and,
+shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the torch
+was held by the very image of old Cæsar.
+
+“But such a hideous grin,” added he, “was never seen on the face of
+mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying-day.”
+
+Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on the
+pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight, while
+the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when the people
+began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient lady,
+the spectre of old Cæsar and the Old Maid herself were not all a
+strangely-combined delusion with some dark purport in its mystery. The
+whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd
+continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows of the
+mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders, glad to
+indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded
+splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given and the
+guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from
+abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic reminiscences
+seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they referred. So strong
+was the impression on some of the more imaginative hearers that two or
+three were seized with trembling fits at one and the same moment,
+protesting that they had distinctly heard three other raps of the iron
+knocker.
+
+“Impossible!” exclaimed others. “See! The moon shines beneath the
+porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
+pillar. There is no one there.”
+
+“Did not the door open?” whispered one of these fanciful persons.
+
+“Didst thou see it too?” said his companion, in a startled tone.
+
+But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third visitant
+had made application at the door of the deserted house. A few, however,
+adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red gleam like
+that of a torch had shone through the great front window, as if the
+negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This too was pronounced a
+mere fantasy.
+
+But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own
+terror painted in the faces of all the rest.
+
+“What an awful thing is this!” cried they.
+
+A shriek too fearfully distinct for doubt had been heard within the
+mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness, as
+if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
+whether to fly from the very sight of the house or to rush trembling in
+and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and affright
+they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their clergyman, a
+venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught them and their
+fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of an ordinary
+lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair upon his
+shoulders, a white beard upon his breast and a back so bent over his
+staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to
+choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time before the
+good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could be made to
+comprehend such portions of the affair as were comprehensible at all.
+But when possessed of the facts, his energies assumed unexpected vigor.
+
+“Verily,” said the old gentleman, “it will be fitting that I enter the
+mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should have
+befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the ‘Old Maid in the
+Winding-Sheet.’”
+
+Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
+mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who had
+spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained the
+shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like their
+predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.
+
+“Old Cæsar cometh not,” observed the priest. “Well, I wot he no longer
+doth service in this mansion.”
+
+“Assuredly, then, it was something worse in old Cæsar’s likeness,” said
+the other adventurer.
+
+“Be it as God wills,” answered the clergyman. “See! my strength, though
+it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let us enter
+and pass up the staircase.”
+
+Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a very
+old man’s mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the aged
+clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing aside,
+and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus practising
+all the gestures of one who makes his way through a throng. Reaching
+the head of the staircase, he looked around with sad and solemn
+benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary locks, and was
+evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.
+
+“Reverend sir,” said his attendant, who conceived this a very suitable
+prelude to their further search, “would it not be well that the people
+join with us in prayer?”
+
+“Well-a-day!” cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
+“Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were present
+to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as many a time
+heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I saw the
+shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one
+after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet hath seen them to
+their graves.”
+
+Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
+staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
+each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They
+therefore walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to the
+great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the shadow and
+partial moonlight of the street beneath. On their right hand was the
+open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left.
+
+The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.
+
+“Within that chamber,” observed he, “a whole lifetime since, did I sit
+by the death-bed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
+gasp—” Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
+which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his
+companion’s hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence
+that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the
+moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It
+was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-backed
+oaken arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her breast and
+her head thrown back, sat the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. The
+stately dame had fallen on her knees with her forehead on the holy
+knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor and the other pressed
+convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair—once sable,
+now discolored with a greenish mould.
+
+As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid’s
+features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they
+trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it
+was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead face
+and the moonlight.
+
+“Both dead!” said the venerable man. “Then who shall divulge the
+secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light and
+shadow across the Old Maid’s face. And now ’tis gone!”
+
+
+
+
+PETER GOLDTHWAITE’S TREASURE
+
+
+“And so, Peter, you won’t even consider of the business?” said Mr. John
+Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his person and
+drawing on his gloves. “You positively refuse to let me have this crazy
+old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the price named?”
+
+“Neither at that, nor treble the sum,” responded the gaunt, grizzled
+and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. “The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must
+find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my
+estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid
+new mansion over the cellar of the old house.”
+
+“Pho, Peter!” cried Mr. Brown as he opened the kitchen door; “content
+yourself with building castles in the air, where house-lots are cheaper
+than on earth, to say nothing of the cost of bricks and mortar. Such
+foundations are solid enough for your edifices, while this underneath
+us is just the thing for mine; and so we may both be suited. What say
+you, again?”
+
+“Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown,” answered Peter Goldthwaite.
+“And, as for castles in the air, mine may not be as magnificent as that
+sort of architecture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr. Brown, as the
+very respectable brick block with dry-goods stores, tailors’ shops and
+banking-rooms on the lower floor, and lawyers’ offices in the second
+story, which you are so anxious to substitute.”
+
+“And the cost, Peter? Eh?” said Mr. Brown as he withdrew in something
+of a pet. “That, I suppose, will be provided for off-hand by drawing a
+check on Bubble Bank?”
+
+John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly known to the
+commercial world between twenty and thirty years before under the firm
+of Goldthwaite & Brown; which copartnership, however, was speedily
+dissolved by the natural incongruity of its constituent parts. Since
+that event, John Brown, with exactly the qualities of a thousand other
+John Browns, and by just such plodding methods as they used, had
+prospered wonderfully and become one of the wealthiest John Browns on
+earth. Peter Goldthwaite, on the contrary, after innumerable schemes
+which ought to have collected all the coin and paper currency of the
+country into his coffers, was as needy a gentleman as ever wore a patch
+upon his elbow. The contrast between him and his former partner may be
+briefly marked, for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always had it,
+while Peter made luck the main condition of his projects, and always
+missed it. While the means held out his speculations had been
+magnificent, but were chiefly confined of late years to such small
+business as adventures in the lottery. Once he had gone on a
+gold-gathering expedition somewhere to the South, and ingeniously
+contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than ever, while others,
+doubtless, were filling theirs with native bullion by the handful. More
+recently he had expended a legacy of a thousand or two of dollars in
+purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the proprietor of a
+province; which, however, so far as Peter could find out, was situated
+where he might have had an empire for the same money—in the clouds.
+From a search after this valuable real estate Peter returned so gaunt
+and threadbare that on reaching New England the scarecrows in the
+corn-fields beckoned to him as he passed by. “They did but flutter in
+the wind,” quoth Peter Goldthwaite. No, Peter, they beckoned, for the
+scarecrows knew their brother.
+
+At the period of our story his whole visible income would not have paid
+the tax of the old mansion in which we find him. It was one of those
+rusty, moss-grown, many-peaked wooden houses which are scattered about
+the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed second story
+projecting over the foundation, as if it frowned at the novelty around
+it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he was, and though, being
+centrally situated on the principal street of the town, it would have
+brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own reasons for
+never parting with, either by auction or private sale. There seemed,
+indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his birthplace; for,
+often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and standing there even
+now, he had not yet taken the step beyond it which would have compelled
+him to surrender the house to his creditors. So here he dwelt with bad
+luck till good should come.
+
+Here, then, in his kitchen—the only room where a spark of fire took off
+the chill of a November evening—poor Peter Goldthwaite had just been
+visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview,
+Peter, with rather a mortified look, glanced downward at his dress,
+parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite & Brown.
+His upper garment was a mixed surtout, woefully faded, and patched with
+newer stuff on each elbow; beneath this he wore a threadbare black
+coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced with others
+of a different pattern; and, lastly, though he lacked not a pair of
+gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been partially
+turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter’s shins before a scanty
+fire. Peter’s person was in keeping with his goodly apparel.
+Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he was the
+perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and empty hopes
+till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash nor stomach more
+substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crack-brained
+simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very brilliant figure
+in the world had he employed his imagination in the airy business of
+poetry instead of making it a demon of mischief in mercantile pursuits.
+After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless as a child, and as
+honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman which Nature meant
+him for, as an irregular life and depressed circumstances will permit
+any man to be.
+
+As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth looking round at the
+disconsolate old kitchen his eyes began to kindle with the illumination
+of an enthusiasm that never long deserted him. He raised his hand,
+clenched it and smote it energetically against the smoky panel over the
+fireplace.
+
+“The time is come,” said he; “with such a treasure at command, it were
+folly to be a poor man any longer. Tomorrow morning I will begin with
+the garret, nor desist till I have torn the house down.”
+
+Deep in the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little
+old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter
+Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were
+ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel
+petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of
+sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that same
+chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter’s grandfather
+had taken her from the almshouse. She had no friend but Peter, nor
+Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as Peter might have a shelter for
+his own head, Tabitha would know where to shelter hers, or, being
+homeless elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand and bring him
+to her native home, the almshouse. Should it ever be necessary, she
+loved him well enough to feed him with her last morsel and clothe him
+with her under-petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old woman, and,
+though never infected with Peter’s flightiness, had become so
+accustomed to his freaks and follies that she viewed them all as
+matters of course. Hearing him threaten to tear the house down, she
+looked quietly up from her work.
+
+“Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter,” said she.
+
+“The sooner we have it all down, the better,” said Peter Goldthwaite.
+“I am tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy, smoky,
+creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man
+when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we shall
+by this time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny side, old
+Tabby, finished and furnished as best may suit your own notions.”
+
+“I should like it pretty much such a room as this kitchen,” answered
+Tabitha. “It will never be like home to me till the chimney-corner gets
+as black with smoke as this, and that won’t be these hundred years. How
+much do you mean to lay out on the house, Mr. Peter?”
+
+“What is that to the purpose?” exclaimed Peter, loftily. “Did not my
+great-grand-uncle, Peter Goldthwaite, who died seventy years ago, and
+whose namesake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty such?”
+
+“I can’t say but he did, Mr. Peter,” said Tabitha, threading her
+needle.
+
+Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference to an immense hoard of
+the precious metals which was said to exist somewhere in the cellar or
+walls, or under the floors, or in some concealed closet or other
+out-of-the-way nook of the old house. This wealth, according to
+tradition, had been accumulated by a former Peter Goldthwaite whose
+character seems to have borne a remarkable similitude to that of the
+Peter of our story. Like him, he was a wild projector, seeking to heap
+up gold by the bushel and the cart-load instead of scraping it together
+coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had almost
+invariably failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the final
+one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches to his
+gaunt and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the nature of his
+fortunate speculation, one intimating that the ancient Peter had made
+the gold by alchemy; another, that he had conjured it out of people’s
+pockets by the black art; and a third—still more unaccountable—that the
+devil had given him free access to the old provincial treasury. It was
+affirmed, however, that some secret impediment had debarred him from
+the enjoyment of his riches, and that he had a motive for concealing
+them from his heir, or, at any rate, had died without disclosing the
+place of deposit. The present Peter’s father had faith enough in the
+story to cause the cellar to be dug over. Peter himself chose to
+consider the legend as an indisputable truth, and amid his many
+troubles had this one consolation—that, should all other resources
+fail, he might build up his fortunes by tearing his house down. Yet,
+unless he felt a lurking distrust of the golden tale, it is difficult
+to account for his permitting the paternal roof to stand so long, since
+he had never yet seen the moment when his predecessor’s treasure would
+not have found plenty of room in his own strong-box. But now was the
+crisis. Should he delay the search a little longer, the house would
+pass from the lineal heir, and with it the vast heap of gold, to remain
+in its burial-place till the ruin of the aged walls should discover it
+to strangers of a future generation.
+
+“Yes,” cried Peter Goldthwaite, again; “to-morrow I will set about it.”
+
+The deeper he looked at the matter, the more certain of success grew
+Peter. His spirits were naturally so elastic that even now, in the
+blasted autumn of his age, he could often compete with the springtime
+gayety of other people. Enlivened by his brightening prospects, he
+began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin, with the queerest
+antics of his lean limbs and gesticulations of his starved features.
+Nay, in the exuberance of his feelings, he seized both of Tabitha’s
+hands and danced the old lady across the floor till the oddity of her
+rheumatic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was echoed
+back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter Goldthwaite were laughing
+in every one. Finally, he bounded upward, almost out of sight, into the
+smoke that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and, alighting safely on
+the floor again, endeavored to resume his customary gravity.
+
+“To-morrow, at sunrise,” he repeated, taking his lamp to retire to bed,
+“I’ll see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the garret.”
+
+“And, as we’re out of wood, Mr. Peter,” said Tabitha, puffing and
+panting with her late gymnastics, “as fast as you tear the house down
+I’ll make a fire with the pieces.”
+
+Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldthwaite. At one time
+he was turning a ponderous key in an iron door not unlike the door of a
+sepulchre, but which, being opened, disclosed a vault heaped up with
+gold coin as plentifully as golden corn in a granary. There were chased
+goblets, also, and tureens, salvers, dinner-dishes and dish-covers of
+gold or silver-gilt, besides chains and other jewels, incalculably
+rich, though tarnished with the damps of the vault; for, of all the
+wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried in the earth or
+sunken in the sea, Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this one
+treasure-place. Anon he had returned to the old house as poor as ever,
+and was received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of a man
+whom he might have mistaken for himself, only that his garments were of
+a much elder fashion. But the house, without losing its former aspect,
+had been changed into a palace of the precious metals. The floors,
+walls and ceilings were of burnished silver; the doors, the
+window-frames, the cornices, the balustrades and the steps of the
+staircase, of pure gold; and silver, with gold bottoms, were the
+chairs, and gold, standing on silver legs, the high chests of drawers,
+and silver the bedsteads, with blankets of woven gold and sheets of
+silver tissue. The house had evidently been transmuted by a single
+touch, for it retained all the marks that Peter remembered, but in gold
+or silver instead of wood, and the initials of his name—which when a
+boy he had cut in the wooden door-post—remained as deep in the pillar
+of gold. A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite except for a
+certain ocular deception which, whenever he glanced backward, caused
+the house to darken from its glittering magnificence into the sordid
+gloom of yesterday.
+
+Up betimes rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer and saw which he had
+placed by his bedside, and hied him to the garret. It was but scantily
+lighted up as yet by the frosty fragments of a sunbeam which began to
+glimmer through the almost opaque bull-eyes of the window. A moralizer
+might find abundant themes for his speculative and impracticable wisdom
+in a garret. There is the limbo of departed fashions, aged trifles of a
+day and whatever was valuable only to one generation of men, and which
+passed to the garret when that generation passed to the grave—not for
+safekeeping, but to be out of the way. Peter saw piles of yellow and
+musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein creditors long dead
+and buried had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink now
+so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found
+old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and tatters, or Peter would have
+put them on. Here was a naked and rusty sword—not a sword of service,
+but a gentleman’s small French rapier—which had never left its scabbard
+till it lost it. Here were canes of twenty different sorts, but no
+gold-headed ones, and shoebuckles of various pattern and material, but
+not silver nor set with precious stones. Here was a large box full of
+shoes with high heels and peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a
+multitude of phials half filled with old apothecary’s stuff which, when
+the other half had done its business on Peter’s ancestors, had been
+brought hither from the death-chamber. Here—not to give a longer
+inventory of articles that will never be put up at auction—was the
+fragment of a full-length looking-glass which by the dust and dimness
+of its surface made the picture of these old things look older than the
+reality. When Peter, not knowing that there was a mirror there, caught
+the faint traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the former
+Peter Goldthwaite had come back either to assist or impede his search
+for the hidden wealth. And at that moment a strange notion glimmered
+through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed the
+gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, however, he had
+unaccountably forgotten.
+
+“Well, Mr. Peter!” cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. “Have you torn
+the house down enough to heat the teakettle?”
+
+“Not yet, old Tabby,” answered Peter, “but that’s soon done, as you
+shall see.” With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and laid
+about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and in
+a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish.
+
+“We shall get our winter’s wood cheap,” quoth Tabitha.
+
+The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him,
+smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers, unclenching spike-nails,
+ripping and tearing away boards, with a tremendous racket from morning
+till night. He took care, however, to leave the outside shell of the
+house untouched, so that the neighbors might not suspect what was going
+on.
+
+Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it
+lasted, had Peter been happier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was
+something in Peter Goldthwaite’s turn of mind which brought him an
+inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused. If he were
+poor, ill-clad, even hungry and exposed, as it were, to be utterly
+annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin, yet only his body
+remained in these miserable circumstances, while his aspiring soul
+enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity. It was his nature to be
+always young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so. Gray
+hairs were nothing—no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look old,
+indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old figure
+much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was a young
+man of high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling of each
+new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes.
+It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long—not too long, but just to
+the right age—a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams, he
+resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light, to go
+a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town. What heart could
+resist him? Happy Peter Goldthwaite!
+
+Every evening—as Peter had long absented himself from his former
+lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and
+as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private circles—he
+and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen hearth. This was
+always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his day’s labor. As the
+foundation of the fire there would be a goodly-sized back-log of red
+oak, which after being sheltered from rain or damp above a century
+still hissed with the heat and distilled streams of water from each
+end, as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two. Next there
+were large sticks, sound, black and heavy, which had lost the principle
+of decay and were indestructible except by fire, wherein they glowed
+like red-hot bars of iron. On this solid basis Tabitha would rear a
+lighter structure, composed of the splinters of door-panels, ornamented
+mouldings, and such quick combustibles, which caught like straw and
+threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue, making its sooty
+sides visible almost to the chimney-top. Meantime, the gloom of the old
+kitchen would be chased out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the
+dusky cross-beams overhead, and driven nobody could tell whither, while
+Peter smiled like a gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of
+comfortable age. All this, of course, was but an emblem of the bright
+fortune which the destruction of the house would shed upon its
+occupants.
+
+While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular
+discharge of fairy-musketry, Peter sat looking and listening in a
+pleasant state of excitement; but when the brief blaze and uproar were
+succeeded by the dark-red glow, the substantial heat and the deep
+singing sound which were to last throughout the evening, his humor
+became talkative. One night—the hundredth time—he teased Tabitha to
+tell him something new about his great-granduncle.
+
+“You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-five years, old
+Tabby, and must have heard many a tradition about him,” said Peter.
+“Did not you tell me that when you first came to the house there was an
+old woman sitting where you sit now who had been housekeeper to the
+famous Peter Goldthwaite?”
+
+“So there was, Mr. Peter,” answered Tabitha, “and she was near about a
+hundred years old. She used to say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite
+had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire—pretty much as
+you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter.”
+
+“The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one,” said
+Peter, complacently, “or he never would have grown so rich. But
+methinks he might have invested the money better than he did. No
+interest! nothing but good security! and the house to be torn down to
+come at it! What made him hide it so snug, Tabby?”
+
+“Because he could not spend it,” said Tabitha, “for as often as he went
+to unlock the chest the Old Scratch came behind and caught his arm. The
+money, they say, was paid Peter out of his purse, and he wanted Peter
+to give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter swore he would
+not do.”
+
+“Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner,” remarked Peter. “But
+this is all nonsense, Tabby; I don’t believe the story.”
+
+“Well, it may not be just the truth,” said Tabitha, “for some folks say
+that Peter did make over the house to the Old Scratch, and that’s the
+reason it has always been so unlucky to them that lived in it. And as
+soon as Peter had given him the deed the chest flew open, and Peter
+caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and behold! there was nothing
+in his fist but a parcel of old rags.”
+
+“Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby!” cried Peter, in great wrath.
+“They were as good golden guineas as ever bore the effigies of the king
+of England. It seems as if I could recollect the whole circumstance,
+and how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was, thrust in my hand, or his
+hand, and drew it out all of a blaze with gold. Old rags indeed!”
+
+But it was not an old woman’s legend that would discourage Peter
+Goldthwaite. All night long he slept among pleasant dreams, and awoke
+at daylight with a joyous throb of the heart which few are fortunate
+enough to feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day he labored hard
+without wasting a moment except at meal-times, when Tabitha summoned
+him to the pork and cabbage, or such other sustenance as she had picked
+up or Providence had sent them. Being a truly pious man, Peter never
+failed to ask a blessing—if the food were none of the best, then so
+much the more earnestly, as it was more needed—nor to return thanks, if
+the dinner had been scanty, yet for the good appetite which was better
+than a sick stomach at a feast. Then did he hurry back to his toil, and
+in a moment was lost to sight in a cloud of dust from the old walls,
+though sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the clatter which he
+raised in the midst of it.
+
+How enviable is the consciousness of being usefully employed! Nothing
+troubled Peter, or nothing but those phantoms of the mind which seem
+like vague recollections, yet have also the aspect of presentiments. He
+often paused with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself,
+“Peter Goldthwaite, did you never strike this blow before?” or “Peter,
+what need of tearing the whole house down? Think a little while, and
+you will remember where the gold is hidden.” Days and weeks passed on,
+however, without any remarkable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean
+gray rat peeped forth at the lean gray man, wondering what devil had
+got into the old house, which had always been so peaceable till now.
+And occasionally Peter sympathized with the sorrows of a female mouse
+who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and delicate young
+ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its ruin. But
+as yet no treasure.
+
+By this time, Peter, being as determined as fate and as diligent as
+time, had made an end with the uppermost regions and got down to the
+second story, where he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had
+formerly been the state-bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as the
+sleeping-apartment of Governor Dudley and many other eminent guests.
+The furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and tattered
+paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented with charcoal
+sketches, chiefly of people’s heads in profile. These being specimens
+of Peter’s youthful genius, it went more to his heart to obliterate
+them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by Michael Angelo.
+One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected him differently.
+It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself on a spade and
+bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with one hand extended
+to grasp something that he had found. But close behind him, with a
+fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure with horns, a tufted
+tail and a cloven hoof.
+
+“Avaunt, Satan!” cried Peter. “The man shall have his gold.” Uplifting
+his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not
+only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the whole
+scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite through the
+plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.
+
+“Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?”
+said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.
+
+Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of
+the wall, and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the
+fireplace, about breast-high from the ground. It contained nothing but
+a brass lamp covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment.
+While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized the lamp and began to
+rub it with her apron.
+
+“There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha,” said Peter. “It is not
+Aladdin’s lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look
+here, Tabby!”
+
+Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was
+saddled with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she
+begun to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding
+both her hands against her sides.
+
+“You can’t make a fool of the old woman,” cried she. “This is your own
+handwriting, Mr. Peter, the same as in the letter you sent me from
+Mexico.”
+
+“There is certainly a considerable resemblance,” said Peter, again
+examining the parchment. “But you know yourself, Tabby, that this
+closet must have been plastered up before you came to the house or I
+came into the world. No; this is old Peter Goldthwaite’s writing. These
+columns of pounds, shillings and pence are his figures, denoting the
+amount of the treasure, and this, at the bottom, is doubtless a
+reference to the place of concealment. But the ink has either faded or
+peeled off, so that it is absolutely illegible. What a pity!”
+
+“Well, this lamp is as good as new. That’s some comfort,” said Tabitha.
+
+“A lamp!” thought Peter. “That indicates light on my researches.”
+
+For the present Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery
+than to resume his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs he stood
+poring over the parchment at one of the front windows, which was so
+obscured with dust that the sun could barely throw an uncertain shadow
+of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it open and looked out
+upon the great street of the town, while the sun looked in at his old
+house. The air, though mild, and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a
+dash of water.
+
+It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the
+housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops,
+which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a summer
+shower beneath the eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was as hard
+and solid as a pavement of white marble, and had not yet grown moist in
+the spring-like temperature. But when Peter thrust forth his head, he
+saw that the inhabitants, if not the town, were already thawed out by
+this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter weather. It gladdened
+him—a gladness with a sigh breathing through it—to see the stream of
+ladies gliding along the slippery sidewalks with their red cheeks set
+off by quilted hoods, boas and sable capes like roses amidst a new kind
+of foliage. The sleigh bells jingled to and fro continually, sometimes
+announcing the arrival of a sleigh from Vermont laden with the frozen
+bodies of porkers or sheep, and perhaps a deer or two; sometimes, of a
+regular marketman with chickens, geese and turkeys, comprising the
+whole colony of a barn-yard; and sometimes, of a farmer and his dame
+who had come to town partly for the ride, partly to go a-shopping and
+partly for the sale of some eggs and butter. This couple rode in an
+old-fashioned square sleigh which had served them twenty winters and
+stood twenty summers in the sun beside their door. Now a gentleman and
+lady skimmed the snow in an elegant car shaped somewhat like a
+cockle-shell; now a stage-sleigh with its cloth curtains thrust aside
+to admit the sun dashed rapidly down the street, whirling in and out
+among the vehicles that obstructed its passage; now came round a corner
+the similitude of Noah’s ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh
+with seats for fifty people and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious
+receptacle was populous with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry
+girls and boys and merry old folks, all alive with fun and grinning to
+the full width of their mouths. They kept up a buzz of babbling voices
+and low laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep, joyous shout which
+the spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys
+let drive their snow-balls right among the pleasure-party. The sleigh
+passed on, and when concealed by a bend of the street was still audible
+by a distant cry of merriment.
+
+Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all
+these accessories—the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the
+gleaming snow, the cheerful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles
+and the jingle-jangle of merry bells which made the heart dance to
+their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen except that peaked piece of
+antiquity Peter Goldthwaite’s house, which might well look sad
+externally, since such a terrible consumption was preying on its
+insides. And Peter’s gaunt figure, half visible in the projecting
+second story, was worthy of his house.
+
+“Peter! How goes it, friend Peter?” cried a voice across the street as
+Peter was drawing in his head. “Look out here, Peter!”
+
+Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
+sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open,
+disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the
+attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite’s window, and to the
+dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.
+
+“I say, Peter!” cried Mr. Brown, again; “what the devil are you about
+there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing
+the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?”
+
+“Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown,” replied Peter. “If I make
+it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar upward.”
+
+“Had not you better let me take the job?” said Mr. Brown,
+significantly.
+
+“Not yet,” answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever since
+he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
+him.
+
+As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the
+secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter’s
+visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid
+chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
+probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a
+home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very
+dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in contrast with
+the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into
+the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which
+the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and
+an intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an
+object that might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people
+would call madness. It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of
+life that each person rectifies his mind by other minds and squares his
+conduct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in
+eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence
+by merely looking out of the window. For a while he doubted whether
+there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case whether it was so
+exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced of its
+non-existence.
+
+But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which Fate
+had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In the
+course of his search he met with many things that are usually found in
+the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are not. What seemed
+most to the purpose was a rusty key which had been thrust into a chink
+of the wall, with a wooden label appended to the handle, bearing the
+initials “P.G.” Another singular discovery was that of a bottle of wine
+walled up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the family that Peter’s
+grandfather, a jovial officer in the old French war, had set aside many
+dozens of the precious liquor for the benefit of topers then unborn.
+Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and therefore kept the
+wine to gladden his success. Many half-pence did he pick up that had
+been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some few Spanish coins,
+and the half of a broken sixpence which had doubtless been a
+love-token. There was likewise a silver coronation medal of George III.
+But old Peter Goldthwaite’s strong-box fled from one dark corner to
+another, or otherwise eluded the second Peter’s clutches till, should
+he seek much farther, he must burrow into the earth.
+
+We will not follow him in his triumphant progress step by step. Suffice
+it that Peter worked like a steam-engine and finished in that one
+winter the job which all the former inhabitants of the house, with time
+and the elements to aid them, had only half done in a century. Except
+the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted. The house was
+nothing but a shell, the apparition of a house, as unreal as the
+painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of a great
+cheese in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a cheese no
+more. And Peter was the mouse.
+
+What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burnt up, for she wisely
+considered that without a house they should need no wood to warm it,
+and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said
+to have dissolved in smoke and flown up among the clouds through the
+great black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirable parallel
+to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat.
+
+On the night between the last day of winter and the first of spring
+every chink and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts
+of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had
+set in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed about the
+atmosphere by a real hurricane which fought against the house as if the
+prince of the air in person were putting the final stroke to Peter’s
+labors. The framework being so much weakened and the inward props
+removed, it would have been no marvel if in some stronger wrestle of
+the blast the rotten walls of the edifice and all the peaked roofs had
+come crashing down upon the owner’s head. He, however, was careless of
+the peril, but as wild and restless as the night itself, or as the
+flame that quivered up the chimney at each roar of the tempestuous
+wind.
+
+“The wine, Tabitha,” he cried—“my grandfather’s rich old wine! We will
+drink it now.”
+
+Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner and
+placed the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp which
+had likewise been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before his
+eyes, and, looking through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen
+illuminated with a golden glory which also enveloped Tabitha and gilded
+her silver hair and converted her mean garments into robes of queenly
+splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.
+
+“Mr. Peter,” remarked Tabitha, “must the wine be drunk before the money
+is found?”
+
+“The money _is_ found!” exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness.
+“The chest is within my reach; I will not sleep till I have turned this
+key in the rusty lock. But first of all let us drink.”
+
+There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle
+with old Peter Goldthwaite’s rusty key, and decapitated the sealed cork
+at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups which Tabitha
+had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant was this aged
+wine that it shone within the cups and rendered the sprig of scarlet
+flowers at the bottom of each more distinctly visible than when there
+had been no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume wasted itself
+round the kitchen.
+
+“Drink, Tabitha!” cried Peter. “Blessings on the honest old fellow who
+set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here’s to Peter
+Goldthwaite’s memory!”
+
+“And good cause have we to remember him,” quoth Tabitha as she drank.
+
+How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various
+calamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be
+quaffed at last by two such boon-companions! A portion of the happiness
+of a former age had been kept for them, and was now set free in a crowd
+of rejoicing visions to sport amid the storm and desolation of the
+present time. Until they have finished the bottle we must turn our eyes
+elsewhere.
+
+It so chanced that on this stormy night Mr. John Brown found himself
+ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair by the glowing grate of
+anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good
+sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the misfortunes of others
+happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of his own
+prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his old partner,
+Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries and continual ill-luck, the
+poverty of his dwelling at Mr. Brown’s last visit, and Peter’s crazed
+and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the window.
+
+“Poor fellow!” thought Mr. John Brown. “Poor crack-brained Peter
+Goldthwaite! For old acquaintance’ sake I ought to have taken care that
+he was comfortable this rough winter.” These feelings grew so powerful
+that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit Peter
+Goldthwaite immediately.
+
+The strength of the impulse was really singular. Every shriek of the
+blast seemed a summons, or would have seemed so had Mr. Brown been
+accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much amazed
+at such active benevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak, muffled
+his throat and ears in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus
+fortified, bade defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had
+rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just weathering the corner
+by Peter Goldthwaite’s house when the hurricane caught him off his
+feet, tossed him face downward into a snow-bank and proceeded to bury
+his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There seemed little hope of
+his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same moment his hat
+was snatched away and whirled aloft into some far-distant region whence
+no tidings have as yet returned.
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a passage through the
+snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered
+onward to Peter’s door. There was such a creaking and groaning and
+rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice
+that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He
+therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen.
+His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with
+their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently
+they had just dragged from a cavity or concealed closet on the left
+side of the chimney. By the lamp in the old woman’s hand Mr. Brown saw
+that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with iron
+plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle in
+which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants of
+another.
+
+Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the lock.
+
+“Oh, Tabitha,” cried he, with tremulous rapture, “how shall I endure
+the effulgence? The gold!—the bright, bright gold! Methinks I can
+remember my last glance at it just as the iron-plated lid fell down.
+And ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret and
+gathering its splendor against this glorious moment. It will flash upon
+us like the noonday sun.”
+
+“Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter!” said Tabitha, with somewhat less
+patience than usual. “But, for mercy’s sake, do turn the key!”
+
+And with a strong effort of both hands Peter did force the rusty key
+through the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean time,
+had drawn near and thrust his eager visage between those of the other
+two at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze
+illuminated the kitchen.
+
+“What’s here?” exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles and holding
+the lamp over the open chest. “Old Peter Goldthwaite’s hoard of old
+rags!”
+
+“Pretty much so, Tabby,” said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the
+treasure.
+
+Oh what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised
+to scare himself out of his scanty wits withal! Here was the semblance
+of an incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town and build
+every street anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane man would have
+given a solid sixpence for. What, then, in sober earnest, were the
+delusive treasures of the chest? Why, here were old provincial bills of
+credit and treasury notes and bills of land-banks, and all other
+bubbles of the sort, from the first issue—above a century and a half
+ago—down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a thousand pounds were
+intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than they.
+
+“And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure!” said John Brown.
+“Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself; and when the
+provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per cent, he
+bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my grandfather say
+that old Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very house and land
+to raise cash for his silly project. But the currency kept sinking till
+nobody would take it as a gift, and there was old Peter Goldthwaite,
+like Peter the second, with thousands in his strong-box and hardly a
+coat to his back. He went mad upon the strength of it. But never mind,
+Peter; it is just the sort of capital for building castles in the air.”
+
+“The house will be down about our ears,” cried Tabitha as the wind
+shook it with increasing violence.
+
+“Let it fall,” said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself upon
+the chest.
+
+“No, no, my old friend Peter!” said John Brown. “I have house-room for
+you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow we
+will try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house; real
+estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome price.”
+
+“And I,” observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits, “have a
+plan for laying out the cash to great advantage.”
+
+“Why, as to that,” muttered John Brown to himself, “we must apply to
+the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if
+Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it to his heart’s content
+with old Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure.”
+
+
+
+
+CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL
+
+
+Passing a summer several years since at Edgartown, on the island of
+Martha’s Vineyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of
+tombstones who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of
+Massachusetts in search of professional employment. The speculation had
+turned out so successful that my friend expected to transmute slate and
+marble into silver and gold to the amount of at least a thousand
+dollars during the few months of his sojourn at Nantucket and the
+Vineyard. The secluded life and the simple and primitive spirit which
+still characterizes the inhabitants of those islands, especially of
+Martha’s Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer
+remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bustle of the world
+can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet, while every family is
+anxious to erect a memorial to its departed members, the untainted
+breath of Ocean bestows such health and length of days upon the people
+of the isles as would cause a melancholy dearth of business to a
+resident artist in that line. His own monument, recording his decease
+by starvation, would probably be an early specimen of his skill.
+Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an article of imported
+merchandise.
+
+In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown—where the dead have
+lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned
+to its original barrenness—in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much
+variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated a century back
+or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers and are adorned
+with a multiplicity of death’s-heads, crossbones, scythes,
+hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here and
+there a winged cherub to direct the mourner’s spirit upward. These
+productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the colonial
+skill of the day, and were probably carved in London and brought across
+the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely isle. The
+more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the ordinary style,
+without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald inscriptions.
+But others—and those far the most impressive both to my taste and
+feelings—were roughly hewn from the gray rocks of the island, evidently
+by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives. On some
+there were merely the initials of a name; some were inscribed with
+misspelt prose or rhyme, in deep letters which the moss and wintry rain
+of many years had not been able to obliterate. These, these were graves
+where loved ones slept. It is an old theme of satire, the falsehood and
+vanity of monumental eulogies; but when affection and sorrow grave the
+letters with their own painful labor, then we may be sure that they
+copy from the record on their hearts.
+
+My acquaintance the sculptor—he may share that title with Greenough,
+since the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael—had found a
+ready market for all his blank slabs of marble and full occupation in
+lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of
+the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and
+singleness both of heart and mind which, methinks, is more rarely found
+among us Yankees than in any other community of people. In spite of his
+gray head and wrinkled brow, he was quite like a child in all matters
+save what had some reference to his own business; he seemed, unless my
+fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation than as people in
+want of tombstones, and his literary attainments evidently comprehended
+very little either of prose or poetry which had not at one time or
+other been inscribed on slate or marble. His sole task and office among
+the immortal pilgrims of the tomb—the duty for which Providence had
+sent the old man into the world, as it were with a chisel in his
+hand—was to label the dead bodies, lest their names should be forgotten
+at the resurrection. Yet he had not failed, within a narrow scope, to
+gather a few sprigs of earthly, and more than earthly, wisdom—the
+harvest of many a grave. And, lugubrious as his calling might appear,
+he was as cheerful an old soul as health and integrity and lack of care
+could make him, and used to set to work upon one sorrowful inscription
+or another with that sort of spirit which impels a man to sing at his
+labor. On the whole, I found Mr. Wigglesworth an entertaining, and
+often instructive, if not an interesting, character; and, partly for
+the charm of his society, and still more because his work has an
+invariable attraction for “man that is born of woman,” I was accustomed
+to spend some hours a day at his workshop. The quaintness of his
+remarks and their not infrequent truth—a truth condensed and pointed by
+the limited sphere of his view—gave a raciness to his talk which mere
+worldliness and general cultivation would at once have destroyed.
+
+Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits of the various
+qualities of marble, numerous slabs of which were resting against the
+walls of the shop, or sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly
+without a word on either side while I watched how neatly his chisel
+struck out letter after letter of the names of the Nortons, the
+Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial families of the
+Vineyard. Often with an artist’s pride the good old sculptor would
+speak of favorite productions of his skill which were scattered
+throughout the village graveyards of New England. But my chief and most
+instructive amusement was to witness his interviews with his customers,
+who held interminable consultations about the form and fashion of the
+desired monuments, the buried excellence to be commemorated, the
+anguish to be expressed, and finally the lowest price in dollars and
+cents for which a marble transcript of their feelings might be
+obtained. Really, my mind received many fresh ideas which perhaps may
+remain in it even longer than Mr. Wigglesworth’s hardest marble will
+retain the deepest strokes of his chisel.
+
+An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had
+been killed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean no less than forty years
+before. It was singular that so strong an impression of early feeling
+should have survived through the changes of her subsequent life, in the
+course of which she had been a wife and a mother, and, so far as I
+could judge, a comfortable and happy woman. Reflecting within myself,
+it appeared to me that this lifelong sorrow—as, in all good faith, she
+deemed it—was one of the most fortunate circumstances of her history.
+It had given an ideality to her mind; it had kept her purer and less
+earthy than she would otherwise have been by drawing a portion of her
+sympathies apart from earth. Amid the throng of enjoyments and the
+pressure of worldly care and all the warm materialism of this life she
+had communed with a vision, and had been the better for such
+intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her maturity, and loving him
+with a far more real affection than she ever could have felt for this
+dream of her girlhood, there had still been an imaginative faith to the
+ocean-buried; so that an ordinary character had thus been elevated and
+refined. Her sighs had been the breath of Heaven to her soul. The good
+lady earnestly desired that the proposed monument should be ornamented
+with a carved border of marine plants interwined with twisted
+sea-shells, such as were probably waving over her lover’s skeleton or
+strewn around it in the far depths of the Pacific. But, Mr.
+Wigglesworth’s chisel being inadequate to the task, she was forced to
+content herself with a rose hanging its head from a broken stem.
+
+After her departure I remarked that the symbol was none of the most
+apt.
+
+“And yet,” said my friend the sculptor, embodying in this image the
+thoughts that had been passing through my own mind, “that broken rose
+has shed its sweet smell through forty years of the good woman’s life.”
+
+It was seldom that I could find such pleasant food for contemplation as
+in the above instance. None of the applicants, I think, affected me
+more disagreeably than an old man who came, with his fourth wife
+hanging on his arm, to bespeak gravestones for the three former
+occupants of his marriage-bed. I watched with some anxiety to see
+whether his remembrance of either were more affectionate than of the
+other two, but could discover no symptom of the kind. The three
+monuments were all to be of the same material and form, and each
+decorated in bas-relief with two weeping willows, one of these
+sympathetic trees bending over its fellow, which was to be broken in
+the midst and rest upon a sepulchral urn. This, indeed, was Mr.
+Wigglesworth’s standing emblem of conjugal bereavement. I shuddered at
+the gray polygamist who had so utterly lost the holy sense of
+individuality in wedlock that methought he was fain to reckon upon his
+fingers how many women who had once slept by his side were now sleeping
+in their graves. There was even—if I wrong him, it is no great matter—a
+glance sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were inclined to drive a
+thriftier bargain by bespeaking four gravestones in a lot.
+
+I was better pleased with a rough old whaling-captain who gave
+directions for a broad marble slab divided into two compartments, one
+of which was to contain an epitaph on his deceased wife and the other
+to be left vacant till death should engrave his own name there. As is
+frequently the case among the whalers of Martha’s Vineyard, so much of
+this storm-beaten widower’s life had been tossed away on distant seas
+that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent scarce three, and
+those at scattered intervals, beneath his own roof. Thus the wife of
+his youth, though she died in his and her declining age, retained the
+bridal dewdrops fresh around her memory.
+
+My observations gave me the idea, and Mr. Wigglesworth confirmed it,
+that husbands were more faithful in setting up memorials to their dead
+wives than widows to their dead husbands. I was not ill-natured enough
+to fancy that women less than men feel so sure of their own constancy
+as to be willing to give a pledge of it in marble. It is more probably
+the fact that, while men are able to reflect upon their lost companions
+as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other hand, are
+conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the departed
+whithersoever he has gone. Soul clings to soul, the living dust has a
+sympathy with the dust of the grave; and by the very strength of that
+sympathy the wife of the dead shrinks the more sensitively from
+reminding the world of its existence. The link is already strong
+enough; it needs no visible symbol. And, though a shadow walks ever by
+her side and the touch of a chill hand is on her bosom, yet life, and
+perchance its natural yearnings, may still be warm within her and
+inspire her with new hopes of happiness. Then would she mark out the
+grave the scent of which would be perceptible on the pillow of the
+second bridal? No, but rather level its green mound with the
+surrounding earth, as if, when she dug up again her buried heart, the
+spot had ceased to be a grave.
+
+Yet, in spite of these sentimentalities, I was prodigiously amused by
+an incident of which I had not the good-fortune to be a witness, but
+which Mr. Wigglesworth related with considerable humor. A gentlewoman
+of the town, receiving news of her husband’s loss at sea, had bespoken
+a handsome slab of marble, and came daily to watch the progress of my
+friend’s chisel. One afternoon, when the good lady and the sculptor
+were in the very midst of the epitaph—which the departed spirit might
+have been greatly comforted to read—who should walk into the workshop
+but the deceased himself, in substance as well as spirit! He had been
+picked up at sea, and stood in no present need of tombstone or epitaph.
+
+“And how,” inquired I, “did his wife bear the shock of joyful
+surprise?”
+
+“Why,” said the old man, deepening the grin of a death’s-head on which
+his chisel was just then employed, “I really felt for the poor woman;
+it was one of my best pieces of marble—and to be thrown away on a
+living man!”
+
+A comely woman with a pretty rosebud of a daughter came to select a
+gravestone for a twin-daughter, who had died a month before. I was
+impressed with the different nature of their feelings for the dead. The
+mother was calm and woefully resigned, fully conscious of her loss, as
+of a treasure which she had not always possessed, and therefore had
+been aware that it might be taken from her; but the daughter evidently
+had no real knowledge of what Death’s doings were. Her thoughts knew,
+but not her heart. It seemed to me that by the print and pressure which
+the dead sister had left upon the survivor’s spirit her feelings were
+almost the same as if she still stood side by side and arm in arm with
+the departed, looking at the slabs of marble, and once or twice she
+glanced around with a sunny smile, which, as its sister-smile had faded
+for ever, soon grew confusedly overshadowed. Perchance her
+consciousness was truer than her reflection; perchance her dead sister
+was a closer companion than in life.
+
+The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth about
+a suitable epitaph, and finally chose an ordinary verse of ill-matched
+rhymes which had already been inscribed upon innumerable tombstones.
+But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses, we forget that
+Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds a profound and
+individual purport in what seems so vague and inexpressive unless
+interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew, though the selfsame
+words may have served for a thousand graves.
+
+“And yet,” said I afterward to Mr. Wigglesworth, “they might have made
+a better choice than this. While you were discussing the subject I was
+struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the lips
+of both mother and daughter. One of these would have formed an
+inscription equally original and appropriate.”
+
+“No, no!” replied the sculptor, shaking his head; “there is a good deal
+of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry, and
+so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones. And
+somehow they seem to stretch to suit a great grief and shrink to fit a
+small one.”
+
+It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took place
+between Mr. Wigglesworth and his customers. A shrewd gentlewoman who
+kept a tavern in the town was anxious to obtain two or three
+gravestones for the deceased members of her family, and to pay for
+these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor to board. Hereupon a
+fantasy arose in my mind of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting down to
+dinner at a broad, flat tombstone carving one of his own plump little
+marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of crossbones and drinking out of a
+hollow death’s-head or perhaps a lachrymatory vase or sepulchral urn,
+while his hostess’s dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet.
+On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man he laughed
+heartily and pronounced my humor to be of the right sort.
+
+“I have lived at such a table all my days,” said he, “and eaten no
+small quantity of slate and marble.”
+
+“Hard fare,” rejoined I, smiling, “but you seemed to have found it
+excellent of digestion, too.”
+
+A man of fifty or thereabouts with a harsh, unpleasant countenance
+ordered a stone for the grave of his bitter enemy, with whom he had
+waged warfare half a lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The
+secret of this phenomenon was that hatred had become the sustenance and
+enjoyment of the poor wretch’s soul; it had supplied the place of all
+kindly affections; it had been really a bond of sympathy between
+himself and the man who shared the passion; and when its object died,
+the unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead. He expressed a
+purpose of being buried side by side with his enemy.
+
+“I doubt whether their dust will mingle,” remarked the old sculptor to
+me; for often there was an earthliness in his conceptions.
+
+“Oh yes,” replied I, who had mused long upon the incident; “and when
+they rise again, these bitter foes may find themselves dear friends.
+Methinks what they mistook for hatred was but love under a mask.”
+
+A gentleman of antiquarian propensities provided a memorial for an
+Indian of Chabbiquidick—one of the few of untainted blood remaining in
+that region, and said to be a hereditary chieftain descended from the
+sachem who welcomed Governor Mayhew to the Vineyard. Mr. Wiggles-worth
+exerted his best skill to carve a broken bow and scattered sheaf of
+arrows in memory of the hunters and warriors whose race was ended here,
+but he likewise sculptured a cherub, to denote that the poor Indian had
+shared the Christian’s hope of immortality.
+
+“Why,” observed I, taking a perverse view of the winged boy and the bow
+and arrows, “it looks more like Cupid’s tomb than an Indian chief’s.”
+
+“You talk nonsense,” said the sculptor, with the offended pride of art.
+He then added with his usual good-nature, “How can Cupid die when there
+are such pretty maidens in the Vineyard?”
+
+“Very true,” answered I; and for the rest of the day I thought of other
+matters than tombstones.
+
+At our next meeting I found him chiselling an open book upon a marble
+headstone, and concluded that it was meant to express the erudition of
+some black-letter clergyman of the Cotton Mather school. It turned out,
+however, to be emblematical of the scriptural knowledge of an old woman
+who had never read anything but her Bible, and the monument was a
+tribute to her piety and good works from the orthodox church of which
+she had been a member. In strange contrast with this Christian woman’s
+memorial was that of an infidel whose gravestone, by his own direction,
+bore an avowal of his belief that the spirit within him would be
+extinguished like a flame, and that the nothingness whence he sprang
+would receive him again.
+
+Mr. Wigglesworth consulted me as to the propriety of enabling a dead
+man’s dust to utter this dreadful creed.
+
+“If I thought,” said he, “that a single mortal would read the
+inscription without a shudder, my chisel should never cut a letter of
+it. But when the grave speaks such falsehoods, the soul of man will
+know the truth by its own horror.”
+
+“So it will,” said I, struck by the idea. “The poor infidel may strive
+to preach blasphemies from his grave, but it will be only another
+method of impressing the soul with a consciousness of immortality.”
+
+There was an old man by the name of Norton, noted throughout the island
+for his great wealth, which he had accumulated by the exercise of
+strong and shrewd faculties combined with a most penurious disposition.
+This wretched miser, conscious that he had not a friend to be mindful
+of him in his grave, had himself taken the needful precautions for
+posthumous remembrance by bespeaking an immense slab of white marble
+with a long epitaph in raised letters, the whole to be as magnificent
+as Mr. Wigglesworth’s skill could make it. There was something very
+characteristic in this contrivance to have his money’s worth even from
+his own tombstone, which, indeed, afforded him more enjoyment in the
+few months that he lived thereafter than it probably will in a whole
+century, now that it is laid over his bones.
+
+This incident reminds me of a young girl—a pale, slender, feeble
+creature most unlike the other rosy and healthful damsels of the
+Vineyard, amid whose brightness she was fading away. Day after day did
+the poor maiden come to the sculptor’s shop and pass from one piece of
+marble to another, till at last she pencilled her name upon a slender
+slab which, I think, was of a more spotless white than all the rest. I
+saw her no more, but soon afterward found Mr. Wigglesworth cutting her
+virgin-name into the stone which she had chosen.
+
+“She is dead, poor girl!” said he, interrupting the tune which he was
+whistling, “and she chose a good piece of stuff for her headstone. Now,
+which of these slabs would you like best to see your own name upon?”
+
+“Why, to tell you the truth, my good Mr. Wigglesworth,” replied I,
+after a moment’s pause, for the abruptness of the question had somewhat
+startled me—“to be quite sincere with you, I care little or nothing
+about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to scepticism
+as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the dust that
+once was human. The weight of these heavy marbles, though unfelt by the
+dead corpse or the enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the spirit
+of the survivor and causes him to connect the idea of death with the
+dungeon-like imprisonment of the tomb, instead of with the freedom of
+the skies. Every gravestone that you ever made is the visible symbol of
+a mistaken system. Our thoughts should soar upward with the butterfly,
+not linger with the exuviæ that confined him. In truth and reason,
+neither those whom we call the living, and still less the departed,
+have anything to do with the grave.”
+
+“I never heard anything so heathenish,” said Mr. Wigglesworth,
+perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his
+notions and feelings and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his
+whole life’s labor. “Would you forget your dead friends the moment they
+are under the sod?”
+
+“They are not under the sod,” I rejoined; “then why should I mark the
+spot where there is no treasure hidden? Forget them? No; but, to
+remember them aright, I would forget what they have cast off. And to
+gain the truer conception of death I would forget the grave.”
+
+But still the good old sculptor murmured, and stumbled, as it were,
+over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life. Whether he
+were right or wrong, I had grown the wiser from our companionship and
+from my observations of nature and character as displayed by those who
+came, with their old griefs or their new ones, to get them recorded
+upon his slabs of marble. And yet with my gain of wisdom I had likewise
+gained perplexity; for there was a strange doubt in my mind whether the
+dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and regrets, have not as much
+real comfort in them—leaving religious influences out of the
+question—as what we term life’s joys.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHAKER BRIDAL
+
+
+One day, in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty
+years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there
+was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect. Individuals
+had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury,
+Harvard and Alfred, and from all the other localities where this
+strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by their
+systematic industry. An elder was likewise there who had made a
+pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in
+Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted
+Mother Ann. He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables,
+had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred
+dance every step of which is believed to alienate the enthusiast from
+earth and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss. His brethren of
+the North had now courteously invited him to be present on an occasion
+when the concurrence of every eminent member of their community was
+peculiarly desirable.
+
+The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair, not only
+hoary-headed and infirm with age, but worn down by a lingering disease
+which it was evident would very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to
+other hands. At his footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the
+Shaker garb.
+
+“My brethren,” said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders, feebly
+exerting himself to utter these few words, “here are the son and
+daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about
+to lighten my weary shoulders. Read their faces, I pray you, and say
+whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice
+aright.”
+
+Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most
+scrutinizing gaze. The man—whose name was Adam Colburn—had a face
+sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and
+traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely
+reached middle age. There was something severe in his aspect and a
+rigidity throughout his person—characteristics that caused him
+generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he
+had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson,
+was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost
+invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance
+which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.
+
+“This pair are still in the summer of their years,” observed the elder
+from Harvard, a shrewd old man. “I would like better to see the
+hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be
+exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which
+have heretofore subsisted between them.”
+
+“Nay, brother,” said the elder from Canterbury; “the hoar-frost and the
+black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha, even
+as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they are yet
+green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable Father’s
+purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved one another
+as the world’s people love? Are there not many brethren and sisters
+among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet, adopting our
+faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual affection?”
+
+Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it
+inexpedient that they should now preside together over a Shaker
+village, it was certainly most singular that such should be the final
+result of many warm and tender hopes. Children of neighboring families,
+their affection was older even than their school-days; it seemed an
+innate principle interfused among all their sentiments and feelings,
+and not so much a distinct remembrance as connected with their whole
+volume of remembrances. But just as they reached a proper age for their
+union misfortunes had fallen heavily on both and made it necessary that
+they should resort to personal labor for a bare subsistence. Even under
+these circumstances Martha Pierson would probably have consented to
+unite her fate with Adam Colburn’s, and, secure of the bliss of mutual
+love, would patiently have awaited the less important gifts of Fortune.
+But Adam, being of a calm and cautious character, was loth to
+relinquish the advantages which a single man possesses for raising
+himself in the world. Year after year, therefore, their marriage had
+been deferred.
+
+Adam Colburn had followed many vocations, had travelled far and seen
+much of the world and of life. Martha had earned her bread sometimes as
+a sempstress, sometimes as help to a farmer’s wife, sometimes as
+schoolmistress of the village children, sometimes as a nurse or watcher
+of the sick, thus acquiring a varied experience the ultimate use of
+which she little anticipated. But nothing had gone prosperously with
+either of the lovers; at no subsequent moment would matrimony have been
+so prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the opening
+bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still, they had held fast
+their mutual faith. Martha might have been the wife of a man who sat
+among the senators of his native State, and Adam could have won the
+hand, as he had unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and comely
+widow. But neither of them desired good-fortune save to share it with
+the other.
+
+At length that calm despair which occurs only in a strong and somewhat
+stubborn character and yields to no second spring of hope settled down
+on the spirit of Adam Colburn. He sought an interview with Martha and
+proposed that they should join the Society of Shakers. The converts of
+this sect are oftener driven within its hospitable gates by worldly
+misfortune than drawn thither by fanaticism, and are received without
+inquisition as to their motives. Martha, faithful still, had placed her
+hand in that of her lover and accompanied him to the Shaker village.
+Here the natural capacity of each, cultivated and strengthened by the
+difficulties of their previous lives, had soon gained them an important
+rank in the society, whose members are generally below the ordinary
+standard of intelligence. Their faith and feelings had in some degree
+become assimilated to those of their fellow-worshippers. Adam Colburn
+gradually acquired reputation not only in the management of the
+temporal affairs of the society, but as a clear and efficient preacher
+of their doctrines. Martha was not less distinguished in the duties
+proper to her sex. Finally, when the infirmities of Father Ephraim had
+admonished him to seek a successor in his patriarchal office, he
+thought of Adam and Martha, and proposed to renew in their persons the
+primitive form of Shaker government as established by Mother Ann. They
+were to be the father and mother of the village. The simple ceremony
+which would constitute them such was now to be performed.
+
+“Son Adam and daughter Martha,” said the venerable Father Ephraim,
+fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, “if ye can conscientiously
+undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your
+fitness.”
+
+“Father,” replied Adam, speaking with the calmness of his character, “I
+came to your village a disappointed man, weary of the world, worn out
+with continual trouble, seeking only a security against evil fortune,
+as I had no hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success were almost
+dead within me. I came hither as a man might come to a tomb willing to
+lie down in its gloom and coldness for the sake of its peace and quiet.
+There was but one earthly affection in my breast, and it had grown
+calmer since my youth; so that I was satisfied to bring Martha to be my
+sister in our new abode. We are brother and sister, nor would I have it
+otherwise. And in this peaceful village I have found all that I hope
+for—all that I desire. I will strive with my best strength for the
+spiritual and temporal good of our community. My conscience is not
+doubtful in this matter. I am ready to receive the trust.”
+
+“Thou hast spoken well, son Adam,” said the father. “God will bless
+thee in the office which I am about to resign.”
+
+“But our sister,” observed the elder from Harvard. “Hath she not
+likewise a gift to declare her sentiments?”
+
+Martha started and moved her lips as if she would have made a formal
+reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old
+recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and
+womanhood, might have gushed from her heart in words that it would have
+been profanation to utter there.
+
+“Adam has spoken,” said she, hurriedly; “his sentiments are likewise
+mine.”
+
+But while speaking these few words Martha grew so pale that she looked
+fitter to be laid in her coffin than to stand in the presence of Father
+Ephraim and the elders; she shuddered, also, as if there were something
+awful or horrible in her situation and destiny. It required, indeed, a
+more than feminine strength of nerve to sustain the fixed observance of
+men so exalted and famous throughout the sect as these were. They had
+overcome their natural sympathy with human frailties and affections.
+One, when he joined the society, had brought with him his wife and
+children, but never from that hour had spoken a fond word to the former
+or taken his best-loved child upon his knee. Another, whose family
+refused to follow him, had been enabled—such was his gift of holy
+fortitude—to leave them to the mercy of the world. The youngest of the
+elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from infancy in a Shaker
+village, and was said never to have clasped a woman’s hand in his own,
+and to have no conception of a closer tie than the cold fraternal one
+of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the most awful character of all. In
+his youth he had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by
+Mother Ann herself, and had partaken of the wild fanaticism of the
+early Shakers. Tradition whispered at the firesides of the village that
+Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot
+iron before it could be purified from earthly passions.
+
+However that might be, poor Martha had a woman’s heart, and a tender
+one, and it quailed within her as she looked round at those strange old
+men, and from them to the calm features of Adam Colburn. But,
+perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath
+and again spoke.
+
+“With what strength is left me by my many troubles,” said she, “I am
+ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it.”
+
+“My children, join your hands,” said Father Ephraim.
+
+They did so. The elders stood up around, and the father feebly raised
+himself to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great
+chair.
+
+“I have bidden you to join your hands,” said he, “not in earthly
+affection, for ye have cast off its chains for ever, but as brother and
+sister in spiritual love and helpers of one another in your allotted
+task. Teach unto others the faith which ye have received. Open wide
+your gates—I deliver you the keys thereof—open them wide to all who
+will give up the iniquities of the world and come hither to lead lives
+of purity and peace. Receive the weary ones who have known the vanity
+of earth; receive the little children, that they may never learn that
+miserable lesson. And a blessing be upon your labors; so that the time
+may hasten on when the mission of Mother Ann shall have wrought its
+full effect, when children shall no more be born and die, and the last
+survivor of mortal race—some old and weary man like me—shall see the
+sun go down nevermore to rise on a world of sin and sorrow.”
+
+The aged father sank back exhausted, and the surrounding elders deemed,
+with good reason, that the hour was come when the new heads of the
+village must enter on their patriarchal duties. In their attention to
+Father Ephraim their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew
+paler and paler, unnoticed even by Adam Colburn. He, indeed, had
+withdrawn his hand from hers and folded his arms with a sense of
+satisfied ambition. But paler and paler grew Martha by his side, till,
+like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the feet of her
+early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could
+endure the weight of its desolate agony no longer.
+
+
+
+
+NIGHT-SKETCHES,
+
+BENEATH AN UMBRELLA
+
+Pleasant is a rainy winter’s day within-doors. The best study for such
+a day—or the best amusement: call it what you will—is a book of travels
+describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is mistily
+presented through the windows. I have experienced that Fancy is then
+most successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors to the
+objects which the author has spread upon his page, and that his words
+become magic spells to summon up a thousand varied pictures. Strange
+landscapes glimmer through the familiar walls of the room, and
+outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred precincts
+of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough to contain
+the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its parched sands
+tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels patiently
+journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be not lofty,
+yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it till their
+summits shine far above the clouds of the middle atmosphere. And with
+my humble means—a wealth that is not taxable—I can transport hither the
+magnificent merchandise of an Oriental bazaar, and call a crowd of
+purchasers from distant countries to pay a fair profit for the precious
+articles which are displayed on all sides. True it is, however, that
+amid the bustle of traffic, or whatever else may seem to be going on
+around me, the raindrops will occasionally be heard to patter against
+my window-panes, which look forth upon one of the quietest streets in a
+New England town. After a time, too, the visions vanish, and will not
+appear again at my bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of
+unreality depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out before the
+clock shall strike bedtime to satisfy myself that the world is not
+entirely made up of such shadowy materials as have busied me throughout
+the day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies that the things
+without him will seem as unreal as those within.
+
+When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly buttoning
+my shaggy overcoat and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome of which
+immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible
+raindrops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and
+cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and chill
+discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful auguries
+innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry shame upon me,
+I should turn back within-doors, resume my elbow-chair, my slippers and
+my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as the day has
+been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering reluctance, no
+doubt, has quelled for a moment the adventurous spirit of many a
+traveller when his feet, which were destined to measure the earth
+around, were leaving their last tracks in the home-paths.
+
+In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I
+look upward and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but only
+a black, impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its lights
+were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if Nature were
+dead and the world had put on black and the clouds were weeping for
+her. With their tears upon my cheek I turn my eyes earthward, but find
+little consolation here below. A lamp is burning dimly at the distant
+corner, and throws just enough of light along the street to show, and
+exaggerate by so faintly showing, the perils and difficulties which
+beset my path. Yonder dingily-white remnant of a huge snowbank, which
+will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days of March, over or
+through that wintry waste must I stride onward. Beyond lies a certain
+Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep,
+leg-deep, neck-deep—in a word, of unknown bottom—on which the lamplight
+does not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched in the
+gradual growth of its horrors from morn till nightfall. Should I
+flounder into its depths, farewell to upper earth! And hark! how
+roughly resounds the roaring of a stream the turbulent career of which
+is partially reddened by the gleam of the lamp, but elsewhere brawls
+noisily through the densest gloom! Oh, should I be swept away in
+fording that impetuous and unclean torrent, the coroner will have a job
+with an unfortunate gentleman who would fain end his troubles anywhere
+but in a mud-puddle.
+
+Pshaw! I will linger not another instant at arm’s-length from these dim
+terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable the longer I delay to
+grapple with them. Now for the onset, and, lo! with little damage save
+a dash of rain in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up the
+pantaloons and the left boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at the
+corner of the street. The lamp throws down a circle of red light around
+me, and twinkling onward from corner to corner I discern other beacons,
+marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a lonesome and
+dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to the storm with
+their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces a spattering
+gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin spouts! The
+puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from various
+quarters at once. I have often observed that this corner is a haunt and
+loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do upon the deep
+dashing ships against our iron-bound shores, nor in the forest tearing
+up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their vast roots. Here
+they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief. See, at this
+moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is passing just within
+the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her umbrella and
+turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of her cloak
+across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable liberties with
+the lower part of her attire. Happily, the good dame is no gossamer,
+but a figure of rotundity and fleshly substance; else would these
+aerial tormentors whirl her aloft like a witch upon a broomstick, and
+set her down, doubtless, in the filthiest kennel hereabout.
+
+From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town.
+Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great
+victory has been won either on the battlefield or at the polls. Two
+rows of shops with windows down nearly to the ground cast a glow from
+side to side, while the black night hangs overhead like a canopy, and
+thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks
+gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the
+sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the
+scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around
+their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till
+they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can
+be dispelled only by radiance from above.
+
+And, after all, it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the
+wanderers in it. Here comes one who has so long been familiar with
+tempestuous weather that he takes the bluster of the storm for a
+friendly greeting, as if it should say, “How fare ye, brother?” He is a
+retired sea-captain wrapped in some nameless garment of the pea-jacket
+order, and is now laying his course toward the marine-insurance office,
+there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck with a crew of old seadogs
+like himself. The blast will put in its word among their hoarse voices,
+and be understood by all of them. Next I meet an unhappy slipshod
+gentleman with a cloak flung hastily over his shoulders, running a race
+with boisterous winds and striving to glide between the drops of rain.
+Some domestic emergency or other has blown this miserable man from his
+warm fireside in quest of a doctor. See that little vagabond! How
+carelessly he has taken his stand right underneath a spout while
+staring at some object of curiosity in a shop-window! Surely the rain
+is his native element; he must have fallen with it from the clouds, as
+frogs are supposed to do.
+
+Here is a picture, and a pretty one—a young man and a girl, both
+enveloped in cloaks and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a
+cotton umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his
+dancing-pumps, and they are on their way no doubt, to some
+cotillon-party or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments
+included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward
+by a vision of festal splendor. But ah! a most lamentable disaster!
+Bewildered by the red, blue and yellow meteors in an apothecary’s
+window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are
+precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two
+streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a
+looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be,
+I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your
+fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye
+touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph and
+a river-deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths of the dark
+pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, disconsolate, abashed, but with
+love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a test
+which proves too strong for many. Faithful though over head and ears in
+trouble!
+
+Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied
+aspect of mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the
+lighted windows or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that
+mine is altogether a chameleon spirit with no hue of its own. Now I
+pass into a more retired street where the dwellings of wealth and
+poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly-contrasted
+pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder
+casement I discern a family circle—the grandmother, the parents and the
+children—all flickering, shadow-like, in the glow of a
+wood-fire.—Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against
+the window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside.—Surely
+my fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my
+bosom night and storm and solitude instead of wife and children. Peace,
+murmurer! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the hearth,
+though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images.
+
+Well, here is still a brighter scene—a stately mansion illuminated for
+a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every room,
+and sunny landscapes hanging round the walls. See! a coach has stopped,
+whence emerges a slender beauty who, canopied by two umbrellas, glides
+within the portal and vanishes amid lightsome thrills of music. Will
+she ever feel the night-wind and the rain? Perhaps—perhaps! And will
+Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud mansion? As surely as the
+dancers will be gay within its halls to-night. Such thoughts sadden yet
+satisfy my heart, for they teach me that the poor man in this mean,
+weatherbeaten hovel, without a fire to cheer him, may call the rich his
+brother—brethren by Sorrow, who must be an inmate of both their
+households; brethren by Death, who will lead them both to other homes.
+
+Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the
+utmost limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with
+the darkness like the farthest star that stands sentinel on the borders
+of uncreated space. It is strange what sensations of sublimity may
+spring from a very humble source. Such are suggested by this hollow
+roar of a subterranean cataract where the mighty stream of a kennel
+precipitates itself beneath an iron grate and is seen no more on earth.
+Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will magnify it till
+you start and smile at the illusion. And now another sound—the rumbling
+of wheels as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls heavily off the
+pavements and splashes through the mud and water of the road. All night
+long the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro between drowsy watch
+and troubled sleep, and will dream of their own quiet beds and awake to
+find themselves still jolting onward. Happier my lot, who will
+straightway hie me to my familiar room and toast myself comfortably
+before the fire, musing and fitfully dozing and fancying a strangeness
+in such sights as all may see. But first let me gaze at this solitary
+figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern which throws the
+circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground about him. He
+passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will not follow
+him.
+
+This figure shall supply me with a moral wherewith, for lack of a more
+appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the
+dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the
+fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again.
+And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we
+bear the lamp of Faith enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely
+lead us home to that heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.
+
+
+
+
+ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS
+
+
+At noon of an autumnal day more than two centuries ago the English
+colors were displayed by the standard bearer of the Salem train-band,
+which had mustered for martial exercise under the orders of John
+Endicott. It was a period when the religious exiles were accustomed
+often to buckle on their armor and practise the handling of their
+weapons of war. Since the first settlement of New England its prospects
+had never been so dismal. The dissensions between Charles I. and his
+subjects were then, and for several years afterward, confined to the
+floor of Parliament. The measures of the king and ministry were
+rendered more tyrannically violent by an opposition which had not yet
+acquired sufficient confidence in its own strength to resist royal
+injustice with the sword. The bigoted and haughty primate Laud,
+archbishop of Canterbury, controlled the religious affairs of the
+realm, and was consequently invested with powers which might have
+wrought the utter ruin of the two Puritan colonies, Plymouth and
+Massachusetts. There is evidence on record that our forefathers
+perceived their danger, but were resolved that their infant country
+should not fall without a struggle, even beneath the giant strength of
+the king’s right arm.
+
+Such was the aspect of the times when the folds of the English banner
+with the red cross in its field were flung out over a company of
+Puritans. Their leader, the famous Endicott, was a man of stern and
+resolute countenance, the effect of which was heightened by a grizzled
+beard that swept the upper portion of his breastplate. This piece of
+armor was so highly polished that the whole surrounding scene had its
+image in the glittering steel. The central object in the mirrored
+picture was an edifice of humble architecture with neither steeple nor
+bell to proclaim it—what, nevertheless, it was—the house of prayer. A
+token of the perils of the wilderness was seen in the grim head of a
+wolf which had just been slain within the precincts of the town, and,
+according to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed on the
+porch of the meeting-house. The blood was still plashing on the
+doorstep. There happened to be visible at the same noontide hour so
+many other characteristics of the times and manners of the Puritans
+that we must endeavor to represent them in a sketch, though far less
+vividly than they were reflected in the polished breastplate of John
+Endicott.
+
+In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important engine
+of Puritanic authority the whipping-post, with the soil around it well
+trodden by the feet of evil-doers who had there been disciplined. At
+one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory and at the other the
+stocks, and, by a singular good fortune for our sketch, the head of an
+Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely encased in the
+former machine, while a fellow-criminal who had boisterously quaffed a
+health to the king was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by side
+on the meeting-house steps stood a male and a female figure. The man
+was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bearing on his
+breast this label, “A WANTON GOSPELLER,” which betokened that he had
+dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the
+infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect
+showed no lack of zeal to maintain his heterodoxies even at the stake.
+The woman wore a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribution
+for having wagged that unruly member against the elders of the church,
+and her countenance and gestures gave much cause to apprehend that the
+moment the stick should be removed a repetition of the offence would
+demand new ingenuity in chastising it.
+
+The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced to undergo their
+various modes of ignominy for the space of one hour at noonday. But
+among the crowd were several whose punishment would be lifelong—some
+whose ears had been cropped like those of puppy-dogs, others whose
+cheeks had been branded with the initials of their misdemeanors; one
+with his nostrils slit and seared, and another with a halter about his
+neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off or to conceal beneath his
+garments. Methinks he must have been grievously tempted to affix the
+other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough. There was
+likewise a young woman with no mean share of beauty whose doom it was
+to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown in the eyes of all the
+world and her own children. And even her own children knew what that
+initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate
+creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth with golden
+thread and the nicest art of needlework; so that the capital A might
+have been thought to mean “Admirable,” or anything rather than
+“Adulteress.”
+
+Let not the reader argue from any of these evidences of iniquity that
+the times of the Puritans were more vicious than our own, when as we
+pass along the very street of this sketch we discern no badge of infamy
+on man or woman. It was the policy of our ancestors to search out even
+the most secret sins and expose them to shame, without fear or favor,
+in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were such the custom now,
+perchance we might find materials for a no less piquant sketch than the
+above.
+
+Except the malefactors whom we have described and the diseased or
+infirm persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen
+years and sixty were seen in the ranks of the train-band. A few stately
+savages in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian stood gazing
+at the spectacle. Their flint-headed arrows were but childish weapons,
+compared with the matchlocks of the Puritans, and would have rattled
+harmlessly against the steel caps and hammered iron breastplates which
+enclosed each soldier in an individual fortress. The valiant John
+Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy followers, and
+prepared to renew the martial toils of the day.
+
+“Come, my stout hearts!” quoth he, drawing his sword. “Let us show
+these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might.
+Well for them if they put us not to prove it in earnest!”
+
+The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and each man drew
+the heavy butt of his matchlock close to his left foot, thus awaiting
+the orders of the captain. But as Endicott glanced right and left along
+the front he discovered a personage at some little distance with whom
+it behoved him to hold a parley. It was an elderly gentleman wearing a
+black cloak and band and a high-crowned hat beneath which was a velvet
+skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan minister. This
+reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been recently cut in
+the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as if he had been travelling on
+foot through the swamps of the wilderness. His aspect was perfectly
+that of a pilgrim, heightened also by an apostolic dignity. Just as
+Endicott perceived him he laid aside his staff and stooped to drink at
+a bubbling fountain which gushed into the sunshine about a score of
+yards from the corner of the meeting-house. But ere the good man drank
+he turned his face heavenward in thankfulness, and then, holding back
+his gray beard with one hand, he scooped up his simple draught in the
+hollow of the other.
+
+“What ho, good Mr. Williams!” shouted Endicott. “You are welcome back
+again to our town of peace. How does our worthy Governor Winthrop? And
+what news from Boston?”
+
+“The governor hath his health, worshipful sir,” answered Roger
+Williams, now resuming his staff and drawing near. “And, for the news,
+here is a letter which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, His
+Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it contains tidings of much
+import, for a ship arrived yesterday from England.”
+
+Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course known to all the
+spectators, had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under
+the banner of his company, and put the governor’s epistle into his
+hand. The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop’s coat-of-arms.
+Endicott hastily unclosed the letter and began to read, while, as his
+eye passed down the page, a wrathful change came over his manly
+countenance. The blood glowed through it till it seemed to be kindling
+with an internal heat, nor was it unnatural to suppose that his
+breastplate would likewise become red hot with the angry fire of the
+bosom which it covered. Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the letter
+fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag above his
+head.
+
+“Black tidings these, Mr. Williams,” said he; “blacker never came to
+New England. Doubtless you know their purport?”
+
+“Yea, truly,” replied Roger Williams, “for the governor consulted
+respecting this matter with my brethren in the ministry at Boston, and
+my opinion was likewise asked. And His Excellency entreats you by me
+that the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be stirred
+up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the king and the archbishop a
+handle against us.”
+
+“The governor is a wise man—a wise man, and a meek and moderate,” said
+Endicott, setting his teeth grimly. “Nevertheless, I must do according
+to my own best judgment. There is neither man, woman nor child in New
+England but has a concern as dear as life in these tidings; and if John
+Endicott’s voice be loud enough, man, woman and child shall hear
+them.—Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square.—Ho, good people! Here are
+news for one and all of you.”
+
+The soldiers closed in around their captain, and he and Roger Williams
+stood together under the banner of the red cross, while the women and
+the aged men pressed forward and the mothers held up their children to
+look Endicott in the face. A few taps of the drum gave signal for
+silence and attention.
+
+“Fellow-soldiers, fellow-exiles,” began Endicott, speaking under strong
+excitement, yet powerfully restraining it, “wherefore did ye leave your
+native country? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green and fertile
+fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls, where we were
+born and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie buried?
+Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in a
+wilderness? A howling wilderness it is. The wolf and the bear meet us
+within halloo of our dwellings. The savage lieth in wait for us in the
+dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of the trees break our
+ploughshares when we would till the earth. Our children cry for bread,
+and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them.
+Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil
+and wintry sky? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights? Was
+it not for liberty to worship God according to our conscience?”
+
+“Call you this liberty of conscience?” interrupted a voice on the steps
+of the meeting-house.
+
+It was the wanton gospeller. A sad and quiet smile flitted across the
+mild visage of Roger Williams, but Endicott, in the excitement of the
+moment, shook his sword wrathfully at the culprit—an ominous gesture
+from a man like him.
+
+“What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?” cried he. “I said
+liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him. Break
+not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this time
+to-morrow.—Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed rhapsodist.
+As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have come to a land
+whereof the Old World hath scarcely heard, that we might make a new
+world unto ourselves and painfully seek a path from hence to heaven.
+But what think ye now? This son of a Scotch tyrant—this grandson of a
+papistical and adulterous Scotch woman whose death proved that a golden
+crown doth not always save an anointed head from the block—”
+
+“Nay, brother, nay,” interposed Mr. Williams; “thy words are not meet
+for a secret chamber, far less for a public street.”
+
+“Hold thy peace, Roger Williams!” answered Endicott, imperiously. “My
+spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand.—I tell ye,
+fellow-exiles, that Charles of England and Laud, our bitterest
+persecutor, arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even
+hither. They are taking counsel, saith this letter, to send over a
+governor-general in whose breast shall be deposited all the law and
+equity of the land. They are minded, also, to establish the idolatrous
+forms of English episcopacy; so that when Laud shall kiss the pope’s
+toe as cardinal of Rome he may deliver New England, bound hand and
+foot, into the power of his master.”
+
+A deep groan from the auditors—a sound of wrath as well as fear and
+sorrow—responded to this intelligence.
+
+“Look ye to it, brethren,” resumed Endicott, with increasing energy.
+“If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall briefly
+behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded,
+and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round it at
+noon-day. We shall hear the sacring-bell and the voices of the Romish
+priests saying the mass. But think ye, Christian men, that these
+abominations may be suffered without a sword drawn, without a shot
+fired, without blood spilt—yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit? No!
+Be ye strong of hand and stout of heart. Here we stand on our own soil,
+which we have bought with our goods, which we have won with our swords,
+which we have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with the
+sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our prayers to the
+God that brought us hither! Who shall enslave us here? What have we to
+do with this mitred prelate—with this crowned king? What have we to do
+with England?”
+
+Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now
+full of his own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the
+standard-bearer, who stood close behind him.
+
+“Officer, lower your banner,” said he.
+
+The officer obeyed, and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it
+through the cloth and with his left hand rent the red cross completely
+out of the banner. He then waved the tattered ensign above his head.
+
+“Sacrilegious wretch!” cried the high-churchman in the pillory, unable
+longer to restrain himself; “thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy
+religion.”
+
+“Treason! treason!” roared the royalist in the stocks. “He hath defaced
+the king’s banner!”
+
+“Before God and man I will avouch the deed,” answered Endicott.—“Beat a
+flourish, drummer—shout, soldiers and people—in honor of the ensign of
+New England. Neither pope nor tyrant hath part in it now.”
+
+With a cry of triumph the people gave their sanction to one of the
+boldest exploits which our history records. And for ever honored be the
+name of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and recognize
+in the rending of the red cross from New England’s banner the first
+omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated after the bones
+of the stern Puritan had lain more than a century in the dust.
+
+
+
+
+THE LILY’S QUEST
+
+AN APOLOGUE
+
+Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the
+form of an antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to
+all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
+pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
+friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there they
+would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of pathos
+which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and fiction and
+permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and romance; there,
+in short—for why should we shape out the vague sunshine of their
+hopes?—there all pure delights were to cluster like roses among the
+pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and spontaneously.
+
+So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set
+out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
+together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
+were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
+for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
+Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her “Lily” because her form was
+as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in hand
+down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of Lilias
+Fay’s paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged creatures
+through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness where the
+deep shadows fell.
+
+But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
+a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
+made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
+drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them, the
+lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their hearts
+that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely unsuited
+to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay, an old
+man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under the
+burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
+absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast between
+the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They looked
+as if moulded of heaven’s sunshine and he of earth’s gloomiest shade;
+they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand through life,
+while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all the woeful
+influences which life could fling upon them.
+
+But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
+the gentle Lily, and she paused.
+
+“What sweeter place shall we find than this?” said she. “Why should we
+seek farther for the site of our temple?”
+
+It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by any
+very prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a hill,
+with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a
+church-spire in another. There were vistas and pathways leading onward
+and onward into the green woodlands and vanishing away in the
+glimmering shade. The temple, if erected here, would look toward the
+west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams
+out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and few of their
+anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.
+
+“Yes,” said Adam Forrester; “we might seek all day and find no lovelier
+spot. We will build our temple here.”
+
+But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site
+which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and
+frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to
+blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal
+figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered
+stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as
+young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now
+relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.
+
+“Not here,” cried old Walter Gascoigne. “Here, long ago, other mortals
+built their temple of happiness; seek another site for yours.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Lilias Fay. “Have any ever planned such a temple save
+ourselves?”
+
+“Poor child!” said her gloomy kinsman. “In one shape or other every
+mortal has dreamed your dream.” Then he told the lovers, how—not,
+indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling—had once stood there, and
+that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever at
+the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.
+
+Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake of
+sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the history of
+almost every household, and yet his hearers felt as if no sunshine
+ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep a
+stain—or, at least, that no joyous temple should be built there.
+
+“This is very sad,” said the Lily, sighing.
+
+“Well, there are lovelier spots than this,” said Adam Forrester,
+soothingly—“spots which sorrow has not blighted.”
+
+So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them,
+looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot and
+was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
+rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the midst
+of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual voice of
+inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side with gray
+precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had not a
+profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices and
+wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief joy
+of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the presence of
+a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble merrily and
+disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow, and throw
+the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.
+
+“Here, here is the spot!” cried the two lovers, with one voice, as they
+reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. “This glen was
+made on purpose for our temple.”
+
+“And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears,” said
+Lilias Fay.
+
+“And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime,” said Adam
+Forrester.
+
+“Ye must build no temple here,” murmured their dismal companion.
+
+And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
+they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
+symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
+And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
+hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
+this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
+which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim’s death-shrieks were
+often heard to echo between the cliffs.
+
+“And see!” cried old Gascoigne; “is the stream yet pure from the stain
+of the murderer’s hands?”
+
+“Methinks it has a tinge of blood,” faintly answered the Lily; and,
+being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover’s
+arm, whispering, “Let us flee from this dreadful vale.”
+
+“Come, then,” said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; “we shall
+soon find a happier spot.”
+
+They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which millions—which
+every child of earth—has tried in turn.
+
+And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
+millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old
+lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked lovely
+in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
+miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
+of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
+kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
+old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
+malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
+sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
+mother’s fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two
+lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses in
+each other’s arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
+evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
+when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
+of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their sad
+demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were seeking,
+not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and their
+posterity.
+
+“Where in this world,” exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, “shall
+we build our temple of happiness?”
+
+“Where in this world, indeed?” repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
+and weary—the more so by the heaviness of her heart—the Lily drooped
+her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, “Where in
+this world shall we build our temple?”
+
+“Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?” said their
+companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
+that dwelt on them. “Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
+may build it.”
+
+While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly thrown
+their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had chanced
+to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted to their
+present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a certain
+regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and a group
+of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive shadows across
+and far beyond, although some softened glory of the sunshine found its
+way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers would dwell
+together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where they were to
+worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the ground, they
+smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale lily was growing
+at their feet.
+
+“We will build our temple here,” said they, simultaneously, and with an
+indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
+
+Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
+turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
+hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
+those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
+just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with his
+sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre hat
+overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
+purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a token
+that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate the
+site of their temple of happiness.
+
+In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
+fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid the
+solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright sunshine.
+It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful pillars
+supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this dome, upon a
+pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books and music
+might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of the
+neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient mausoleum
+and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of dark-veined
+marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones. They doubted,
+too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a creature of
+this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day more fragile,
+so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch her up and
+waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth of the
+temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot his
+continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and giving
+as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a tomb. In
+due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple rite of
+dedication.
+
+On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
+mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
+strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
+faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
+ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
+With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
+Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the
+time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which the Lily
+had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning in
+the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded upon
+the slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had long
+since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a loving
+hand had now transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden of
+Paradise.
+
+But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam
+Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of
+many delightful hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there.
+And, lo! a wonder! Digging a grave beneath the temple’s marble floor,
+the sexton found no virgin earth such as was meet to receive the
+maiden’s dust, but an ancient sepulchre in which were treasured up the
+bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
+ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the funeral procession
+brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne
+standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and face
+of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand the
+spot would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they lowered
+the coffin down.
+
+“And so,” said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which
+his insanity was wont to gleam forth, “you have found no better
+foundation for your happiness than on a grave?”
+
+But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its
+birth in Adam’s mind even from the old man’s taunting words, for then
+he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself
+had acted, and the mystery of life and death was opened to him.
+
+“Joy! joy!” he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. “On a grave be
+the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity.”
+
+With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and
+glimmered down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape
+of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom,
+symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that
+the darkest riddle of humanity was read.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE
+
+
+It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health
+and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the
+world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not
+infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me—one with the roar
+of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs—forth from the
+haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath
+the shadow of even one primeval tree, much less be lost among the
+multitude of hoary trunks and hidden from the earth and sky by the
+mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach more like
+a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban farmhouse.
+When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a necessity within
+me, I am drawn to the seashore which extends its line of rude rocks and
+seldom-trodden sands for leagues around our bay. Setting forth at my
+last ramble on a September morning, I bound myself with a hermit’s vow
+to interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to share no social
+pleasure, but to derive all that day’s enjoyment from shore and sea and
+sky, from my soul’s communion with these, and from fantasies and
+recollections or anticipated realities. Surely here is enough to feed a
+human spirit for a single day.—Farewell, then, busy world! Till your
+evening lights shall shine along the street—till they gleam upon my
+sea-flushed face as I tread homeward—free me from your ties and let me
+be a peaceful outlaw.
+
+Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and, clambering down a
+crag, I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does
+the spirit leap forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the
+full extent of the broad blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to
+the sea! I descend over its margin and dip my hand into the wave that
+meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is Ocean’s voice
+of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let us
+pace together—the reader’s fancy arm in arm with mine—this noble beach,
+which extends a mile or more from that craggy promontory to yonder
+rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea; in the rear, a precipitous
+bank the grassy verge of which is breaking away year after year, and
+flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below. The beach
+itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with hardly any
+pebbles intermixed. Near the water’s edge there is a wet margin which
+glistens brightly in the sunshine and reflects objects like a mirror,
+and as we tread along the glistening border a dry spot flashes around
+each footstep, but grows moist again as we lift our feet. In some spots
+the sand receives a complete impression of the sole, square toe and
+all; elsewhere it is of such marble firmness that we must stamp heavily
+to leave a print even of the iron-shod heel. Along the whole of this
+extensive beach gambols the surf-wave. Now it makes a feint of dashing
+onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek murmur and does but kiss
+the strand; now, after many such abortive efforts, it rears itself up
+in an unbroken line, heightening as it advances, without a speck of
+foam on its green crest. With how fierce a roar it flings itself
+forward and rushes far up the beach!
+
+As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was
+startled, as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human
+life was within the magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the remote
+distance of the beach, appearing like sea-nymphs, or some airier things
+such as might tread upon the feathery spray, was a group of girls.
+Hardly had I beheld them, when they passed into the shadow of the rocks
+and vanished. To comfort myself—for truly I would fain have gazed a
+while longer—I made acquaintance with a flock of beach-birds. These
+little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by about a stone’s-throw
+along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food upon its margin. Yet,
+with a philosophy which mankind would do well to imitate, they drew a
+continual pleasure from their toil for a subsistence. The sea was each
+little bird’s great playmate. They chased it downward as it swept back,
+and again ran up swiftly before the impending wave, which sometimes
+overtook them and bore them off their feet. But they floated as lightly
+as one of their own feathers on the breaking crest. In their airy
+flutterings they seemed to rest on the evanescent spray. Their
+images—long-legged little figures with gray backs and snowy bosoms—were
+seen as distinctly as the realities in the mirror of the glistening
+strand. As I advanced they flew a score or two of yards, and, again
+alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf-wave; and thus
+they bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant fantasies,
+till at its extremity they took wing over the ocean and were gone.
+After forming a friendship with these small surf-spirits, it is really
+worth a sigh to find no memorial of them save their multitudinous
+little tracks in the sand.
+
+When we have paced the length of the beach, it is pleasant and not
+unprofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and
+occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks, being all
+discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
+every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the
+surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to
+relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf, and
+trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
+live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer
+monster. Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon
+the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a
+jelly-fish which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to
+snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water
+brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming shallower and more
+shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the effort
+to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary appears to
+have bewildered us, for our tracks go round and round and are
+confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the level
+beach. And here amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost the only
+stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in an
+unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and awfulness
+of the great deep. Thus by tracking our footprints in the sand we track
+our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a glance upon it when
+it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always make us
+wiser.
+
+This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With
+your staff you may write verses—love-verses if they please you best—and
+consecrate them with a woman’s name. Here, too, may be inscribed
+thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the heart’s secret
+places, which you would not pour upon the sand without the certainty
+that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea will wash them
+out. Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now (for there is room
+enough on your canvas) draw huge faces—huge as that of the Sphynx on
+Egyptian sands—and fit them with bodies of corresponding immensity and
+legs which might stride halfway to yonder island. Child’s-play becomes
+magnificent on so grand a scale. But, after all, the most fascinating
+employment is simply to write your name in the sand. Draw the letters
+gigantic, so that two strides may barely measure them, and three for
+the long strokes; cut deep, that the record may be permanent. Statesmen
+and warriors and poets have spent their strength in no better cause
+than this. Is it accomplished? Return, then, in an hour or two, and
+seek for this mighty record of a name. The sea will have swept over it,
+even as time rolls its effacing waves over the names of statesmen and
+warriors and poets. Hark! the surf-wave laughs at you.
+
+Passing from the beach, I begin to clamber over the crags, making my
+difficult way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the
+assaults of a fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of
+attitude. Some of them have their feet in the foam and are shagged
+halfway upward with seaweed; some have been hollowed almost into
+caverns by the unwearied toil of the sea, which can afford to spend
+centuries in wearing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble. One huge
+rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a giant’s tombstone,
+on which the veins resemble inscriptions, but in an unknown tongue. We
+will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antediluvian race, or
+else that Nature’s own hand has here recorded a mystery which, could I
+read her language, would make mankind the wiser and the happier. How
+many a thing has troubled me with that same idea! Pass on and leave it
+unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue which might seem to have been hewn
+through the very heart of an enormous crag, affording passage for the
+rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with tumultuous foam
+and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare and glistening. In
+this chasm there was once an intersecting vein of softer stone, which
+the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the granite walls remain
+entire on either side. How sharply and with what harsh clamor does the
+sea rake back the pebbles as it momentarily withdraws into its own
+depths! At intervals the floor of the chasm is left nearly dry, but
+anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are seen struggling to
+get in at once; two hit the walls athwart, while one rushes straight
+through, and all three thunder as if with rage and triumph. They heap
+the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and spray. While watching this
+scene I can never rid myself of the idea that a monster endowed with
+life and fierce energy is striving to burst his way through the narrow
+pass. And what a contrast to look through the stormy chasm and catch a
+glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond!
+
+Many interesting discoveries may be made among these broken cliffs.
+Once, for example, I found a dead seal which a recent tempest had
+tossed into the nook of the rocks, where his shaggy carcase lay rolled
+in a heap of eel-grass as if the sea-monster sought to hide himself
+from my eye. Another time a shark seemed on the point of leaping from
+the surf to swallow me, nor did I wholly without dread approach near
+enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death
+from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a
+bird—a large gray bird—but whether a loon or a wild goose or the
+identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology to
+decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its head
+beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest
+it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird would
+soar among the clouds no more, nor ride upon its native waves; so I
+drew near and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for a
+remembrance. Another day I discovered an immense bone wedged into a
+chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a
+scymitar, bejewelled with barnacles and small shellfish and partly
+covered with a growth of seaweed. Some leviathan of former ages had
+used this ponderous mass as a jaw-bone. Curiosities of a minuter order
+may be observed in a deep reservoir which is replenished with water at
+every tide, but becomes a lake among the crags save when the sea is at
+its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin grow marine plants, some
+of which tower high beneath the water and cast a shadow in the
+sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro and hide themselves among the
+seaweed; there is also a solitary crab who appears to lead the life of
+a hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of the place, and
+likewise several five-fingers; for I know no other name than that which
+children give them. If your imagination be at all accustomed to such
+freaks, you may look down into the depths of this pool and fancy it the
+mysterious depth of ocean. But where are the hulks and scattered
+timbers of sunken ships? where the treasures that old Ocean hoards?
+where the corroded cannon? where the corpses and skeletons of seamen
+who went down in storm and battle?
+
+On the day of my last ramble—it was a September day, yet as warm as
+summer—what should I behold as I approached the above-described basin
+but three girls sitting on its margin and—yes, it is veritably
+so—laving their snowy feet in the sunny water? These, these are the
+warm realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on
+the beach. Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with their
+feet! They have not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock and steal
+away again.
+
+In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this
+encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant
+sensation. I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet,
+glancing at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with
+the ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down
+from some high crag and watch a group of children gathering pebbles and
+pearly shells and playing with the surf as with old Ocean’s hoary
+beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at
+anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and
+sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew—four gentlemen in
+roundabout jackets—are busy with their fishing-lines. But with an
+inward antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any
+meditative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his
+sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.
+
+From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily
+over the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has
+given me a right to call my own. I would do battle for it even with the
+churl that should produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings melted
+into its rocky walls and sandy floor and made them a portion of myself?
+It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough, high
+precipice which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of sand.
+In front the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal; in the
+rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth which gives
+nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees that
+grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for
+footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir trees, but oaks
+hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on the
+beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this
+autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor.
+Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of
+yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves and
+glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance I detect
+some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the stern gray
+rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little
+cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and
+pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the feast? A few
+biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft of samphire
+gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By this time the
+little rill has filled its reservoir again, and as I quaff it I thank
+God more heartily than for a civic banquet that he gives me the
+healthful appetite to make a feast of bread and water.
+
+Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the sand and, basking
+in the sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this
+my hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes
+fancy that they have ears to hear them and a soul to sympathize. There
+is a magic in this spot. Dreams haunt its precincts and flit around me
+in broad sunlight, nor require that sleep shall blindfold me to real
+objects ere these be visible. Here can I frame a story of two lovers,
+and make their shadows live before me and be mirrored in the tranquil
+water as they tread along the sand, leaving no footprints. Here, should
+I will it, I can summon up a single shade and be myself her lover.—Yes,
+dreamer, but your lonely heart will be the colder for such
+fancies.—Sometimes, too, the Past comes back, and finds me here, and in
+her train come faces which were gladsome when I knew them, yet seem not
+gladsome now. Would that my hiding-place were lonelier, so that the
+Past might not find me!—Get ye all gone, old friends, and let me listen
+to the murmur of the sea—a melancholy voice, but less sad than yours.
+Of what mysteries is it telling? Of sunken ships and whereabouts they
+lie? Of islands afar and undiscovered whose tawny children are
+unconscious of other islands and of continents, and deem the stars of
+heaven their nearest neighbors? Nothing of all this. What, then? Has it
+talked for so many ages and meant nothing all the while? No; for those
+ages find utterance in the sea’s unchanging voice, and warn the
+listener to withdraw his interest from mortal vicissitudes and let the
+infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul. This is wisdom, and
+therefore will I spend the next half-hour in shaping little boats of
+driftwood and launching them on voyages across the cove, with the
+feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of ages tell me true,
+this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of five hundred tons
+and launch them forth upon the main, bound to “Far Cathay.” Yet how
+would the merchant sneer at me!
+
+And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a
+thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock
+mid-deep in the surf—see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars
+and foams,—let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise my
+oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and got
+the victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the gentleman in
+seaweed has nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable roaring. His
+voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine is hushed. Once
+more I shout and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh what joy for a
+shy man to feel himself so solitary that he may lift his voice to its
+highest pitch without hazard of a listener!—But hush! Be silent, my
+good friend! Whence comes that stifled laughter? It was musical, but
+how should there be such music in my solitude? Looking upward, I catch
+a glimpse of three faces peeping from the summit of the cliff like
+angels between me and their native sky.—Ah, fair girls! you may make
+yourself merry at my eloquence, but it was my turn to smile when I saw
+your white feet in the pool. Let us keep each other’s secrets.
+
+The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the
+sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will come
+and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of these
+gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind. Climb we,
+therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink gazing down
+into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been what few can
+be—sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word outright:
+self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the recess
+now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has been!
+There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head upon the
+sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my hands in
+triumph, and see my shadow clapping its unreal hands and claiming the
+triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all day, since my
+own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries!
+
+Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time—it is time;
+for as the sun sinks over the western wave the sea grows melancholy and
+the surf has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray and not
+of earth in their remoteness amid the desolate waste. My spirit wanders
+forth afar, but finds no resting-place and comes shivering back. It is
+time that I were hence. But grudge me not the day that has been spent
+in seclusion which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been
+my companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has
+told me his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around me in my
+hermitage. Such companionship works an effect upon a man’s character as
+if he had been admitted to the society of creatures that are not
+mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets, the
+influence of this day will still be felt; so that I shall walk among
+men kindly and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but yet shall
+not melt into the indistinguishable mass of humankind. I shall think my
+own thoughts and feel my own emotions and possess my individuality
+unviolated.
+
+But it is good at the eve of such a day to feel and know that there are
+men and women in the world. That feeling and that knowledge are mine at
+this moment, for on the shore, far below me, the fishing-party have
+landed from their skiff and are cooking their scaly prey by a fire of
+driftwood kindled in the angle of two rude rocks. The three visionary
+girls are likewise there. In the deepening twilight, while the surf is
+dashing near their hearth, the ruddy gleam of the fire throws a strange
+air of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is with pebbles and
+seaweed and exposed to the “melancholy main.” Moreover, as the smoke
+climbs up the precipice, it brings with it a savory smell from a pan of
+fried fish and a black kettle of chowder, and reminds me that my dinner
+was nothing but bread and water and a tuft of samphire and an apple.
+Methinks the party might find room for another guest at that flat rock
+which serves them for a table; and if spoons be scarce, I could pick up
+a clam-shell on the beach. They see me now; and—the blessing of a
+hungry man upon him!—one of them sends up a hospitable shout: “Halloo,
+Sir Solitary! Come down and sup with us!” The ladies wave their
+handkerchiefs. Can I decline? No; and be it owned, after all my
+solitary joys, that this is the sweetest moment of a day by the
+seashore.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD FANE’S ROSEBUD
+
+
+There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy than, while gazing
+at a figure of melancholy age, to recreate its youth, and without
+entirely obliterating the identity of form and features to restore
+those graces which Time has snatched away. Some old people—especially
+women—so age-worn and woeful are they, seem never to have been young
+and gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent
+into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with
+sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds and weep at
+funerals. Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential
+to their existence; all their attributes combine to render them
+darksome shadows creeping strangely amid the sunshine of human life.
+Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful creatures
+and set Fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken
+the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color, and
+repair the shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy maiden shall be seen in
+the old matron’s elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let the
+years roll back again, each sadder than the last, and the whole weight
+of age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure. Wrinkles and
+furrows, the handwriting of Time, may thus be deciphered and found to
+contain deep lessons of thought and feeling.
+
+Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my
+much-respected friend the Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute who
+has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying-breaths these
+forty years. See! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth with her
+gown and upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering thriftily into her
+person the whole warmth of the fire which now at nightfall begins to
+dissipate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers
+capriciously in front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms
+of her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar
+the outlines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a
+teaspoon in her right hand with which to stir up the contents of a
+tumbler in her left, whence steams a vapory fragrance abhorred of
+temperance societies. Now she sips, now stirs, now sips again. Her sad
+old heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva which
+is mixed half and half with hot water in the tumbler. All day long she
+has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home only
+when the spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too. But
+now are her melancholy meditations cheered and her torpid blood warmed
+and her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous years by a
+draught from the true fountain of youth in a case-bottle. It is strange
+that men should deem that fount a fable, when its liquor fills more
+bottles than the Congress-water.—Sip it again, good nurse, and see
+whether a second draught will not take off another score of years, and
+perhaps ten more, and show us in your high-backed chair the blooming
+damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane.—Get you gone, Age and
+Widowhood!—Come back, unwedded Youth!—But, alas! the charm will not
+work. In spite of Fancy’s most potent spell, I can see only an old dame
+cowering over the fire, a picture of decay and desolation, while the
+November blast roars at her in the chimney and fitful showers rush
+suddenly against the window.
+
+Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton—such was the pretty maiden-name
+of Nurse Toothaker—possessed beauty that would have gladdened this dim
+and dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her the heart of Edward
+Fane, who has since made so great a figure in the world and is now a
+grand old gentleman with powdered hair and as gouty as a lord. These
+early lovers thought to have walked hand in hand through life. They had
+wept together for Edward’s little sister Mary, whom Rose tended in her
+sickness—partly because she was the sweetest child that ever lived or
+died, but more for love of him. She was but three years old. Being such
+an infant, Death could not embody his terrors in her little corpse; nor
+did Rose fear to touch the dead child’s brow, though chill, as she
+curled the silken hair around it, nor to take her tiny hand and clasp a
+flower within its fingers. Afterward, when she looked through the pane
+of glass in the coffin-lid and beheld Mary’s face, it seemed not so
+much like death or life as like a wax-work wrought into the perfect
+image of a child asleep and dreaming of its mother’s smile. Rose
+thought her too fair a thing to be hidden in the grave, and wondered
+that an angel did not snatch up little Mary’s coffin and bear the
+slumbering babe to heaven and bid her wake immortal. But when the sods
+were laid on little Mary, the heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered
+at the fantasy that in grasping the child’s cold fingers her virgin
+hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality and could never lose
+the earthy taint. How many a greeting since! But as yet she was a fair
+young girl with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom, and,
+instead of “Rose”—which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened
+beauty—her lover called her “Rosebud.”
+
+The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward Fane. His mother was
+a rich and haughty dame with all the aristocratic prejudices of
+colonial times. She scorned Rose Grafton’s humble parentage and caused
+her son to break his faith, though, had she let him choose, he would
+have prized his Rosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers parted,
+and have seldom met again. Both may have visited the same mansions, but
+not at the same time, for one was bidden to the festal hall and the
+other to the sick-chamber; he was the guest of Pleasure and Prosperity,
+and she of Anguish. Rose, after their separation, was long secluded
+within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with the
+revengeful hope of breaking her false lover’s heart. She went to her
+bridegroom’s arms with bitterer tears, they say, than young girls ought
+to shed at the threshold of the bridal-chamber. Yet, though her
+husband’s head was getting gray and his heart had been chilled with an
+autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love him, and wondered at her own
+conjugal affection. He was all she had to love; there were no children.
+
+In a year or two poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome
+infirmity which settled in his joints and made him weaker than a child.
+He crept forth about his business, and came home at dinner-time and
+eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife’s heart, but
+slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy dub
+of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife if she sometimes blushed
+to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked for the
+appearance of some old, old man, but he dragged his nerveless limbs
+into the parlor—and there was Mr. Toothaker! The disease increasing, he
+never went into the sunshine save with a staff in his right hand and
+his left on his wife’s shoulder, bearing heavily downward like a dead
+man’s hand. Thus, a slender woman still looking maiden-like, she
+supported his tall, broad-chested frame along the pathway of their
+little garden, and plucked the roses for her gray-haired husband, and
+spoke soothingly as to an infant. His mind was palsied with his body;
+its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few months more she helped him
+up the staircase with a pause at every step, and a longer one upon the
+landing-place, and a heavy glance behind as he crossed the threshold of
+his chamber. He knew, poor man! that the precincts of those four walls
+would thenceforth be his world—his world, his home, his tomb, at once a
+dwelling-and a burial-place—till he were borne to a darker and a
+narrower one. But Rose was with him in the tomb. He leaned upon her in
+his daily passage from the bed to the chair by the fireside, and back
+again from the weary chair to the joyless bed—his bed and hers, their
+marriage-bed—till even this short journey ceased and his head lay all
+day upon the pillow and hers all night beside it. How long poor Mr.
+Toothaker was kept in misery! Death seemed to draw near the door, and
+often to lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into
+the chamber, nodding to Rose and pointing at her husband, but still
+delayed to enter. “This bedridden wretch cannot escape me,” quoth
+Death. “I will go forth and run a race with the swift and fight a
+battle with the strong, and come back for Toothaker at my leisure.” Oh,
+when the deliverer came so near, in the dull anguish of her worn-out
+sympathies did she never long to cry, “Death, come in”?
+
+But no; we have no right to ascribe such a wish to our friend Rose. She
+never failed in a wife’s duty to her poor sick husband. She murmured
+not though a glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her as him, nor
+answered peevishly though his complaining accents roused her from
+sweetest dream only to share his wretchedness. He knew her faith, yet
+nourished a cankered jealousy; and when the slow disease had chilled
+all his heart save one lukewarm spot which Death’s frozen fingers were
+searching for, his last words were, “What would my Rose have done for
+her first love, if she has been so true and kind to a sick old man like
+me?” And then his poor soul crept away and left the body lifeless,
+though hardly more so than for years before, and Rose a widow, though
+in truth it was the wedding-night that widowed her. She felt glad, it
+must be owned, when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because his corpse had
+retained such a likeness to the man half alive that she hearkened for
+the sad murmur of his voice bidding her shift his pillow. But all
+through the next winter, though the grave had held him many a month,
+she fancied him calling from that cold bed, “Rose, Rose! Come put a
+blanket on my feet!”
+
+So now the Rosebud was the widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come
+early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was
+fled. She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a
+widow’s cheerful gravity she might have won a widower, stealing into
+his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the widow Toothaker
+had no such projects. By her watchings and continual cares her heart
+had become knit to her first husband with a constancy which changed its
+very nature and made her love him for his infirmities, and infirmity
+for his sake. When the palsied old man was gone, even her early lover
+could not have supplied his place. She had dwelt in a sick-chamber and
+been the companion of a half-dead wretch till she could scarcely
+breathe in a free air and felt ill at ease with the healthy and the
+happy. She missed the fragrance of the doctor’s stuff. She walked the
+chamber with a noiseless footfall. If visitors came in, she spoke in
+soft and soothing accents, and was startled and shocked by their loud
+voices. Often in the lonesome evening she looked timorously from the
+fireside to the bed, with almost a hope of recognizing a ghastly face
+upon the pillow. Then went her thoughts sadly to her husband’s grave.
+If one impatient throb had wronged him in his lifetime, if she had
+secretly repined because her buoyant youth was imprisoned with his
+torpid age, if ever while slumbering beside him a treacherous dream had
+admitted another into her heart,—yet the sick man had been preparing a
+revenge which the dead now claimed. On his painful pillow he had cast a
+spell around her; his groans and misery had proved more captivating
+charms than gayety and youthful grace; in his semblance Disease itself
+had won the Rosebud for a bride, nor could his death dissolve the
+nuptials. By that indissoluble bond she had gained a home in every
+sick-chamber, and nowhere else; there were her brethren and sisters;
+thither her husband summoned her with that voice which had seemed to
+issue from the grave of Toothaker. At length she recognized her
+destiny.
+
+We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the widow; now we see her in
+a separate and insulated character: she was in all her attributes Nurse
+Toothaker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled lips,
+could make known her experience in that capacity. What a history might
+she record of the great sicknesses in which she has gone hand in hand
+with the exterminating angel! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted
+a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has witnessed
+when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and old, all
+but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one.
+Where would be Death’s triumph if none lived to weep? She can speak of
+strange maladies that have broken out as if spontaneously, but were
+found to have been imported from foreign lands with rich silks and
+other merchandise, the costliest portion of the cargo. And once, she
+recollects, the people died of what was considered a new pestilence,
+till the doctors traced it to the ancient grave of a young girl who
+thus caused many deaths a hundred years after her own burial. Strange
+that such black mischief should lurk in a maiden’s grave! She loves to
+tell how strong men fight with fiery fevers, utterly refusing to give
+up their breath, and how consumptive virgins fade out of the world,
+scarcely reluctant, as if their lovers were wooing them to a far
+country.—Tell us, thou fearful woman; tell us the death-secrets. Fain
+would I search out the meaning of words faintly gasped with
+intermingled sobs and broken sentences half-audibly spoken between
+earth and the judgment-seat.
+
+An awful woman! She is the patron-saint of young physicians and the
+bosom-friend of old ones. In the mansions where she enters the inmates
+provide themselves black garments; the coffin-maker follows her, and
+the bell tolls as she comes away from the threshold. Death himself has
+met her at so many a bedside that he puts forth his bony hand to greet
+Nurse Toothaker. She is an awful woman. And oh, is it conceivable that
+this handmaid of human infirmity and affliction—so darkly stained, so
+thoroughly imbued with all that is saddest in the doom of mortals—can
+ever again be bright and gladsome even though bathed in the sunshine of
+eternity? By her long communion with woe has she not forfeited her
+inheritance of immortal joy? Does any germ of bliss survive within her?
+
+Hark! an eager knocking st Nurse Toothaker’s door. She starts from her
+drowsy reverie, sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon, and lights a
+lamp at the dim embers of the fire. “Rap, rap, rap!” again, and she
+hurries adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can be at
+death’s door now, since there is such an earnest messenger at Nurse
+Toothaker’s. Again the peal resounds just as her hand is on the lock.
+“Be quick, Nurse Toothaker!” cries a man on the doorstep. “Old General
+Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach and has sent for you to
+watch by his death-bed. Make haste, for there is no time to
+lose.”—“Fane! Edward Fane! And has he sent for me at last? I am ready.
+I will get on my cloak and begone. So,” adds the sable-gowned,
+ashen-visaged, funereal old figure, “Edward Fane remembers his
+Rosebud.”
+
+Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss within her. Her
+long-hoarded constancy, her memory of the bliss that was remaining amid
+the gloom of her after-life like a sweet-smelling flower in a coffin,
+is a symbol that all may be renewed. In some happier clime the Rosebud
+may revive again with all the dewdrops in its bosom.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREEFOLD DESTINY
+
+A FAËRY LEGEND
+
+I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far
+as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in
+which the spirit and mechanism of the faëry legend should be combined
+with the characters and manners of familiar life. In the little tale
+which follows a subdued tinge of the wild and wonderful is thrown over
+a sketch of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped,
+without entirely obliterating the sober hues of nature. Rather than a
+story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered as an
+allegory such as the writers of the last century would have expressed
+in the shape of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to give
+a more lifelike warmth than could be infused into those fanciful
+productions.
+
+In the twilight of a summer eve a tall dark figure over which long and
+remote travel had thrown an outlandish aspect was entering a village
+not in “faëry londe,” but within our own familiar boundaries. The staff
+on which this traveller leaned had been his companion from the spot
+where it grew in the jungles of Hindostan; the hat that overshadowed
+his sombre brow, had shielded him from the suns of Spain; but his cheek
+had been blackened by the red-hot wind of an Arabian desert and had
+felt the frozen breath of an Arctic region. Long sojourning amid wild
+and dangerous men, he still wore beneath his vest the ataghan which he
+had once struck into the throat of a Turkish robber. In every foreign
+clime he had lost something of his New England characteristics, and
+perhaps from every people he had unconsciously borrowed a new
+peculiarity; so that when the world-wanderer again trod the street of
+his native village it is no wonder that he passed unrecognized, though
+exciting the gaze and curiosity of all. Yet, as his arm casually
+touched that of a young woman who was wending her way to an evening
+lecture, she started and almost uttered a cry.
+
+“Ralph Cranfield!” was the name that she half articulated.
+
+“Can that be my old playmate Faith Egerton?” thought the traveller,
+looking round at her figure, but without pausing.
+
+Ralph Cranfield from his youth upward had felt himself marked out for a
+high destiny. He had imbibed the idea—we say not whether it were
+revealed to him by witchcraft or in a dream of prophecy, or that his
+brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of a
+sybil, but he had imbibed the idea, and held it firmest among his
+articles of faith—that three marvellous events of his life were to be
+confirmed to him by three signs.
+
+The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his
+youthful imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the
+maid who alone of all the maids on earth could make him happy by her
+love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful
+woman wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart—whether of
+pearl or ruby or emerald or carbuncle or a changeful opal, or perhaps a
+priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as it were a
+heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger he
+was bound to address her thus: “Maiden, I have brought you a heavy
+heart. May I rest its weight on you?” And if she were his fated
+bride—if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here below
+which all eternity should only bind more closely—she would reply, with
+her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, “This token which I have worn so
+long is the assurance that you may.”
+
+And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a
+mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the earth of which the burial-place
+would be revealed to none but him. When his feet should press upon the
+mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him pointing
+downward—whether carved of marble or hewn in gigantic dimensions on the
+side of a rocky precipice, or perchance a hand of flame in empty air,
+he could not tell, but at least he would discern a hand, the forefinger
+pointing downward, and beneath it the Latin word “_Effode_”—“Dig!” And,
+digging thereabouts, the gold in coin or ingots, the precious stones,
+or of whatever else the treasure might consist, would be certain to
+reward his toil.
+
+The third and last of the miraculous events in the life of this
+high-destined man was to be the attainment of extensive influence and
+sway over his fellow-creatures. Whether he were to be a king and
+founder of a hereditary throne, or the victorious leader of a people
+contending for their freedom, or the apostle of a purified and
+regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show. As messengers of the
+sign by which Ralph Cranfield might recognize the summons, three
+venerable men were to claim audience of him. The chief among them—a
+dignified and majestic person arrayed, it may be supposed, in the
+flowing garments of an ancient sage—would be the bearer of a wand or
+prophet’s rod. With this wand or rod or staff the venerable sage would
+trace a certain figure in the air, and then proceed to make known his
+Heaven-instructed message, which, if obeyed, must lead to glorious
+results.
+
+With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his imaginative youth
+Ralph Cranfield had set forth to seek the maid, the treasure, and the
+venerable sage with his gift of extended empire. And had he found them?
+Alas! it was not with the aspect of a triumphant man who had achieved a
+nobler destiny than all his fellows, but rather with the gloom of one
+struggling against peculiar and continual adversity, that he now passed
+homeward to his mother’s cottage. He had come back, but only for a
+time, to lay aside the pilgrim’s staff, trusting that his weary manhood
+would regain somewhat of the elasticity of youth in the spot where his
+threefold fate had been foreshown him. There had been few changes in
+the village, for it was not one of those thriving places where a year’s
+prosperity makes more than the havoc of a century’s decay, but, like a
+gray hair in a young man’s head, an antiquated little town full of old
+maids and aged elms and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to be the
+changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had a more majestic spread,
+the weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of
+verdant moss, and doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the
+burial-ground inscribed with names that had once been familiar in the
+village street; yet, summing up all the mischief that ten years had
+wrought, it seemed scarcely more than if Ralph Cranfield had gone forth
+that very morning and dreamed a day-dream till the twilight, and then
+turned back again. But his heart grew cold because the village did not
+remember him as he remembered the village.
+
+“Here is the change,” sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast.
+“Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering and
+heavy with disappointed hopes? The youth returns not who went forth so
+joyously.”
+
+And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother’s gate, in front of the small
+house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept
+herself comfortable during her son’s long absence. Admitting himself
+within the enclosure, he leaned against a great old tree, trifling with
+his own impatience as people often do in those intervals when years are
+summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling—its
+windows brightened with the sky-gleam, its doorway with the half of a
+millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving thence to the
+gate. He made friends again with his childhood’s friend—the old tree
+against which he leaned—and, glancing his eye down its trunk, beheld
+something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a half-obliterated
+inscription—the Latin word “_Effode_”—which he remembered to have
+carved in the bark of the tree with a whole day’s toil when he had
+first begun to muse about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted a
+rather singular coincidence that the bark just above the inscription
+had put forth an excrescence shaped not unlike a hand, with the
+forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate. Such, at least, was
+its appearance in the dusky light.
+
+“Now, a credulous man,” said Ralph Cranfield, carelessly, to himself,
+“might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world
+lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother’s dwelling. That
+would be a jest indeed.”
+
+More he thought not about the matter, for now the door was opened and
+an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to
+discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises and was
+standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield’s mother.
+Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the other
+to his rest—if quiet rest he found.
+
+But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow, for his sleep
+and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was
+rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold
+mystery of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to have
+awaited him beneath his mother’s roof and thronged riotously around to
+welcome his return. In the well-remembered chamber, on the pillow where
+his infancy had slumbered, he had passed a wilder night than ever in an
+Arab tent or when he had reposed his head in the ghastly shades of a
+haunted forest. A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside and laid her
+finger on the scintillating heart; a hand of flame had glowed amid the
+darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the earth; a hoary sage
+had waved his prophetic wand and beckoned the dreamer onward to a chair
+of state. The same phantoms, though fainter in the daylight, still
+flitted about the cottage and mingled among the crowd of familiar faces
+that were drawn thither by the news of Ralph Cranfield’s return to bid
+him welcome for his mother’s sake. There they found him, a tall, dark,
+stately man of foreign aspect, courteous in demeanor and mild of
+speech, yet with an abstracted eye which seemed often to snatch a
+glance at the invisible.
+
+Meantime, the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house full of joy
+that she again had somebody to love and be careful of, and for whom she
+might vex and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily life. It
+was nearly noon when she looked forth from the door and descried three
+personages of note coming along the street through the hot sunshine and
+the masses of elm-tree shade. At length they reached her gate and undid
+the latch.
+
+“See, Ralph!” exclaimed she, with maternal pride; “here is Squire
+Hawkwood and the two other selectmen coming on purpose to see you. Now,
+do tell them a good long story about what you have seen in foreign
+parts.”
+
+The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood, was a very pompous
+but excellent old gentleman, the head and prime-mover in all the
+affairs of the village, and universally acknowledged to be one of the
+sagest men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion even then becoming
+antiquated, a three-cornered hat, and carried a silver-headed cane the
+use of which seemed to be rather for flourishing in the air than for
+assisting the progress of his legs. His two companions were elderly and
+respectable yeomen who, retaining an ante-Revolutionary reverence for
+rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in the squire’s rear.
+
+As they approached along the pathway Ralph Cranfield sat in an oaken
+elbow-chair half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors and
+enveloping their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded his
+mental world. “Here,” thought he, smiling at the conceit—“here come
+three elderly personages, and the first of the three is a venerable
+sage with a staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of
+my fate?”
+
+While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered, Ralph rose from his
+seat and advanced a few steps to receive them, and his stately figure
+and dark countenance as he bent courteously toward his guests had a
+natural dignity contrasting well with the bustling importance of the
+squire. The old gentleman, according to invariable custom, gave an
+elaborate preliminary flourish with his cane in the air, then removed
+his three-cornered hat in order to wipe his brow, and finally proceeded
+to make known his errand.
+
+“My colleagues and myself,” began the squire, “are burdened with
+momentous duties, being jointly selectmen of this village. Our minds
+for the space of three days past have been laboriously bent on the
+selection of a suitable person to fill a most important office and take
+upon himself a charge and rule which, wisely considered, may be ranked
+no lower than those of kings and potentates. And whereas you, our
+native townsman, are of good natural intellect and well cultivated by
+foreign travel, and that certain vagaries and fantasies of your youth
+are doubtless long ago corrected,—taking all these matters, I say, into
+due consideration, we are of opinion that Providence hath sent you
+hither at this juncture for our very purpose.”
+
+During this harangue Cranfield gazed fixedly at the speaker, as if he
+beheld something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little figure,
+and as if the squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient sage
+instead of a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet breeches
+and silk stockings. Nor was his wonder without sufficient cause, for
+the flourish of the squire’s staff, marvellous to relate, had described
+precisely the signal in the air which was to ratify the message of the
+prophetic sage whom Cranfield had sought around the world.
+
+“And what,” inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor in his voice—“what
+may this office be which is to equal me with kings and potentates?”
+
+“No less than instructor of our village school,” answered Squire
+Hawkwood, “the office being now vacant by the death of the venerable
+Master Whitaker after a fifty years’ incumbency.”
+
+“I will consider of your proposal,” replied Ralph Cranfield, hurriedly,
+“and will make known my decision within three days.”
+
+After a few more words the village dignitary and his companions took
+their leave. But to Cranfield’s fancy their images were still present,
+and became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures
+which had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterward had shown
+themselves in his waking moments, assuming homely aspects among
+familiar things. His mind dwelt upon the features of the squire till
+they grew confused with those of the visionary sage and one appeared
+but the shadow of the other. The same visage, he now thought, had
+looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops; the same form had
+beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure
+had mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great
+Geyser. At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the
+dreamy messenger of destiny in this pompous, bustling, self-important,
+little-great man of the village. Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat
+all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his
+mother’s thousand questions about his travels and adventures. At sunset
+he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the aged elm tree, his
+eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand pointing downward at
+the half-obliterated inscription.
+
+As Cranfield walked down the street of the village the level sunbeams
+threw his shadow far before him, and he fancied that, as his shadow
+walked among distant objects, so had there been a presentiment stalking
+in advance of him throughout his life. And when he drew near each
+object over which his tall shadow had preceded him, still it proved to
+be one of the familiar recollections of his infancy and youth. Every
+crook in the pathway was remembered. Even the more transitory
+characteristics of the scene were the same as in by-gone days. A
+company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and refreshed him
+with their fragrant breath. “It is sweeter,” thought he, “than the
+perfume which was wafted to our ship from the Spice Islands.” The round
+little figure of a child rolled from a doorway and lay laughing almost
+beneath Cranfield’s feet. The dark and stately man stooped down, and,
+lifting the infant, restored him to his mother’s arms. “The children,”
+said he to himself, and sighed and smiled—“the children are to be my
+charge.” And while a flow of natural feeling gushed like a well-spring
+in his heart he came to a dwelling which he could nowise forbear to
+enter. A sweet voice which seemed to come from a deep and tender soul
+was warbling a plaintive little air within. He bent his head and passed
+through the lowly door. As his foot sounded upon the threshold a young
+woman advanced from the dusky interior of the house, at first hastily,
+and then with a more uncertain step, till they met face to face. There
+was a singular contrast in their two figures—he dark and picturesque,
+one who had battled with the world, whom all suns had shone upon and
+whom all winds had blown on a varied course; she neat, comely and
+quiet—quiet even in her agitation—as if all her emotions had been
+subdued to the peaceful tenor of her life. Yet their faces, all unlike
+as they were, had an expression that seemed not so alien—a glow of
+kindred feeling flashing upward anew from half-extinguished embers.
+
+“You are welcome home,” said Faith Egerton.
+
+But Cranfield did not immediately answer, for his eye had, been caught
+by an ornament in the shape of a heart which Faith wore as a brooch
+upon her bosom. The material was the ordinary white quartz, and he
+recollected having himself shaped it out of one of those Indian
+arrowheads which are so often found in the ancient haunts of the red
+men. It was precisely on the pattern of that worn by the visionary
+maid. When Cranfield departed on his shadowy search, he had bestowed
+this brooch, in a gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton.
+
+“So, Faith, you have kept the heart?” said he, at length.
+
+“Yes,” said she, blushing deeply; then, more gayly, “And what else have
+you brought me from beyond the sea?”
+
+“Faith,” replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated words by an
+uncontrollable impulse, “I have brought you nothing but a heavy heart.
+May I rest its weight on you?”
+
+“This token which I have worn so long,” said Faith, laying her
+tremulous finger on the heart, “is the assurance that you may.”
+
+“Faith, Faith!” cried Cranfield, clasping her in his arms; “you have
+interpreted my wild and weary dream!”
+
+Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the mysterious
+treasure he was to till the earth around his mother’s dwelling and reap
+its products; instead of warlike command or regal or religious sway, he
+was to rule over the village children; and now the visionary maid had
+faded from his fancy, and in her place he saw the playmate of his
+childhood.
+
+Would all who cherish such wild wishes but look around them, they would
+oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity and happiness, within
+those precincts and in that station where Providence itself has cast
+their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search
+or a lifetime spent in vain!
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+ [1] Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York,
+ Maine, who died about eighty years since, made himself remarkable by
+ the same eccentricity that is here related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper.
+ In his case, however, the symbol had a different import. In early life
+ he had accidentally killed a beloved friend, and from that day till
+ the hour of his own death he hid his face from men.
+
+ [2] Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should suspect a
+ mistake here. The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric, is not
+ known to have been an immoral man. We rather doubt his identity with
+ the priest of Merry Mount.
+
+ [3] Essex and Washington streets, Salem.
+
+ [4] The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
+ founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought up
+ in prose. Sullivan, in his history of Maine, written since the
+ Revolution, remarks that even then the existence of the Great
+ Carbuncle was not entirely discredited.
+
+ [5] This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart related in
+ Dunlap’s _History of the Arts of Designs_—a most entertaining book to
+ the general reader, and a deeply-interesting one, we should think, to
+ the artist.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE-TOLD TALES ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne</title>
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Twice-Told Tales</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 11, 2004 [eBook #13707]<br />
+[Most recently updated: May 19, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Rick Niles, John Hagerson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE-TOLD TALES ***</div>
+
+<h1>TWICE-TOLD TALES</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE</h2>
+
+<h5>PHILADELPHIA:<br/>
+DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER,<br/>
+23 SOUTH NINTH STREET</h5>
+
+<h4>1889</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">THE GRAY CHAMPION</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">SUNDAY AT HOME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">THE WEDDING-KNELL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">THE MINISTER&rsquo;S BLACK VEIL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">THE GENTLE BOY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">MR. HIGGINBOTHAM&rsquo;S CATASTROPHE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">LITTLE ANNIE&rsquo;S RAMBLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">WAKEFIELD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">THE GREAT CARBUNCLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">THE PROPHETIC PICTURES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">DAVID SWAN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">THE TOLL-GATHERER&rsquo;S DAY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">FANCY&rsquo;S SHOW-BOX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">DR. HEIDEGGER&rsquo;S EXPERIMENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE:</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">    I. HOWE&rsquo;S MASQUERADE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">    II. EDWARD RANDOLPH&rsquo;S PORTRAIT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">    III. LADY ELEANORE&rsquo;S MANTLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">    IV. OLD ESTHER DUDLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">THE HAUNTED MIND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">THE VILLAGE UNCLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">THE AMBITIOUS GUEST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">THE SISTER-YEARS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">SNOWFLAKES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">THE SEVEN VAGABONDS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">THE WHITE OLD MAID</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap32">PETER GOLDTHWAITE&rsquo;S TREASURE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap33">CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap34">THE SHAKER BRIDAL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap35">NIGHT-SKETCHES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap36">ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap37">THE LILY&rsquo;S QUEST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap38">FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap39">EDWARD FANE&rsquo;S ROSEBUD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap40">THE THREEFOLD DESTINY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr class="med" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>Twice-Told Tales</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>
+THE GRAY CHAMPION</h2>
+
+<p>
+There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of
+heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution.
+James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the
+charters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take
+away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund
+Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny&mdash;a governor and
+council holding office from the king and wholly independent of the country;
+laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people, immediate or by
+their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated and the titles
+of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by
+restrictions on the press; and finally, disaffection overawed by the first band
+of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our
+ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had
+invariably secured their allegiance to the mother-country, whether its head
+chanced to be a Parliament, Protector or popish monarch. Till these evil times,
+however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists had ruled
+themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the
+native subjects of Great Britain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length a rumor reached our shores that the prince of Orange had ventured on
+an enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religious
+rights and the salvation of New England. It was but a doubtful whisper; it
+might be false or the attempt might fail, and in either case the man that
+stirred against King James would lose his head. Still, the intelligence
+produced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the streets and
+threw bold glances at their oppressors, while far and wide there was a subdued
+and silent agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land
+from its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to
+avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm their
+despotism by yet harsher measures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors,
+being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the governor&rsquo;s guard and
+made their appearance in the streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when
+the march commenced. The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go
+through the streets less as the martial music of the soldiers than as a
+muster-call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude by various avenues
+assembled in King street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century
+afterward, of another encounter between the troops of Britain and a people
+struggling against her tyranny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the Pilgrims came, this crowd of
+their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their
+character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier
+occasions. There was the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the gloomy
+but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech and the confidence in
+Heaven&rsquo;s blessing on a righteous cause which would have marked a band of
+the original Puritans when threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed,
+it was not yet time for the old spirit to be extinct, since there were men in
+the street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees before a house
+was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old soldiers of the
+Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms
+might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here, also, were the
+veterans of King Philip&rsquo;s war, who had burned villages and slaughtered
+young and old with pious fierceness while the godly souls throughout the land
+were helping them with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the
+crowd, which, unlike all other mobs, regarded them with such reverence as if
+there were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their
+influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, the purpose of the governor in disturbing the peace of the town at a
+period when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment was
+almost the Universal subject of inquiry, and variously explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Satan will strike his master-stroke presently,&rdquo; cried some,
+&ldquo;because he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to
+be dragged to prison. We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King
+street.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their minister, who
+looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as well befitted a
+candidate for the highest honor of his profession&mdash;a crown of martyrdom.
+It was actually fancied at that period that New England might have a John
+Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in the <i>Primer</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew,&rdquo;
+cried others. &ldquo;We are to be massacred, man and male-child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither was this rumor wholly discredited; although the wiser class believed
+the governor&rsquo;s object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor under the
+old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first settlers, was known
+to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing that Sir Edmund Andros
+intended at once to strike terror by a parade of military force and to confound
+the opposite faction by possessing himself of their chief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stand firm for the old charter-governor!&rdquo; shouted the crowd,
+seizing upon the idea&mdash;&ldquo;the good old Governor Bradstreet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While this cry was at the loudest the people were surprised by the well-known
+figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, who
+appeared on the elevated steps of a door and with characteristic mildness
+besought them to submit to the constituted authorities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My children,&rdquo; concluded this venerable person, &ldquo;do nothing
+rashly. Cry not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England and expect
+patiently what the Lord will do in this matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The event was soon to be decided. All this time the roll of the drum had been
+approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with reverberations from
+house to house and the regular tramp of martial footsteps it burst into the
+street. A double rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying the whole
+breadth of the passage, with shouldered matchlocks and matches burning, so as
+to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress
+of a machine that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
+moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party
+of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros, elderly, but
+erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favorite councillors and the
+bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand rode Edward Randolph, our
+arch-enemy, that &ldquo;blasted wretch,&rdquo; as Cotton Mather calls him, who
+achieved the downfall of our ancient government and was followed with a
+sensible curse-through life and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant,
+scattering jests and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came behind with a
+downcast look, dreading, as well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the
+people, who beheld him, their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of
+his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor and two or three civil
+officers under the Crown were also there. But the figure which most attracted
+the public eye and stirred up the deepest feeling was the Episcopal clergyman
+of King&rsquo;s Chapel riding haughtily among the magistrates in his priestly
+vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and persecution, the union of
+Church and State, and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans to
+the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its moral,
+the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things
+and the character of the people&mdash;on one side the religious multitude with
+their sad visages and dark attire, and on the other the group of despotic
+rulers with the high churchman in the midst and here and there a crucifix at
+their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust
+authority and scoffing at the universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers,
+waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by
+which obedience could be secured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Lord of hosts,&rdquo; cried a voice among the crowd, &ldquo;provide a
+champion for thy people!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald&rsquo;s cry to
+introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were now
+huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the soldiers had
+advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was
+empty&mdash;a paved solitude between lofty edifices which threw almost a
+twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen the figure of an ancient man
+who seemed to have emerged from among the people and was walking by himself
+along the centre of the street to confront the armed band. He wore the old
+Puritan dress&mdash;a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at
+least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his
+hand to assist the tremulous gait of age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round,
+displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable by the hoary
+beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragement
+and warning, then turned again and resumed his way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is this gray patriarch?&rdquo; asked the young men of their sires.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is this venerable brother?&rdquo; asked the old men among
+themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of fourscore years
+and upward, were disturbed, deeming it strange that they should forget one of
+such evident authority whom they must have known in their early days, the
+associate of Winthrop and all the old councillors, giving laws and making
+prayers and leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have
+remembered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth as their own were now.
+And the young! How could he have passed so utterly from their
+memories&mdash;that hoary sire, the relic of long-departed times, whose awful
+benediction had surely been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?&rdquo;
+whispered the wondering crowd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary
+walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers,
+and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised
+himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his
+shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with
+a warrior&rsquo;s step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form
+advanced on one side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the
+other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped
+his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader&rsquo;s truncheon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stand!&rdquo; cried he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal of that
+voice&mdash;fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to God
+in prayer&mdash;were irresistible. At the old man&rsquo;s word and outstretched
+arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the advancing line stood still.
+A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining
+the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb,
+could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause whom the
+oppressor&rsquo;s drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe
+and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves brought to
+an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their
+snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however,
+blenched not a step, but, glancing his severe eye round the group, which half
+encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have
+thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the governor and
+council with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority
+of the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does this old fellow here?&rdquo; cried Edward Randolph,
+fiercely.&mdash;&ldquo;On, Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the
+dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen&mdash;to stand aside or
+be trampled on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, nay! Let us show respect to the good grandsire,&rdquo; said
+Bullivant, laughing. &ldquo;See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary
+who hath lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of
+times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
+Noll&rsquo;s name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you mad, old man?&rdquo; demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and
+harsh tones. &ldquo;How dare you stay the march of King James&rsquo;s
+governor?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have stayed the march of a king himself ere now,&rdquo; replied the
+gray figure, with stern composure. &ldquo;I am here, Sir Governor, because the
+cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and,
+beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear
+once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of
+James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by
+to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in this very street, where ye would
+make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a governor, back! With this
+night thy power is ended. To-morrow, the prison! Back, lest I foretell the
+scaffold!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the words of
+their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one unaccustomed to
+converse except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their
+souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arms and ready to
+convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros
+looked at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude
+and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to
+quench, and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in
+an open space where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his
+thoughts he uttered no word which might discover, but, whether the oppressor
+were overawed by the Gray Champion&rsquo;s look or perceived his peril in the
+threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back and ordered
+his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before another sunset the
+governor and all that rode so proudly with him were prisoners, and long ere it
+was known that James had abdicated King William was proclaimed throughout New
+England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops had gone
+from King street and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear,
+Bradstreet, the aged governor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than his
+own. Others soberly affirmed that while they marvelled at the venerable
+grandeur of his aspect the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly
+into the hues of twilight, till where he stood there was an empty space. But
+all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched
+for his reappearance in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor
+knew when his funeral passed nor where his gravestone was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the records
+of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too mighty for the age,
+but glorious in all after-times for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its
+high example to the subject. I have heard that whenever the descendants of the
+Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires the old man appears again. When
+eighty years had passed, he walked once more in King street. Five years later,
+in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green beside the
+meeting-house at Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a slab of
+slate inlaid commemorates the first-fallen of the Revolution. And when our
+fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker&rsquo;s Hill, all through that
+night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be ere he comes
+again! His hour is one of darkness and adversity and peril. But should domestic
+tyranny oppress us or the invader&rsquo;s step pollute our soil, still may the
+Gray Champion come! for he is the type of New England&rsquo;s hereditary
+spirit, and his shadowy march on the eve of danger must ever be the pledge that
+New England&rsquo;s sons will vindicate their ancestry.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>
+SUNDAY AT HOME</h2>
+
+<p>
+Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to watch the
+sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my chamber window. First
+the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy
+aspect; next it encroaches on the tower and causes the index of the dial to
+glisten like gold as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now the
+loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework of the portal
+is marked strongly out. At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven
+comes down the stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing
+with fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among
+the nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same sun brightens it
+every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness for the
+Sabbath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for the
+edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and its dim
+emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and somewhat melancholy
+spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our thoughts, as well as locally. It
+impresses us as a giant with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to
+care for the great and small concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks
+a moral to the few that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of
+their separate and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings
+abroad the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither have
+gladness and festivity found a better utterance than by its tongue; and when
+the dead are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy voice
+to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human interests,
+what a moral loneliness on week-days broods round about its stately height! It
+has no kindred with the houses above which it towers; it looks down into the
+narrow thoroughfare&mdash;the lonelier because the crowd are elbowing their
+passage at its base. A glance at the body of the church deepens this
+impression. Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted shadows we
+discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless
+pulpit and the clock which tells to solitude how time is passing.
+Time&mdash;where man lives not&mdash;what is it but eternity? And in the
+church, we might suppose, are garnered up throughout the week all thoughts and
+feelings that have reference to eternity, until the holy day comes round again
+to let them forth. Might not, then, its more appropriate site be in the
+outskirts of the town, with space for old trees to wave around it and throw
+their solemn shadows over a quiet green? We will say more of this hereafter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a holier
+brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices on the Exchange
+nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business anywhere but at church. Many
+have fancied so. For my own part, whether I see it scattered down among tangled
+woods, or beaming broad across the fields, or hemmed in between brick
+buildings, or tracing out the figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still
+I recognize the Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some
+illusions&mdash;and this among them&mdash;are the shadows of great truths.
+Doubts may flit around me or seem to close their evil wings and settle down,
+but so long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven
+retains its sanctity on the Sabbath&mdash;while that blessed sunshine lives
+within me&mdash;never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If it
+have gone astray, it will return again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind the
+curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot so near the church
+as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple should be deemed
+consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it said that a devout heart
+may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the
+same. My heart, perhaps, has no such holy, nor, I would fain trust, such
+impious, potency. It must suffice that, though my form be absent, my inner man
+goes constantly to church, while many whose bodily presence fills the
+accustomed seats have left their souls at home. But I am there even before my
+friend the sexton. At length he comes&mdash;a man of kindly but sombre aspect,
+in dark gray clothes, and hair of the same mixture. He comes and applies his
+key to the wide portal. Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews or
+ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again to enjoy the
+music of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too! All the steeples in town are
+talking together aloft in the sunny air and rejoicing among themselves while
+their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here are the children assembling to
+the Sabbath-school, which is kept somewhere within the church. Often, while
+looking at the arched portal, I have been gladdened by the sight of a score of
+these little girls and boys in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks bursting
+suddenly forth into the sunshine like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been
+shut up in the solemn gloom. Or I might compare them to cherubs haunting that
+holy place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell individuals of
+the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is invariably an old woman in
+black whose bent frame and rounded shoulders are evidently laden with some
+heavy affliction which she is eager to rest upon the altar. Would that the
+Sabbath came twice as often, for the sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is
+an elderly man, also, who arrives in good season and leans against the corner
+of the tower, just within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a
+darksome brow. I sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of the two.
+After these, others drop in singly and by twos and threes, either disappearing
+through the doorway or taking their stand in its vicinity. At last, and always
+with an unexpected sensation, the bell turns in the steeple overhead and throws
+out an irregular clangor, jarring the tower to its foundation. As if there were
+magic in the sound, the sidewalks of the street, both up and down along, are
+immediately thronged with two long lines of people, all converging hitherward
+and streaming into the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of a coach draws
+nearer&mdash;a deeper thunder by its contrast with the surrounding
+stillness&mdash;until it sets down the wealthy worshippers at the portal among
+their humblest brethren. Beyond that entrance&mdash;in theory, at
+least&mdash;there are no distinctions of earthly rank; nor, indeed, by the
+goodly apparel which is flaunting in the sun would there seem to be such on the
+hither side. Those pretty girls! Why will they disturb my pious meditations? Of
+all days in the week, they should strive to look least fascinating on the
+Sabbath, instead of heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival the
+blessed angels and keep our thoughts from heaven. Were I the minister himself,
+I must needs look. One girl is white muslin from the waist upward and black
+silk downward to her slippers; a second blushes from top-knot to shoe-tie, one
+universal scarlet; another shines of a pervading yellow, as if she had made a
+garment of the sunshine. The greater part, however, have adopted a milder
+cheerfulness of hue. Their veils, especially when the wind raises them, give a
+lightness to the general effect and make them appear like airy phantoms as they
+flit up the steps and vanish into the sombre doorway. Nearly all&mdash;though
+it is very strange that I should know it&mdash;wear white stockings, white as
+snow, and neat slippers laced crosswise with black ribbon pretty high above the
+ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effective than a black one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe simplicity, needing no
+black silk gown to denote his office. His aspect claims my reverence, but
+cannot win my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter keeping fast the gate of
+Heaven and frowning, more stern than pitiful, on the wretched applicants, that
+face should be my study. By middle age, or sooner, the creed has generally
+wrought upon the heart or been attempered by it. As the minister passes into
+the church the bell holds its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the
+congregation dies away. The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then
+at my window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he has
+caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies asleep in the
+quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me, and brings also an
+uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. Oh, I ought to have gone to
+church! The bustle of the rising congregation reaches my ears. They are
+standing up to pray. Could I bring my heart into unison with those who are
+praying in yonder church and lift it heavenward with a fervor of supplication,
+but no distinct request, would not that be the safest kind of
+prayer?&mdash;&ldquo;Lord, look down upon me in mercy!&rdquo; With that
+sentiment gushing from my soul, might I not leave all the rest to him?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I can enjoy
+better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir and the massive
+melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me. At this distance it
+thrills through my frame and plays upon my heart-strings with a pleasure both
+of the sense and spirit. Heaven be praised! I know nothing of music as a
+science, and the most elaborate harmonies, if they please me, please as simply
+as a nurse&rsquo;s lullaby. The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my
+mind with fanciful echoes till I start from my reverie and find that the sermon
+has commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify in a regular way by any
+but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher utters gives
+birth to a train of thought and leads me onward step by step quite out of
+hearing of the good man&rsquo;s voice unless he be indeed a son of thunder. At
+my open window, catching now and then a sentence of the &ldquo;parson&rsquo;s
+saw,&rdquo; I am as well situated as at the foot of the pulpit stairs. The
+broken and scattered fragments of this one discourse will be the texts of many
+sermons preached by those colleague pastors&mdash;colleagues, but often
+disputants&mdash;my Mind and Heart. The former pretends to be a scholar and
+perplexes me with doctrinal points; the latter takes me on the score of
+feeling; and both, like several other preachers, spend their strength to very
+little purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my curtain
+just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour-hand on the dial has
+passed beyond four o&rsquo;clock. The declining sun is hidden behind the
+steeple and throws its shadow straight across the street; so that my chamber is
+darkened as with a cloud. Around the church door all is solitude, and an
+impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A commotion is heard. The seats
+are slammed down and the pew doors thrown back; a multitude of feet are
+trampling along the unseen aisles, and the congregation bursts suddenly through
+the portal. Foremost scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and
+dark phalanx of grown men, and lastly a crowd of females with young children
+and a few scattered husbands. This instantaneous outbreak of life into
+loneliness is one of the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good people
+are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they have been wrapped, as it
+were, in a sort of holy trance by the fervor of their devotion. There is a
+young man, a third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always to flourish a white
+handkerchief and brush the seat of a tight pair of black silk pantaloons which
+shine as if varnished. They must have been made of the stuff called
+&ldquo;everlasting,&rdquo; or perhaps of the same piece as Christian&rsquo;s
+garments in the <i>Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress</i>, for he put them on two summers
+ago and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a great liking to those
+black silk pantaloons. But now, with nods and greetings among friends, each
+matron takes her husband&rsquo;s arm and paces gravely homeward, while the
+girls also flutter away after arranging sunset walks with their favored
+bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve of love. At length the whole congregation
+is dispersed. No; here, with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable
+ladies and a sable gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens
+his severe visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the most
+captivating picture of bliss in heaven is &ldquo;There we shall be
+white!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now, attuning
+its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ. Who are the
+choristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down from heaven this blessed
+morn to blend themselves with the worship of the truly good are playing and
+singing their farewell to the earth. On the wings of that rich melody they were
+borne upward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the singing-men and
+singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and raised their voices
+fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ. Yet it lifted my soul higher
+than all their former strains. They are gone&mdash;the sons and daughters of
+Music&mdash;and the gray sexton is just closing the portal. For six days more
+there will be no face of man in the pews and aisles and galleries, nor a voice
+in the pulpit, nor music in the choir. Was it worth while to rear this massive
+edifice to be a desert in the heart of the town and populous only for a few
+hours of each seventh day? Oh, but the church is a symbol of religion. May its
+site, which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was felled, be kept
+holy for ever, a spot of solitude and peace amid the trouble and vanity of our
+week-day world! There is a moral, and a religion too, even in the silent walls.
+And may the steeple still point heavenward and be decked with the hallowed
+sunshine of the Sabbath morn!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>
+THE WEDDING-KNELL</h2>
+
+<p>
+There is a certain church, in the city of New York which I have always regarded
+with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there solemnized under very
+singular circumstances in my grandmother&rsquo;s girlhood. That venerable lady
+chanced to be a spectator of the scene, and ever after made it her favorite
+narrative. Whether the edifice now standing on the same site be the identical
+one to which she referred I am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would it be
+worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error by reading the
+date of its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church
+surrounded by an enclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear urns,
+pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the tributes of
+private affection or more splendid memorials of historic dust. With such a
+place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath its tower, one would be
+willing to connect some legendary interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement, though
+there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady&rsquo;s part and forty
+years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr. Ellenwood was a
+shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all men who brood over their
+own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions a vein of generous sentiment; a
+scholar throughout life, though always an indolent one, because his studies had
+no definite object either of public advantage or personal ambition; a
+gentleman, high-bred and fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a
+considerable relaxation in his behalf of the common rules of society. In truth,
+there were so many anomalies in his character, and, though shrinking with
+diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been his fatality so often to
+become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of conduct, that people
+searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of insanity. But there was no need
+of this. His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked the support of an
+engrossing purpose, and in feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of
+other food. If he were mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an
+aimless and abortive life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom in everything but
+age as can well be conceived. Compelled to relinquish her first engagement, she
+had been united to a man of twice her own years, to whom she became an
+exemplary wife, and by whose death she was left in possession of a splendid
+fortune. A Southern gentleman considerably younger than herself succeeded to
+her hand and carried her to Charleston, where after many uncomfortable years
+she found herself again a widow. It would have been singular if any uncommon
+delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney&rsquo;s; it
+could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment, the cold duty
+of her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart&rsquo;s principles
+consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her Southern husband, which
+had inevitably driven her to connect the idea of his death with that of her
+comfort. To be brief, she was that wisest but unloveliest variety of woman, a
+philosopher, bearing troubles of the heart with equanimity, dispensing with all
+that should have been her happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage
+in most matters, the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one frailty
+that made her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not remain beautiful by
+proxy in the person of a daughter; she therefore refused to grow old and ugly
+on any consideration; she struggled with Time, and held fast her roses in spite
+of him, till the venerable thief appeared to have relinquished the spoil as not
+worth the trouble of acquiring it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such an unworldly man
+as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney&rsquo;s return to her
+native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones, seemed to concur in
+supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive part in arranging the
+affair; there were considerations of expediency which she would be far more
+likely to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood, and there was just the specious
+phantom of sentiment and romance in this late union of two early lovers which
+sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost her true feelings among the
+accidents of life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of
+worldly wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been induced
+to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But while people talked
+the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnized according to the
+Episcopalian forms and in open church, with a degree of publicity that
+attracted many spectators, who occupied the front seats of the galleries and
+the pews near the altar and along the broad aisle. It had been arranged, or
+possibly it was the custom of the day, that the parties should proceed
+separately to church. By some accident the bridegroom was a little less
+punctual than the widow and her bridal attendants, with whose arrival, after
+this tedious but necessary preface, the action of our tale may be said to
+commence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were heard, and the
+gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal-party came through the church door
+with the sudden and gladsome effect of a burst of sunshine. The whole group,
+except the principal figure, was made up of youth and gayety. As they streamed
+up the broad aisle, while the pews and pillars seemed to brighten on either
+side, their steps were as buoyant as if they mistook the church for a ball-room
+and were ready to dance hand in hand to the altar. So brilliant was the
+spectacle that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its
+entrance. At the moment when the bride&rsquo;s foot touched the threshold the
+bell swung heavily in the tower above her and sent forth its deepest knell. The
+vibrations died away, and returned with prolonged solemnity as she entered the
+body of the church.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens! What an omen!&rdquo; whispered a young lady to her lover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On my honor,&rdquo; replied the gentleman, &ldquo;I believe the bell has
+the good taste to toll of its own accord. What has she to do with weddings? If
+you, dearest Julia, were approaching the altar, the bell would ring out its
+merriest peal. It has only a funeral-knell for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bride and most of her company had been too much occupied with the bustle of
+entrance to hear the first boding stroke of the bell&mdash;or, at least, to
+reflect on the singularity of such a welcome to the altar. They therefore
+continued to advance with undiminished gayety. The gorgeous dresses of the
+time&mdash;the crimson velvet coats, the gold-laced hats, the hoop-petticoats,
+the silk, satin, brocade and embroidery, the buckles, canes and swords, all
+displayed to the best advantage on persons suited to such finery&mdash;made the
+group appear more like a bright-colored picture than anything real. But by what
+perversity of taste had the artist represented his principal figure as so
+wrinkled and decayed, while yet he had decked her out in the brightest splendor
+of attire, as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into age and become
+a moral to the beautiful around her? On they went, however, and had glittered
+along about a third of the aisle, when another stroke of the bell seemed to
+fill the church with a visible gloom, dimming and obscuring the bright-pageant
+till it shone forth again as from a mist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time the party wavered, stopped and huddled closer together, while a
+slight scream was heard from some of the ladies and a confused whispering among
+the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might have been fancifully
+compared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly shaken by a puff of wind which
+threatened to scatter the leaves of an old brown, withered rose on the same
+stalk with two dewy buds, such being the emblem of the widow between her fair
+young bridemaids. But her heroism was admirable. She had started with an
+irrepressible shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her
+heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in dismay, she
+took the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell continued to swing,
+strike and vibrate with the same doleful regularity as when a corpse is on its
+way to the tomb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken,&rdquo; said the
+widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. &ldquo;But so many weddings
+have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and yet turned out
+unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under such different
+auspices.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; answered the rector, in great perplexity, &ldquo;this
+strange occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of the famous Bishop
+Taylor wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe that, to
+speak somewhat after his own rich style, he seems to hang the bridal-chamber in
+black and cut the wedding-garment out of a coffin-pall. And it has been the
+custom of divers nations to infuse something of sadness into their marriage
+ceremonies, so to keep death in mind while contracting that engagement which is
+life&rsquo;s chiefest business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral
+from this funeral-knell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener point, he
+did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the mystery and stop
+those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a marriage. A brief space elapsed,
+during which the silence was broken only by whispers and a few suppressed
+titterings among the wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first
+shock were disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
+have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth. The
+widow&rsquo;s glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a window of
+the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that she had dedicated to
+her first husband; then her eyelids dropped over their faded orbs and her
+thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another grave. Two buried men with a voice
+at her ear and a cry afar off were calling her to lie down beside them.
+Perhaps, with momentary truth of feeling, she thought how much happier had been
+her fate if, after years of bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral
+and she were followed to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover,
+long her husband. But why had she returned to him when their cold hearts shrank
+from each other&rsquo;s embrace?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to fade in
+the air. A whisper, communicated from those who stood nearest the windows, now
+spread through the church: a hearse with a train of several coaches was
+creeping along the street, conveying some dead man to the churchyard, while the
+bride awaited a living one at the altar. Immediately after, the footsteps of
+the bridegroom and his friends were heard at the door. The widow looked down
+the aisle and clenched the arm of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand with
+such unconscious violence that the fair girl trembled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You frighten me, my dear madam,&rdquo; cried she. &ldquo;For
+heaven&rsquo;s sake, what is the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, my dear&mdash;nothing,&rdquo; said the widow; then, whispering
+close to her ear, &ldquo;There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of. I
+am expecting my bridegroom to come into the church with my two first husbands
+for groomsmen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look! look!&rdquo; screamed the bridemaid. &ldquo;What is here? The
+funeral!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. First came an old man and
+woman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head to foot in the
+deepest black, all but their pale features and hoary hair, he leaning on a
+staff and supporting her decrepit form with his nerveless arm. Behind appeared
+another and another pair, as aged, as black and mournful as the first. As they
+drew near the widow recognized in every face some trait of former friends long
+forgotten, but now returning as if from their old graves to warn her to prepare
+a shroud, or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles and
+infirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens of her own decay. Many
+a merry night had she danced with them in youth, and now in joyless age she
+felt that some withered partner should request her hand and all unite in a
+dance of death to the music of the funeral-bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed that from
+pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe as some object
+hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full in sight. Many turned
+away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid stare, and a young girl giggled
+hysterically and fainted with the laughter on her lips. When the spectral
+procession approached the altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged,
+till in the centre appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with all
+this gloomy pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his
+shroud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like aspect. The
+eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all else was fixed in
+the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin. The corpse stood
+motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that seemed to melt into the
+clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the air while he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, my bride!&rdquo; said those pale lips. &ldquo;The hearse is ready;
+the sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us be married,
+and then to our coffins!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How shall the widow&rsquo;s horror be represented? It gave her the ghastliness
+of a dead man&rsquo;s bride. Her youthful friends stood apart, shuddering at
+the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom and herself; the whole scene expressed by
+the strongest imagery the vain struggle of the gilded vanities of this world
+when opposed to age, infirmity, sorrow and death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The awestruck silence was first broken by the clergyman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Ellenwood,&rdquo; said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of
+authority, &ldquo;you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by the unusual
+circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must be deferred. As an old
+friend, let me entreat you to return home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Home&mdash;yes; but not without my bride,&rdquo; answered he, in the
+same hollow accents. &ldquo;You deem this mockery&mdash;perhaps madness. Had I
+bedizened my aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my
+withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have been mockery or
+madness; but now let young and old declare which of us has come hither without
+a wedding-garment&mdash;the bridegroom or the bride.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside the widow, contrasting
+the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and glitter in which she had
+arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None that beheld them could deny the
+terrible strength of the moral which his disordered intellect had contrived to
+draw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cruel! cruel!&rdquo; groaned the heartstricken bride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cruel?&rdquo; repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a
+wild bitterness, &ldquo;Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the other!
+In youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took away all
+the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality enough even to
+grieve at&mdash;with only a pervading gloom, through which I walked wearily and
+cared not whither. But after forty years, when I have built my tomb and would
+not give up the thought of resting there&mdash;no, not for such a life as we
+once pictured&mdash;you call me to the altar. At your summons I am here. But
+other husbands have enjoyed your youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart and
+all that could be termed your life. What is there for me but your decay and
+death? And therefore I have bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the
+sexton&rsquo;s deepest knell, and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a
+burial-service, that we may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre and
+enter it together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion in a
+heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. The stern lesson of the
+day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She seized the
+bridegroom&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; cried she; &ldquo;let us wed even at the door of the
+sepulchre. My life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is
+one true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth: it makes me worthy of
+you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for eternity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while a tear
+was gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human feeling from the
+frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear, even with his shroud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beloved of my youth,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I have been wild. The
+despair of my whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me. Forgive and
+be forgiven. Yes; it is evening with us now, and we have realized none of our
+morning dreams of happiness. But let us join our hands before the altar as
+lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through life, yet who meet
+again as they are leaving it and find their earthly affection changed into
+something holy as religion. And what is time to the married of eternity?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amid the tears of many and a swell of exalted sentiment in those who felt
+aright was solemnized the union of two immortal souls. The train of withered
+mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale features of the aged
+bride and the death-bell tolling through the whole till its deep voice
+overpowered the marriage-words,&mdash;all marked the funeral of earthly hopes.
+But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as if stirred by the sympathies of
+this impressive scene, poured forth an anthem, first mingling with the dismal
+knell, then rising to a loftier strain, till the soul looked down upon its woe.
+And when the awful rite was finished and with cold hand in cold hand the
+married of eternity withdrew, the organ&rsquo;s peal of solemn triumph drowned
+the wedding-knell.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a> THE MINISTER&rsquo;S BLACK VEIL</h2>
+
+<h4>A PARABLE<a href="#fn1" name="fnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house pulling lustily at the
+bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along the street.
+Children with bright faces tripped merrily beside their parents or mimicked a
+graver gait in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors
+looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine
+made them prettier than on week-days. When the throng had mostly streamed into
+the porch, the sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend
+Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s door. The first glimpse of the clergyman&rsquo;s figure was
+the signal for the bell to cease its summons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?&rdquo; cried the
+sexton, in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All within hearing immediately turned about and beheld the semblance of Mr.
+Hooper pacing slowly his meditative way toward the meeting-house. With one
+accord they started, expressing more wonder than if some strange minister were
+coming to dust the cushions of Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s pulpit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure it is our parson?&rdquo; inquired Goodman Gray of the
+sexton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper,&rdquo; replied the sexton.
+&ldquo;He was to have exchanged pulpits with Parson Shute of Westbury, but
+Parson Shute sent to excuse himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral
+sermon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight. Mr. Hooper, a
+gentlemanly person of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was dressed with
+due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had starched his band and brushed
+the weekly dust from his Sunday&rsquo;s garb. There was but one thing
+remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about his forehead and hanging down over
+his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil.
+On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crape, which entirely
+concealed his features except the mouth and chin, but probably did not
+intercept his sight further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and
+inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper walked
+onward at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking on the ground,
+as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his
+parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps. But so wonder-struck
+were they that his greeting hardly met with a return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t really feel as if good Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s face was behind
+that piece of crape,&rdquo; said the sexton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it,&rdquo; muttered an old woman as she hobbled into
+the meeting-house. &ldquo;He has changed himself into something awful only by
+hiding his face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our parson has gone mad!&rdquo; cried Goodman Gray, following him across
+the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the
+meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could refrain from
+twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright and turned directly
+about; while several little boys clambered upon the seats, and came down again
+with a terrible racket. There was a general bustle, a rustling of the
+women&rsquo;s gowns and shuffling of the men&rsquo;s feet, greatly at variance
+with that hushed repose which should attend the entrance of the minister. But
+Mr. Hooper appeared not to notice the perturbation of his people. He entered
+with an almost noiseless step, bent his head mildly to the pews on each side
+and bowed as he passed his oldest parishioner, a white-haired great-grandsire,
+who occupied an arm-chair in the centre of the aisle. It was strange to observe
+how slowly this venerable man became conscious of something singular in the
+appearance of his pastor. He seemed not fully to partake of the prevailing
+wonder till Mr. Hooper had ascended the stairs and showed himself in the
+pulpit, face to face with his congregation except for the black veil. That
+mysterious emblem was never once withdrawn. It shook with his measured breath
+as he gave out the psalm, it threw its obscurity between him and the holy page
+as he read the Scriptures, and while he prayed the veil lay heavily on his
+uplifted countenance. Did he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was
+addressing?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape that more than one woman of
+delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet perhaps the
+pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister as his
+black veil to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic one: he
+strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences rather than
+to drive them thither by the thunders of the word. The sermon which he now
+delivered was marked by the same characteristics of style and manner as the
+general series of his pulpit oratory, but there was something either in the
+sentiment of the discourse itself or in the imagination of the auditors which
+made it greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their
+pastor&rsquo;s lips. It was tinged rather more darkly than usual with the
+gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s temperament. The subject had reference to
+secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest,
+and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the
+Omniscient can detect them. A subtle power was breathed into his words. Each
+member of the congregation, the most innocent girl and the man of hardened
+breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them behind his awful veil and
+discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought. Many spread their clasped
+hands on their bosoms. There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper
+said&mdash;at least, no violence; and yet with every tremor of his melancholy
+voice the hearers quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe. So
+sensible were the audience of some unwonted attribute in their minister that
+they longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil, almost believing that
+a stranger&rsquo;s visage would be discovered, though the form, gesture and
+voice were those of Mr. Hooper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous confusion,
+eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits
+the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles,
+huddled closely together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some
+went homeward alone, wrapped in silent meditation; some talked loudly and
+profaned the Sabbath-day with ostentatious laughter. A few shook their
+sagacious heads, intimating that they could penetrate the mystery, while one or
+two affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s
+eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp as to require a shade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a brief interval forth came good Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of his
+flock. Turning his veiled face from one group to another, he paid due reverence
+to the hoary heads, saluted the middle-aged with kind dignity as their friend
+and spiritual guide, greeted the young with mingled authority and love, and
+laid his hands on the little children&rsquo;s heads to bless them. Such was
+always his custom on the Sabbath-day. Strange and bewildered looks repaid him
+for his courtesy. None, as on former occasions, aspired to the honor of walking
+by their pastor&rsquo;s side. Old Squire Saunders&mdash;doubtless by an
+accidental lapse of memory&mdash;neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table,
+where the good clergyman had been wont to bless the food almost every Sunday
+since his settlement. He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and at the
+moment of closing the door was observed to look back upon the people, all of
+whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister. A sad smile gleamed faintly from
+beneath the black veil and flickered about his mouth, glimmering as he
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How strange,&rdquo; said a lady, &ldquo;that a simple black veil, such
+as any woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on
+Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s face!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s
+intellects,&rdquo; observed her husband, the physician of the village.
+&ldquo;But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of this vagary even
+on a sober-minded man like myself. The black veil, though it covers only our
+pastor&rsquo;s face, throws its influence over his whole person and makes him
+ghost-like from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Truly do I,&rdquo; replied the lady; &ldquo;and I would not be alone
+with him for the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with
+himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men sometimes are so,&rdquo; said her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The afternoon service was attended with similar circumstances. At its
+conclusion the bell tolled for the funeral of a young lady. The relatives and
+friends were assembled in the house and the more distant acquaintances stood
+about the door, speaking of the good qualities of the deceased, when their talk
+was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hooper, still covered with his black
+veil. It was now an appropriate emblem. The clergyman stepped into the room
+where the corpse was laid, and bent over the coffin to take a last farewell of
+his deceased parishioner. As he stooped the veil hung straight down from his
+forehead, so that, if her eye-lids had not been closed for ever, the dead
+maiden might have seen his face. Could Mr. Hooper be fearful of her glance,
+that he so hastily caught back the black veil? A person who watched the
+interview between the dead and living scrupled not to affirm that at the
+instant when the clergyman&rsquo;s features were disclosed the corpse had
+slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and muslin cap, though the countenance
+retained the composure of death. A superstitious old woman was the only witness
+of this prodigy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the coffin Mr. Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners, and thence
+to the head of the staircase, to make the funeral prayer. It was a tender and
+heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued with celestial hopes
+that the music of a heavenly harp swept by the fingers of the dead seemed
+faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister. The people
+trembled, though they but darkly understood him, when he prayed that they and
+himself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young
+maiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their
+faces. The bearers went heavily forth and the mourners followed, saddening all
+the street, with the dead before them and Mr. Hooper in his black veil behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you look back?&rdquo; said one in the procession to his partner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had a fancy,&rdquo; replied she, &ldquo;that the minister and the
+maiden&rsquo;s spirit were walking hand in hand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so had I at the same moment,&rdquo; said the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night the handsomest couple in Milford village were to be joined in
+wedlock. Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid cheerfulness
+for such occasions which often excited a sympathetic smile where livelier
+merriment would have been thrown away. There was no quality of his disposition
+which made him more beloved than this. The company at the wedding awaited his
+arrival with impatience, trusting that the strange awe which had gathered over
+him throughout the day would now be dispelled. But such was not the result.
+When Mr. Hooper came, the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same
+horrible black veil which had added deeper gloom to the funeral and could
+portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate effect on the
+guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from beneath the black crape
+and dimmed the light of the candles. The bridal pair stood up before the
+minister, but the bride&rsquo;s cold fingers quivered in the tremulous hand of
+the bridegroom, and her death-like paleness caused a whisper that the maiden
+who had been buried a few hours before was come from her grave to be married.
+If ever another wedding were so dismal, it was that famous one where they
+tolled the wedding-knell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After performing the ceremony Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his lips,
+wishing happiness to the new-married couple in a strain of mild pleasantry that
+ought to have brightened the features of the guests like a cheerful gleam from
+the hearth. At that instant, catching a glimpse of his figure in the
+looking-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which
+it overwhelmed all others. His frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt
+the untasted wine upon the carpet and rushed forth into the darkness, for the
+Earth too had on her black veil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day the whole village of Milford talked of little else than Parson
+Hooper&rsquo;s black veil. That, and the mystery concealed behind it, supplied
+a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the street and good
+women gossipping at their open windows. It was the first item of news that the
+tavernkeeper told to his guests. The children babbled of it on their way to
+school. One imitative little imp covered his face with an old black
+handkerchief, thereby so affrighting his playmates that the panic seized
+himself and he wellnigh lost his wits by his own waggery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was remarkable that, of all the busybodies and impertinent people in the
+parish, not one ventured to put the plain question to Mr. Hooper wherefore he
+did this thing. Hitherto, whenever there appeared the slightest call for such
+interference, he had never lacked advisers nor shown himself averse to be
+guided by their judgment. If he erred at all, it was by so painful a degree of
+self-distrust that even the mildest censure would lead him to consider an
+indifferent action as a crime. Yet, though so well acquainted with this amiable
+weakness, no individual among his parishioners chose to make the black veil a
+subject of friendly remonstrance. There was a feeling of dread, neither plainly
+confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each to shift the
+responsibility upon another, till at length it was found expedient to send a
+deputation of the church, in order to deal with Mr. Hooper about the mystery
+before it should grow into a scandal. Never did an embassy so ill discharge its
+duties. The minister received them with friendly courtesy, but became silent
+after they were seated, leaving to his visitors the whole burden of introducing
+their important business. The topic, it might be supposed, was obvious enough.
+There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s forehead and
+concealing every feature above his placid mouth, on which, at times, they could
+perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But that piece of crape, to
+their imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a
+fearful secret between him and them. Were the veil but cast aside, they might
+speak freely of it, but not till then. Thus they sat a considerable time,
+speechless, confused and shrinking uneasily from Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s eye, which
+they felt to be fixed upon them with an invisible glance. Finally, the deputies
+returned abashed to their constituents, pronouncing the matter too weighty to
+be handled except by a council of the churches, if, indeed, it might not
+require a General Synod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with which the
+black veil had impressed all besides herself. When the deputies returned
+without an explanation, or even venturing to demand one, she with the calm
+energy of her character determined to chase away the strange cloud that
+appeared to be settling round Mr. Hooper every moment more darkly than before.
+As his plighted wife it should be her privilege to know what the black veil
+concealed. At the minister&rsquo;s first visit, therefore, she entered upon the
+subject with a direct simplicity which made the task easier both for him and
+her. After he had seated himself she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the veil,
+but could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so overawed the
+multitude; it was but a double fold of crape hanging down from his forehead to
+his mouth and slightly stirring with his breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said she, aloud, and smiling, &ldquo;there is nothing
+terrible in this piece of crape, except that it hides a face which I am always
+glad to look upon. Come, good sir; let the sun shine from behind the cloud.
+First lay aside your black veil, then tell me why you put it on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s smile glimmered faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is an hour to come,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;when all of us shall
+cast aside our veils. Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece
+of crape till then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your words are a mystery too,&rdquo; returned the young lady.
+&ldquo;Take away the veil from them, at least.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Elizabeth, I will,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;so far as my vow may suffer
+me. Know, then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it
+ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of
+multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No mortal eye
+will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me from the world; even
+you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What grievous affliction hath befallen you,&rdquo; she earnestly
+inquired, &ldquo;that you should thus darken your eyes for ever?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it be a sign of mourning,&rdquo; replied Mr. Hooper, &ldquo;I,
+perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a
+black veil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an
+innocent sorrow?&rdquo; urged Elizabeth. &ldquo;Beloved and respected as you
+are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness of
+secret sin. For the sake of your holy office do away this scandal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the rumors that
+were already abroad in the village. But Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s mildness did not
+forsake him. He even smiled again&mdash;that same sad smile which always
+appeared like a faint glimmering of light proceeding from the obscurity beneath
+the veil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough,&rdquo; he merely
+replied; &ldquo;and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the
+same?&rdquo; And with this gentle but unconquerable obstinacy did he resist all
+her entreaties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in thought,
+considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to withdraw her lover
+from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other meaning, was perhaps a
+symptom of mental disease. Though of a firmer character than his own, the tears
+rolled down her cheeks. But in an instant, as it were, a new feeling took the
+place of sorrow: her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when like a
+sudden twilight in the air its terrors fell around her. She arose and stood
+trembling before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And do you feel it, then, at last?&rdquo; said he, mournfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand and turned to leave the
+room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have patience with me, Elizabeth!&rdquo; cried he, passionately.
+&ldquo;Do not desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be
+mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between
+our souls. It is but a mortal veil; it is not for eternity. Oh, you know not
+how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my black veil! Do not
+leave me in this miserable obscurity for ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lift the veil but once and look me in the face,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never! It cannot be!&rdquo; replied Mr. Hooper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then farewell!&rdquo; said Elizabeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She withdrew her arm from his grasp and slowly departed, pausing at the door to
+give one long, shuddering gaze that seemed almost to penetrate the mystery of
+the black veil. But even amid his grief Mr. Hooper smiled to think that only a
+material emblem had separated him from happiness, though the horrors which it
+shadowed forth must be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s black veil or
+by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to hide. By
+persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was reckoned merely
+an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men
+otherwise rational and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity. But
+with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk
+the street with any peace of mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and
+timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that others would make it a point of
+hardihood to throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of the latter class
+compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial-ground; for
+when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would always be faces behind the
+gravestones peeping at his black veil. A fable went the rounds that the stare
+of the dead people drove him thence. It grieved him to the very depth of his
+kind heart to observe how the children fled from his approach, breaking up
+their merriest sports while his melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their
+instinctive dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else that a
+preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black crape. In
+truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so great that he never
+willingly passed before a mirror nor stooped to drink at a still fountain lest
+in its peaceful bosom he should be affrighted by himself. This was what gave
+plausibility to the whispers that Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s conscience tortured him
+for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed or otherwise than so
+obscurely intimated. Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into
+the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister,
+so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and
+fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors he
+walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul or gazing
+through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was
+believed, respected his dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil. But
+still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as
+he passed by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable effect of
+making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of his mysterious
+emblem&mdash;for there was no other apparent cause&mdash;he became a man of
+awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His converts always regarded
+him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming, though but figuratively,
+that before he brought them to celestial light they had been with him behind
+the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark
+affections. Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper and would not yield their
+breath till he appeared, though ever, as he stooped to whisper consolation,
+they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own. Such were the terrors of
+the black veil even when Death had bared his visage. Strangers came long
+distances to attend service at his church with the mere idle purpose of gazing
+at his figure because it was forbidden them to behold his face. But many were
+made to quake ere they departed. Once, during Governor Belcher&rsquo;s
+administration, Mr. Hooper was appointed to preach the election sermon. Covered
+with his black veil, he stood before the chief magistrate, the council and the
+representatives, and wrought so deep an impression that the legislative
+measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom and piety of our
+earliest ancestral sway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet
+shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved and dimly
+feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever
+summoned to their aid in mortal anguish. As years wore on, shedding their snows
+above his sable veil, he acquired a name throughout the New England churches,
+and they called him Father Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners who were of
+mature age when he was settled had been borne away by many a funeral: he had
+one congregation in the church and a more crowded one in the churchyard; and,
+having wrought so late into the evening and done his work so well, it was now
+good Father Hooper&rsquo;s turn to rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight in the death-chamber of
+the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none. But there was the
+decorously grave though unmoved physician, seeking only to mitigate the last
+pangs of the patient whom he could not save. There were the deacons and other
+eminently pious members of his church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark
+of Westbury, a young and zealous divine who had ridden in haste to pray by the
+bedside of the expiring minister. There was the nurse&mdash;no hired handmaiden
+of Death, but one whose calm affection had endured thus long in secrecy, in
+solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not perish even at the dying-hour.
+Who but Elizabeth! And there lay the hoary head of good Father Hooper upon the
+death-pillow with the black veil still swathed about his brow and reaching down
+over his face, so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it
+to stir. All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the
+world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman&rsquo;s love
+and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; and still it lay
+upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber and shade him
+from the sunshine of eternity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some time previous his mind had been confused, wavering doubtfully between
+the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at intervals, into
+the indistinctness of the world to come. There had been feverish turns which
+tossed him from side to side and wore away what little strength he had. But in
+his most convulsive struggles and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect,
+when no other thought retained its sober influence, he still showed an awful
+solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside. Even if his bewildered soul
+could have forgotten, there was a faithful woman at his pillow who with averted
+eyes would have covered that aged face which she had last beheld in the
+comeliness of manhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and
+bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath that grew fainter and
+fainter except when a long, deep and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude
+the flight of his spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Venerable Father Hooper,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the moment of your
+release is at hand. Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in
+time from eternity?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head;
+then&mdash;apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful&mdash;he
+exerted himself to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yea,&rdquo; said he, in faint accents; &ldquo;my soul hath a patient
+weariness until that veil be lifted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And is it fitting,&rdquo; resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, &ldquo;that a
+man so given to prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and thought,
+so far as mortal judgment may pronounce,&mdash;is it fitting that a father in
+the Church should leave a shadow on his memory that may seem to blacken a life
+so pure? I pray you, my venerable brother, let not this thing be! Suffer us to
+be gladdened by your triumphant aspect as you go to your reward. Before the
+veil of eternity be lifted let me cast aside this black veil from your
+face;&rdquo; and, thus speaking, the Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward to reveal
+the mystery of so many years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, exerting a sudden energy that made all the beholders stand aghast, Father
+Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the bedclothes and pressed them
+strongly on the black veil, resolute to struggle if the minister of Westbury
+would contend with a dying man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried the veiled clergyman. &ldquo;On earth, never!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dark old man,&rdquo; exclaimed the affrighted minister, &ldquo;with what
+horrible crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Father Hooper&rsquo;s breath heaved: it rattled in his throat; but, with a
+mighty effort grasping forward with his hands, he caught hold of life and held
+it back till he should speak. He even raised himself in bed, and there he sat
+shivering with the arms of Death around him, while the black veil hung down,
+awful at that last moment in the gathered terrors of a lifetime. And yet the
+faint, sad smile so often there now seemed to glimmer from its obscurity and
+linger on Father Hooper&rsquo;s lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you tremble at me alone?&rdquo; cried he, turning his veiled face
+round the circle of pale spectators. &ldquo;Tremble also at each other. Have
+men avoided me and women shown no pity and children screamed and fled only for
+my black veil? What but the mystery which it obscurely typifies has made this
+piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend,
+the lover to his best-beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of
+his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin,&mdash;then deem
+me a monster for the symbol beneath which I have lived and die. I look around
+me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While his auditors shrank from one another in mutual affright, Father Hooper
+fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile lingering on the
+lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore
+him to the grave. The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that
+grave, the burial-stone is moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper&rsquo;s face is
+dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a> THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT</h2>
+
+<p class="quote">
+There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the curious
+history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount. In the
+slight sketch here attempted the facts recorded on the grave pages of our New
+England annalists have wrought themselves almost spontaneously into a sort of
+allegory. The masques, mummeries and festive customs described in the text are
+in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these points may be
+found in Strutt&rsquo;s <i>Book of English Sports and Pastimes</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the banner-staff of
+that gay colony. They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were to
+pour sunshine over New England&rsquo;s rugged hills and scatter flower-seeds
+throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire. Midsummer
+eve had come, bringing deep verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap of a
+more vivid hue than the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit,
+dwelt all the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the summer months and
+revelling with autumn and basking in the glow of winter&rsquo;s fireside.
+Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile, and came
+hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry Mount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on Midsummer eve. This
+venerated emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the slender grace of
+youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the old wood-monarchs. From its
+top streamed a silken banner colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the
+ground the pole was dressed with birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest
+green, and some with silvery leaves fastened by ribbons that fluttered in
+fantastic knots of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden-flowers and
+blossoms of the wilderness laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and
+dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine tree. Where this
+green and flowery splendor terminated the shaft of the Maypole was stained with
+the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the lowest green bough
+hung an abundant wreath of roses&mdash;some that had been gathered in the
+sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the
+colonists had reared from English seed. O people of the Golden Age, the chief
+of your husbandry was to raise flowers!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the Maypole? It
+could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from their classic groves
+and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all the persecuted did, in
+the fresh woods of the West. These were Gothic monsters, though perhaps of
+Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders of a comely youth uprose the head and
+branching antlers of a stag; a second, human in all other points, had the grim
+visage of a wolf; a third, still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man,
+showed the beard and horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a
+bear erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with pink silk
+stockings. And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of the dark
+forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of a human hand and as ready
+for the dance as any in that circle. His inferior nature rose halfway to meet
+his companions as they stooped. Other faces wore the similitude of man or
+woman, but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pendulous before their
+mouths, which seemed of awful depth and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal
+fit of laughter. Here might be seen the salvage man&mdash;well known in
+heraldry&mdash;hairy as a baboon and girdled with green leaves. By his
+side&mdash;a nobler figure, but still a counterfeit&mdash;appeared an Indian
+hunter with feathery crest and wampum-belt. Many of this strange company wore
+foolscaps and had little bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a
+silvery sound responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits. Some
+youths and maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their places in
+the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry upon their features.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad smile of
+sunset round their venerated Maypole. Had a wanderer bewildered in the
+melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he
+might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes,
+some midway between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy
+jollity that foreran the change; but a band of Puritans who watched the scene,
+invisible themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls
+with whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had ever
+trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud. One was a
+youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow pattern crosswise on
+his breast. His right hand held a gilded staff&mdash;the ensign of high dignity
+among the revellers&mdash;and his left grasped the slender fingers of a fair
+maiden not less gayly decorated than himself. Bright roses glowed in contrast
+with the dark and glossy curls of each, and were scattered round their feet or
+had sprung up spontaneously there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to
+the Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an
+English priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen
+fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By the riot of his
+rolling eye and the pagan decorations of his holy garb, he seemed the wildest
+monster there, and the very Comus of the crew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Votaries of the Maypole,&rdquo; cried the flower-decked priest,
+&ldquo;merrily all day long have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this
+your merriest hour, my hearts! Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May,
+whom I, a clerk of Oxford and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently to join
+in holy matrimony.&mdash;Up with your nimble spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green
+men and glee-maidens, bears and wolves and horned gentlemen! Come! a chorus now
+rich with the old mirth of Merry England and the wilder glee of this fresh
+forest, and then a dance, to show the youthful pair what life is made of and
+how airily they should go through it!&mdash;All ye that love the Maypole, lend
+your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord and Lady of the May!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where jest and
+delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The Lord and Lady of
+the May, though their titles must be laid down at sunset, were really and truly
+to be partners for the dance of life, beginning the measure that same bright
+eve. The wreath of roses that hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole
+had been twined for them, and would be thrown over both their heads in symbol
+of their flowery union. When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar
+burst from the rout of monstrous figures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Begin you the stave, reverend sir,&rdquo; cried they all, &ldquo;and
+never did the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately a prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with practised
+minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such a mirthful cadence
+that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the sound. But the May-lord&mdash;he
+of the gilded staff&mdash;chancing to look into his lady&rsquo;s eyes, was
+wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that met his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Edith, sweet Lady of the May,&rdquo; whispered he, reproachfully,
+&ldquo;is yon wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look
+so sad? Oh, Edith, this is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive
+shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be brighter
+than the mere remembrance of what is now passing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the very thought that saddened me. How came it in your mind
+too?&rdquo; said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high treason
+to be sad at Merry Mount. &ldquo;Therefore do I sigh amid this festive music.
+And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream, and fancy that these
+shapes of our jovial friends are visionary and their mirth unreal, and that we
+are no true lord and lady of the May. What is the mystery in my heart?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower of
+withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers! No sooner
+had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were sensible of something
+vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures, and felt a dreary
+presentiment of inevitable change. From the moment that they truly loved they
+had subjected themselves to earth&rsquo;s doom of care and sorrow and troubled
+joy, and had no more a home at Merry Mount. That was Edith&rsquo;s mystery. Now
+leave we the priest to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole
+till the last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit and the shadows of the
+forest mingle gloomily in the dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who these gay
+people were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two hundred years ago, and more, the Old World and its inhabitants became
+mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the West&mdash;some
+to barter glass and such like jewels for the furs of the Indian hunter, some to
+conquer virgin empires, and one stern band to pray. But none of these motives
+had much weight with thecolonists of Merry Mount. Their leaders were men who
+had sported so long with life, that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these
+unwelcome guests were led astray by the crowd of vanities which they should
+have put to flight. Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on
+masques, and play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the
+heart&rsquo;s fresh gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came
+hither to act out their latest day-dream. They gathered followers from all that
+giddy tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men. In their
+train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets; wandering players, whose
+theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers, and
+mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and fairs; in a
+word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that age, but now began
+to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of Puritanism. Light had their
+footsteps been on land, and as lightly they came across the sea. Many had been
+maddened by their previous troubles into a gay despair; others were as madly
+gay in the flush of youth, like the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever might
+be the quality of their mirth, old and young were gay at Merry Mount. The young
+deemed themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the
+counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully, because at
+least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a lifetime, they
+would not venture among the sober truths of life not even to be truly blest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither. The King
+of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore potent sway. On the
+Eve of St. John, they felled whole acres of the forest to make bonfires, and
+danced by the blaze all night, crowned with garlands, and throwing flowers into
+the flame. At harvest time, though their crop was of the smallest, they made an
+image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and wreathed it with autumnal garlands,
+and bore it home triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists of
+Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made their true
+history a poet&rsquo;s tale. Spring decked the hallowed emblem with young
+blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought roses of the deepest blush, and
+the perfected foliage of the forest; Autumn enriched it with that red and
+yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower;
+and Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles, till it
+flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate
+season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it a tribute of its own richest
+splendor. Its votaries danced round it, once, at least, in every month;
+sometimes they called it their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the
+banner staff of Merry Mount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than those
+Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans,
+most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought
+in the forest or the cornfield till evening made it prayer time again. Their
+weapons were always at hand to shoot down the straggling savage. When they met
+in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons
+three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps
+of Indians. Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing
+of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The
+selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in
+the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping-post, which might be
+termed the Puritan Maypole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult woods, each with
+a horseload of iron armor to burden his footsteps, would sometimes draw near
+the sunny precincts of Merry Mount. There were the silken colonists, sporting
+round their Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear to dance, or striving to
+communicate their mirth to the grave Indian, or masquerading in the skins of
+deer and wolves which they had hunted for that especial purpose. Often the
+whole colony were playing at Blindman&rsquo;s Buff, magistrates and all with
+their eyes bandaged, except a single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners
+pursued by the tinkling of the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they
+were seen following a flower-decked corpse with merriment and festive music to
+his grave. But did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times they sang
+ballads and told tales for the edification of their pious visitors, or
+perplexed them with juggling tricks, or grinned at them through horse-collars;
+and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of their own stupidity and
+began a yawning-match. At the very least of these enormities the men of iron
+shook their heads and frowned so darkly that the revellers looked up, imagining
+that a momentary cloud had overcast the sunshine which was to be perpetual
+there. On the other hand, the Puritans affirmed that when a psalm was pealing
+from their place of worship the echo which the forest sent them back seemed
+often like the chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of laughter. Who
+but the fiend and his bond-slaves the crew of Merry Mount had thus disturbed
+them? In due time a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as serious on
+the other as anything could be among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance
+to the Maypole. The future complexion of New England was involved in this
+important quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jurisdiction over
+the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime and make it a
+land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm for ever; but should
+the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the
+hills, and flowers would beautify the forest and late posterity do homage to
+the Maypole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After these authentic passages from history we return to the nuptials of the
+Lord and Lady of the May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and must darken our
+tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the Maypole a solitary sunbeam is
+fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint golden tinge blended with the
+hues of the rainbow banner. Even that dim light is now withdrawn, relinquishing
+the whole domain of Merry Mount to the evening gloom which has rushed so
+instantaneously from the black surrounding woods. But some of these black
+shadows have rushed forth in human shape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, with the setting sun the last day of mirth had passed from Merry Mount.
+The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag lowered his
+antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the bells of the
+morrice-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The Puritans had played a
+characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries. Their darksome figures were
+intermixed with the wild shapes of their foes, and made the scene a picture of
+the moment when waking thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of a
+dream. The leader of the hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while
+the rout of monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a
+dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So stern was
+the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame and soul, seemed
+wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all of one substance with his
+headpiece and breastplate. It was the Puritan of Puritans: it was Endicott
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stand off, priest of Baal!&rdquo; said he, with a grim frown and laying
+no reverent hand upon the surplice. &ldquo;I know thee, Blackstone!<a href="#fn2" name="fnref2"><sup>[2]</sup></a>
+Thou art the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted
+Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of it in
+thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this
+wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would defile it! And
+first for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of thy worship!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor long did
+it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound, it showered leaves and
+rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast, and finally, with all its green
+boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic of departed pleasures, down fell the
+banner-staff of Merry Mount. As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew
+darker and the woods threw forth a more sombre shadow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There!&rdquo; cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work;
+&ldquo;there lies the only Maypole in New England. The thought is strong within
+me that by its fall is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirthmakers
+amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; echoed his followers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol. At the sound the
+Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of broad mirth, yet
+at this moment strangely expressive of sorrow and dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Valiant captain,&rdquo; quoth Peter Palfrey, the ancient of the band,
+&ldquo;what order shall be taken with the prisoners?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole,&rdquo; replied
+Endicott, &ldquo;yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again and give
+each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It would have
+served rarely for a whipping-post.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there are pine trees enow,&rdquo; suggested the lieutenant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True, good ancient,&rdquo; said the leader. &ldquo;Wherefore bind the
+heathen crew and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece as earnest of
+our future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks to rest themselves so
+soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own well-ordered settlements
+where such accommodations may be found. Further penalties, such as branding and
+cropping of ears, shall be thought of hereafter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How many stripes for the priest?&rdquo; inquired Ancient Palfrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None as yet,&rdquo; answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the
+culprit. &ldquo;It must be for the Great and General Court to determine whether
+stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penalty, may atone for his
+transgressions. Let him look to himself. For such as violate our civil order it
+may be permitted us to show mercy, but woe to the wretch that troubleth our
+religion!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this dancing bear?&rdquo; resumed the officer. &ldquo;Must he share
+the stripes of his fellows?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shoot him through the head!&rdquo; said the energetic Puritan. &ldquo;I
+suspect witchcraft in the beast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here be a couple of shining ones,&rdquo; continued Peter Palfrey,
+pointing his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. &ldquo;They seem to be of
+high station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be fitted
+with less than a double share of stripes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Endicott rested on his sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect of the
+hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and apprehensive, yet there was
+an air of mutual support and of pure affection seeking aid and giving it that
+showed them to be man and wife with the sanction of a priest upon their love.
+The youth in the peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded staff and thrown
+his arm about the Lady of the May, who leaned against his breast too lightly to
+burden him, but with weight enough to express that their destinies were linked
+together for good or evil. They looked first at each other and then into the
+grim captain&rsquo;s face. There they stood in the first hour of wedlock, while
+the idle pleasures of which their companions were the emblems had given place
+to the sternest cares of life, personified by the dark Puritans. But never had
+their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high as when its glow was chastened by
+adversity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Youth,&rdquo; said Endicott, &ldquo;ye stand in an evil case&mdash;thou
+and thy maiden-wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both
+have a token to remember your wedding-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stern man,&rdquo; cried the May-lord, &ldquo;how can I move thee? Were
+the means at hand, I would resist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
+with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; replied the immitigable zealot. &ldquo;We are not wont to
+show an idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter
+discipline.&mdash;What sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer
+thy share of the penalty besides his own?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be it death,&rdquo; said Edith, &ldquo;and lay it all on me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case. Their foes
+were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their home desolate, the
+benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous destiny in the shape of the
+Puritan leader their only guide. Yet the deepening twilight could not
+altogether conceal that the iron man was softened. He smiled at the fair
+spectacle of early love; he almost sighed for the inevitable blight of early
+hopes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,&rdquo;
+observed Endicott. &ldquo;We will see how they comport themselves under their
+present trials ere we burden them with greater. If among the spoil there be any
+garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put upon this May-lord and his
+Lady instead of their glistening vanities. Look to it, some of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And shall not the youth&rsquo;s hair be cut?&rdquo; asked Peter Palfrey,
+looking with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,&rdquo;
+answered the captain. &ldquo;Then bring them along with us, but more gently
+than their fellows. There be qualities in the youth which may make him valiant
+to fight and sober to toil and pious to pray, and in the maiden that may fit
+her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing up babes in better nurture than
+her own hath been.&mdash;Nor think ye, young ones, that they are the happiest,
+even in our lifetime of a moment, who misspend it in dancing round a
+Maypole.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock-foundation of New
+England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole and threw it
+with his own gauntleted hand over the heads of the Lord and Lady of the May. It
+was a deed of prophecy. As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all
+systematic gayety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the
+sad forest. They returned to it no more. But as their flowery garland was
+wreathed of the brightest roses that had grown there, so in the tie that united
+them were intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys. They went
+heavenward supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their
+lot to tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry
+Mount.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a> THE GENTLE BOY</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called Quakers&mdash;led,
+as they professed, by the inward movement of the spirit&mdash;made their
+appearance in New England. Their reputation as holders of mystic and pernicious
+principles having spread before them, the Puritans early endeavored to banish
+and to prevent the further intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by
+which it was intended to purge the land of heresy, though more than
+sufficiently vigorous, were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming
+persecution as a divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a holy
+courage unknown to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the cross by
+providing for the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness.
+Though it was the singular fact that every nation of the earth rejected the
+wandering enthusiasts who practised peace toward all men, the place of greatest
+uneasiness and peril, and therefore in their eyes the most eligible, was the
+province of Massachusetts Bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our pious
+forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured nearly a hundred
+years after actual persecution had ceased, were attractions as powerful for the
+Quakers as peace, honor and reward would have been for the worldly-minded.
+Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the sect, eager to testify against
+the oppression which they hoped to share; and when shipmasters were restrained
+by heavy fines from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous
+journeys through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if
+conveyed by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened almost to
+madness by the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the
+rules of decency as well as of rational religion, and presented a singular
+contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian successors of the
+present day. The command of the Spirit, inaudible except to the soul and not to
+be controverted on grounds of human wisdom, was made a plea for most indecorous
+exhibitions which, abstractedly considered, well deserved the moderate
+chastisement of the rod. These extravagances, and the persecution which was at
+once their cause and consequence, continued to increase, till in the year 1659
+the government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect
+with the crown of martyrdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to this act,
+but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon the person then at
+the head of the government. He was a man of narrow mind and imperfect
+education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made hot and mischievous by
+violent and hasty passions; he exerted his influence indecorously and
+unjustifiably to compass the death of the enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in
+respect to them was marked by brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful
+feelings were not less deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and
+his associates in after-times. The historian of the sect affirms that by the
+wrath of Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the
+&ldquo;bloody town&rdquo; of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he
+takes his stand, as it were, among the graves of the ancient persecutors, and
+triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them in old age or at the
+parting-hour. He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and in madness,
+but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome
+disease and &ldquo;death by rottenness&rdquo; of the fierce and cruel governor.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of two men of
+the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from the metropolis to
+the neighboring country-town in which he resided. The air was cool, the sky
+clear, and the lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon
+which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of
+middle age, wrapped in a gray frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had
+reached the outskirts of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay
+between him and his home. The low straw-thatched houses were scattered at
+considerable intervals along the road, and, the country having been settled but
+about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still bore no small
+proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn wind wandered among the
+branches, whirling away the leaves from all except the pine trees and moaning
+as if it lamented the desolation of which it was the instrument. The road had
+penetrated the mass of woods that lay nearest to the town, and was just
+emerging into an open space, when the traveller&rsquo;s ears were saluted by a
+sound more mournful than even that of the wind. It was like the wailing of some
+one in distress, and it seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir
+tree in the centre of a cleared but unenclosed and uncultivated field. The
+Puritan could not but remember that this was the very spot which had been made
+accursed a few hours before by the execution of the Quakers, whose bodies had
+been thrown together into one hasty grave beneath the tree on which they
+suffered. He struggled, however, against the superstitious fears which belonged
+to the age, and compelled himself to pause and listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The voice is most likely mortal, nor have I cause to tremble if it be
+otherwise,&rdquo; thought he, straining his eyes through the dim moonlight.
+&ldquo;Methinks it is like the wailing of a child&mdash;some infant, it may be,
+which has strayed from its mother and chanced upon this place of death. For the
+ease of mine own conscience I must search this matter out.&rdquo; He therefore
+left the path and walked somewhat fearfully across the field. Though now so
+desolate, its soil was pressed down and trampled by the thousand footsteps of
+those who had witnessed the spectacle of that day, all of whom had now retired,
+leaving the dead to their loneliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The traveller at length reached the fir tree, which from the middle upward was
+covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been erected beneath, and
+other preparations made for the work of death. Under this unhappy
+tree&mdash;which in after-times was believed to drop poison with its
+dew&mdash;sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood. It was a slender and
+light-clad little boy who leaned his face upon a hillock of fresh-turned and
+half-frozen earth and wailed bitterly, yet in a suppressed tone, as if his
+grief might receive the punishment of crime. The Puritan, whose approach had
+been unperceived, laid his hand upon the child&rsquo;s shoulder and addressed
+him compassionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you
+weep,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But dry your eyes and tell me where your mother
+dwells; I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you in her
+arms tonight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to the
+stranger. It was a pale, bright-eyed countenance, certainly not more than six
+years old, but sorrow, fear and want had destroyed much of its infantile
+expression. The Puritan, seeing the boy&rsquo;s frightened gaze and feeling
+that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to reassure him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were to
+leave you here. What! you do not fear to sit beneath the gallows on a new-made
+grave, and yet you tremble at a friend&rsquo;s touch? Take heart, child, and
+tell me what is your name and where is your home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Friend,&rdquo; replied the little boy, in a sweet though faltering
+voice, &ldquo;they call me Ilbrahim, and my home is here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pale, spiritual face, the eyes that seemed to mingle with the moonlight,
+the sweet, airy voice and the outlandish name almost made the Puritan believe
+that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung up out of the grave on which
+he sat; but perceiving that the apparition stood the test of a short mental
+prayer, and remembering that the arm which he had touched was lifelike, he
+adopted a more rational supposition. &ldquo;The poor child is stricken in his
+intellect,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;but verily his words are fearful in a
+place like this.&rdquo; He then spoke soothingly, intending to humor the
+boy&rsquo;s fantasy:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your home will scarce be comfortable, Ilbrahim, this cold autumn night,
+and I fear you are ill-provided with food. I am hastening to a warm supper and
+bed; and if you will go with me, you shall share them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank thee, friend, but, though I be hungry and shivering with cold,
+thou wilt not give me food nor lodging,&rdquo; replied the boy, in the quiet
+tone which despair had taught him even so young. &ldquo;My father was of the
+people whom all men hate; they have laid him under this heap of earth, and here
+is my home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Puritan, who had laid hold of little Ilbrahim&rsquo;s hand, relinquished it
+as if he were touching a loathsome reptile. But he possessed a compassionate
+heart which not even religious prejudice could harden into stone. &ldquo;God
+forbid that I should leave this child to perish, though he comes of the
+accursed sect,&rdquo; said he to himself. &ldquo;Do we not all spring from an
+evil root? Are we not all in darkness till the light doth shine upon us? He
+shall not perish, neither in body nor, if prayer and instruction may avail for
+him, in soul.&rdquo; He then spoke aloud and kindly to Ilbrahim, who had again
+hid his face in the cold earth of the grave:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was every door in the land shut against you, my child, that you have
+wandered to this unhallowed spot?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They drove me forth from the prison when they took my father
+thence,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;and I stood afar off watching the crowd of
+people; and when they were gone, I came hither, and found only this grave. I
+knew that my father was sleeping here, and I said, &lsquo;This shall be my
+home.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, child, no, not while I have a roof over my head or a morsel to share
+with you,&rdquo; exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now fully
+excited. &ldquo;Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth as if the cold heart
+beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast. The traveller,
+however, continued to entreat him tenderly, and, seeming to acquire some degree
+of confidence, he at length arose; but his slender limbs tottered with
+weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he leaned against the tree of death
+for support.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My poor boy, are you so feeble?&rdquo; said the Puritan. &ldquo;When did
+you taste food last?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ate of bread and water with my father in the prison,&rdquo; replied
+Ilbrahim, &ldquo;but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day, saying
+that he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey&rsquo;s end. Trouble not
+thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food many times ere
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about him, while
+his heart stirred with shame and anger against the gratuitous cruelty of the
+instruments in this persecution. In the awakened warmth of his feelings he
+resolved that at whatever risk he would not forsake the poor little defenceless
+being whom Heaven had confided to his care. With this determination he left the
+accursed field and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy
+had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his progress,
+and he soon beheld the fire-rays from the windows of the cottage which he, a
+native of a distant clime, had built in the Western wilderness. It was
+surrounded by a considerable extent of cultivated ground, and the dwelling was
+situated in the nook of a wood-covered hill, whither it seemed to have crept
+for protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look up, child,&rdquo; said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head
+had sunk upon his shoulder; &ldquo;there is our home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the word &ldquo;home&rdquo; a thrill passed through the child&rsquo;s frame,
+but he continued silent. A few moments brought them to the cottage door, at
+which the owner knocked; for at that early period, when savages were wandering
+everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were indispensable to the security
+of a dwelling. The summons was answered by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and
+dull-featured piece of humanity, who, after ascertaining that his master was
+the applicant, undid the door and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him
+in. Farther back in the passageway the red blaze discovered a matronly woman,
+but no little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their
+father&rsquo;s return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the Puritan entered he thrust aside his cloak and displayed Ilbrahim&rsquo;s
+face to the female.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
+hands,&rdquo; observed he. &ldquo;Be kind to him, even as if he were of those
+dear ones who have departed from us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?&rdquo; she
+inquired. &ldquo;Is he one whom the wilderness-folk have ravished from some
+Christian mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Dorothy; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness,&rdquo;
+he replied. &ldquo;The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
+morsel and to drink of his birchen cup, but Christian men, alas! had cast him
+out to die.&rdquo; Then he told her how he had found him beneath the gallows,
+upon his father&rsquo;s grave, and how his heart had prompted him like the
+speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast home and be kind unto
+him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and clothe him as if he were his
+own child, and to afford him the instruction which should counteract the
+pernicious errors hitherto instilled into his infant mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband, and she
+approved of all his doings and intentions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you a mother, dear child?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply, but Dorothy
+at length understood that he had a mother, who like the rest of her sect was a
+persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from the prison a short time before,
+carried into the uninhabited wilderness and left to perish there by hunger or
+wild beasts. This was no uncommon method of disposing of the Quakers, and they
+were accustomed to boast that the inhabitants of the desert were more
+hospitable to them than civilized man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fear not, little boy; you shall not need a mother, and a kind
+one,&rdquo; said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. &ldquo;Dry
+your tears, Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had
+successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim would consent
+to occupy it he knelt down, and as Dorothy listed to his simple and affecting
+prayer she marvelled how the parents that had taught it to him could have been
+judged worthy of death. When the boy had fallen asleep, she bent over his pale
+and spiritual countenance, pressed a kiss upon his white brow, drew the
+bedclothes up about his neck, and went away with a pensive gladness in her
+heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old country. He
+had remained in England during the first years of the Civil War, in which he
+had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons under Cromwell. But when the
+ambitious designs of his leader began to develop themselves, he quitted the
+army of the Parliament and sought a refuge from the strife which was no longer
+holy among the people of his persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts. A more
+worldly consideration had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither, for New
+England offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as to
+dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it difficult to
+provide for a wife and increasing family. To this supposed impurity of motive
+the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to impute the removal by death of all
+the children for whose earthly good the father had been over-thoughtful. They
+had left their native country blooming like roses, and like roses they had
+perished in a foreign soil. Those expounders of the ways of Providence, who had
+thus judged their brother and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin, were
+not more charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to fill up the
+void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the accursed sect. Nor did
+they fail to communicate their disapprobation to Tobias, but the latter in
+reply merely pointed at the little quiet, lovely boy, whose appearance and
+deportment were indeed as powerful arguments as could possibly have been
+adduced in his own favor. Even his beauty, however, and his winning manners
+sometimes produced an effect ultimately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the
+outer surfaces of their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard,
+affirmed that no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their
+antipathy to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of divers
+theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince him of the errors
+of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful controversialist, but the
+feeling of his religion was strong as instinct in him, and he could neither be
+enticed nor driven from the faith which his father had died for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the
+child&rsquo;s protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly began
+to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold regards of many
+a friend whom they had valued. The common people manifested their opinions more
+openly. Pearson was a man of some consideration, being a representative to the
+General Court and an approved lieutenant in the train-bands, yet within a week
+after his adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also,
+when walking through a solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice from some
+invisible speaker, and it cried, &ldquo;What shall be done to the backslider?
+Lo! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine cords, and every cord
+three knots.&rdquo; These insults irritated Pearson&rsquo;s temper for the
+moment; they entered also into his heart, and became imperceptible but powerful
+workers toward an end which his most secret thought had not yet whispered.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family, Pearson
+and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them at public
+worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this measure from the boy, but
+he prepared himself in silence, and at the appointed hour was clad in the new
+mourning-suit which Dorothy had wrought for him. As the parish was then, and
+during many subsequent years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the
+commencement of religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound
+of that martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and Dorothy
+set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two parents linked
+together by the infant of their love. On their path through the leafless woods
+they were overtaken by many persons of their acquaintance, all of whom avoided
+them and passed by on the other side; but a severer trial awaited their
+constancy when they had descended the hill and drew near the pine-built and
+undecorated house of prayer. Around the door, from which the drummer still sent
+forth his thundering summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including
+several of the oldest members of the congregation, many of the middle-aged and
+nearly all the younger males. Pearson found it difficult to sustain their
+united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy, whose mind was differently
+circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer to her and faltered not in her
+approach. As they entered the door they overheard the muttered sentiments of
+the assemblage; and when the reviling voices of the little children smote
+Ilbrahim&rsquo;s ear, he wept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling, the
+unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit offered
+nothing to excite the devotion which without such external aids often remains
+latent in the heart. The floor of the building was occupied by rows of long
+cushionless benches, supplying the place of pews, and the broad aisle formed a
+sexual division impassable except by children beneath a certain age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and Ilbrahim,
+being within the years of infancy, was retained under the care of the latter.
+The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their rusty cloaks as he passed by;
+even the mild-featured maidens seemed to dread contamination; and many a stern
+old man arose and turned his repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the
+gentle boy, as if the sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a sweet
+infant of the skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the
+inhabitants of this miserable world closed up their impure hearts against him,
+drew back their earth-soiled garments from his touch and said, &ldquo;We are
+holier than thou.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother and retaining fast hold of
+her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might befit a person of
+matured taste and understanding who should find himself in a temple dedicated
+to some worship which he did not recognize, but felt himself bound to respect.
+The exercises had not yet commenced, however, when the boy&rsquo;s attention
+was arrested by an event apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her
+face muffled in a hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced
+slowly up the broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench.
+Ilbrahim&rsquo;s faint color varied, his nerves fluttered; he was unable to
+turn his eyes from the muffled female.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the preliminary prayer and hymn were over, the minister arose, and, having
+turned the hour-glass which stood by the great Bible, commenced his discourse.
+He was now well stricken in years, a man of pale, thin countenance, and his
+gray hairs were closely covered by a black velvet skull-cap. In his younger
+days he had practically learned the meaning of persecution from Archbishop
+Laud, and he was not now disposed to forget the lesson against which he had
+murmured then. Introducing the often-discussed subject of the Quakers, he gave
+a history of that sect and a description of their tenets in which error
+predominated and prejudice distorted the aspect of what was true. He adverted
+to the recent measures in the province, and cautioned his hearers of weaker
+parts against calling in question the just severity which God-fearing
+magistrates had at length been compelled to exercise. He spoke of the danger of
+pity&mdash;in some cases a commendable and Christian virtue, but inapplicable
+to this pernicious sect. He observed that such was their devilish obstinacy in
+error that even the little children, the sucking babes, were hardened and
+desperate heretics. He affirmed that no man without Heaven&rsquo;s especial
+warrant should attempt their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw
+them from the slough he should himself be precipitated into its lowest depths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sands of the second hour were principally in the lower half of the glass
+when the sermon concluded. An approving murmur followed, and the clergyman,
+having given out a hymn, took his seat with much self-congratulation, and
+endeavored to read the effect of his eloquence in the visages of the people.
+But while voices from all parts of the house were tuning themselves to sing a
+scene occurred which, though not very unusual at that period in the province,
+happened to be without precedent in this parish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The muffled female, who had hitherto sat motionless in the front rank of the
+audience, now arose and with slow, stately and unwavering step ascended the
+pulpit stairs. The quaverings of incipient harmony were hushed and the divine
+sat in speechless and almost terrified astonishment while she undid the door
+and stood up in the sacred desk from which his maledictions had just been
+thundered. She then divested herself of the cloak and hood, and appeared in a
+most singular array. A shapeless robe of sackcloth was girded about her waist
+with a knotted cord; her raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its
+blackness was defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strewn upon her
+head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the deathly whiteness
+of a countenance which, emaciated with want and wild with enthusiasm and
+strange sorrows, retained no trace of earlier beauty. This figure stood gazing
+earnestly on the audience, and there was no sound nor any movement except a
+faint shuddering which every man observed in his neighbor, but was scarcely
+conscious of in himself. At length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke
+for the first few moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct utterance.
+Her discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly entangled with her
+reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible rhapsody, which, however, seemed to
+spread its own atmosphere round the hearer&rsquo;s soul, and to move his
+feelings by some influence unconnected with the words. As she proceeded
+beautiful but shadowy images would sometimes be seen like bright things moving
+in a turbid river, or a strong and singularly shaped idea leapt forth and
+seized at once on the understanding or the heart. But the course of her
+unearthly eloquence soon led her to the persecutions of her sect, and from
+thence the step was short to her own peculiar sorrows. She was naturally a
+woman of mighty passions, and hatred and revenge now wrapped themselves in the
+garb of piety. The character of her speech was changed; her images became
+distinct though wild, and her denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The governor and his mighty men,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;have gathered
+together, taking counsel among themselves and saying, &lsquo;What shall we do
+unto this people&mdash;even unto the people that have come into this land to
+put our iniquity to the blush?&rsquo; And, lo! the devil entereth into the
+council-chamber like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled, with a
+dark and twisted countenance and a bright, downcast eye. And he standeth up
+among the rulers; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to each; and every man
+lends his ear, for his word is &lsquo;Slay! Slay!rsquo; But I say unto ye, Woe
+to them that slay! Woe to them that shed the blood of saints! Woe to them that
+have slain the husband and cast forth the child, the tender infant, to wander
+homeless and hungry and cold till he die, and have saved the mother alive in
+the cruelty of their tender mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are
+they in the delight and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their
+death-hour, whether it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and
+lingering pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave, when the
+children&rsquo;s children shall revile the ashes of the fathers! Woe, woe, woe,
+at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the slain in this bloody land,
+and the father, the mother and the child, shall await them in a day that they
+cannot escape! Seed of the faith, seed of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving
+with a power that ye know not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood!
+Lift your voices, chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment
+with me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
+inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the hysteric
+shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience generally had not
+been drawn onward in the current with her own. They remained stupefied,
+stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent which deafened them by its
+roaring, but might not move them by its violence. The clergyman, who could not
+hitherto have ejected the usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force,
+now addressed her in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;Is it to the Lord&rsquo;s house that you come to pour forth the
+foulness of your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and
+remember that the sentence of death is on you&mdash;yea, and shall be executed,
+were it but for this day&rsquo;s work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance,&rdquo; replied
+she, in a depressed, and even mild, tone. &ldquo;I have done my mission unto
+thee and to thy people; reward me with stripes, imprisonment or death, as ye
+shall be permitted.&rdquo; The weakness of exhausted passion caused her steps
+to totter as she descended the pulpit stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The people, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on the floor of the
+house, whispering among themselves and glancing toward the intruder. Many of
+them now recognized her as the woman who had assaulted the governor with
+frightful language as he passed by the window of her prison; they knew, also,
+that she was adjudged to suffer death, and had been preserved only by an
+involuntary banishment into the wilderness. The new outrage by which she had
+provoked her fate seemed to render further lenity impossible, and a gentleman
+in military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the door of
+the meetinghouse and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her feet press the
+floor, however, when an unexpected scene occurred. In that moment of her peril,
+when every eye frowned with death, a little timid boy threw his arms round his
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am here, mother; it is I, and I will go with thee to prison,&rdquo; he
+exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost frightened expression, for she knew
+that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not hoped to see his face
+again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one of the happy visions with which
+her excited fancy had often deceived her in the solitude of the desert or in
+prison; but when she felt his hand warm within her own and heard his little
+eloquence of childish love, she began to know that she was yet a mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blessed art thou, my son!&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;My heart was
+withered&mdash;yea, dead with thee and with thy father&mdash;and now it leaps
+as in the first moment when I pressed thee to my bosom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knelt down and embraced him again and again, while the joy that could find
+no words expressed itself in broken accents, like the bubbles gushing up to
+vanish at the surface of a deep fountain. The sorrows of past years and the
+darker peril that was nigh cast not a shadow on the brightness of that fleeting
+moment. Soon, however, the spectators saw a change upon her face as the
+consciousness of her sad estate returned, and grief supplied the fount of tears
+which joy had opened. By the words she uttered it would seem that the
+indulgence of natural love had given her mind a momentary sense of its errors,
+and made her know how far she had strayed from duty in following the dictates
+of a wild fanaticism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;for thy mother&rsquo;s path has gone darkening onward, till now the end
+is death. Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were tottering,
+and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for; yet I have
+ill-performed a mother&rsquo;s part by thee in life, and now I leave thee no
+inheritance but woe and shame. Thou wilt go seeking through the world, and find
+all hearts closed against thee and their sweet affections turned to bitterness
+for my sake. My child, my child, how many a pang awaits thy gentle spirit, and
+I the cause of all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hid her face on Ilbrahim&rsquo;s head, and her long raven hair, discolored
+with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a veil. A low and
+interrupted moan was the voice of her heart&rsquo;s anguish, and it did not
+fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their involuntary virtue for a
+sin. Sobs were audible in the female section of the house, and every man who
+was a father drew his hand across his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain feeling like the
+consciousness of guilt oppressed him; so that he could not go forth and offer
+himself as the protector of the child. Dorothy, however, had watched her
+husband&rsquo;s eye. Her mind was free from the influence that had begun to
+work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman and addressed her in the
+hearing of all the congregation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be his mother,&rdquo; she
+said, taking Ilbrahim&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Providence has signally marked out
+my husband to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our
+roof now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him. Leave
+the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his welfare.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while she
+gazed earnestly in Dorothy&rsquo;s face. Her mild but saddened features and
+neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of fireside
+poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far as mortal could
+be so, in respect to God and man, while the enthusiast, in her robe of
+sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had as evidently violated the duties of
+the present life and the future by fixing her attention wholly on the latter.
+The two females, as they held each a hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical
+allegory: it was rational piety and unbridled fanaticism contending for the
+empire of a young heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou art not of our people,&rdquo; said the Quaker, mournfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, we are not of your people,&rdquo; replied Dorothy, with mildness,
+&ldquo;but we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you. Doubt
+not that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our tender
+and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own children have gone
+before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no longer so,&rdquo; she added,
+in a faltering tone, &ldquo;and your son will have all my care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But will ye lead him in the path which his parents have trodden?&rdquo;
+demanded the Quaker. &ldquo;Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his
+father has died for, and for which I&mdash;even I&mdash;am soon to become an
+unworthy martyr? The boy has been baptized in blood; will ye keep the mark
+fresh and ruddy upon his forehead?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not deceive you,&rdquo; answered Dorothy. &ldquo;If your child
+become our child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has
+imparted to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we must do
+toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences, and not of yours.
+Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your trust, even in complying with
+your wishes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and then
+turned her eyes upward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally, and the
+contention of her soul was evident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Friend,&rdquo; she said, at length, to Dorothy, &ldquo;I doubt not that
+my son shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe
+that even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world, for surely thou
+art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a husband. Doth he stand here
+among this multitude of people? Let him come forth, for I must know to whom I
+commit this most precious trust.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her face upon the male auditors, and after a momentary delay Tobias
+Pearson came forth from among them. The Quaker saw the dress which marked his
+military rank, and shook her head; but then she noted the hesitating air, the
+eyes that struggled with her own and were vanquished, the color that went and
+came and could find no resting-place. As she gazed an unmirthful smile spread
+over her features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot.
+Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hear it, I hear it! The voice speaketh within me and saith,
+&lsquo;Leave thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I
+have other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy
+love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.&rsquo; I
+go, friends, I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence trusting that
+all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands there is a labor in the
+vineyard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and clung to
+his mother with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she had kissed his
+cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands over his head in mental
+prayer, she was ready to depart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Farewell, friends in mine extremity,&rdquo; she said to Pearson and his
+wife; &ldquo;the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in heaven, to
+be returned a thousandfold hereafter.&mdash;And farewell, ye mine enemies, to
+whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a hair of my head, nor to stay my
+footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming when ye shall call upon me to
+witness for ye to this one sin uncommitted, and I will rise up and
+answer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her steps toward the door, and the men who had stationed themselves
+to guard it withdrew and suffered her to pass. A general sentiment of pity
+overcame the virulence of religious hatred. Sanctified by her love and her
+affliction, she went forth, and all the people gazed after her till she had
+journeyed up the hill and was lost behind its brow. She went, the apostle of
+her own unquiet heart, to renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had
+been already heard in many lands of Christendom, and she had pined in the cells
+of a Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the dungeons of
+the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the followers of the Prophet,
+and from them she had received the courtesy and kindness which all the
+contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her husband and
+herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the sultan&rsquo;s
+countenance was gracious to them; in that pagan land, too, was Ilbrahim&rsquo;s
+birthplace, and his Oriental name was a mark of gratitude for the good deeds of
+an unbeliever.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over Ilbrahim that
+could be delegated, their affection for him became, like the memory of their
+native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a piece of the immovable
+furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after a week or two of mental
+disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by many inadvertent proofs that he
+considered them as parents and their house as home. Before the winter snows
+were melted the persecuted infant, the little wanderer from a remote and
+heathen country, seemed native in the New England cottage and inseparable from
+the warmth and security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment,
+and in the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim&rsquo;s demeanor lost a
+premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he became
+more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with freedom. It was
+in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered imaginations of both his
+father and mother had perhaps propagated a certain unhealthiness in the mind of
+the boy. In his general state Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most
+trifling events and from every object about him; he seemed to discover rich
+treasures of happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
+points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety, coming
+to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the family, and Ilbrahim
+was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody countenances and chasing
+away the gloom from the dark corners of the cottage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of pain, the
+exuberant cheerfulness of the boy&rsquo;s prevailing temper sometimes yielded
+to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not always be followed up to
+their original source, but most frequently they appeared to flow&mdash;though
+Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a cause&mdash;from wounded love. The
+flightiness of his mirth rendered him often guilty of offences against the
+decorum of a Puritan household, and on these occasions he did not invariably
+escape rebuke. But the slightest word of real bitterness, which he was
+infallible in distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his
+heart and poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was
+entirely forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
+sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he would
+not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in the stamina
+of self-support. It was a plant that would twine beautifully round something
+stronger than itself; but if repulsed or torn away, it had no choice but to
+wither on the ground. Dorothy&rsquo;s acuteness taught her that severity would
+crush the spirit of the child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one
+who handles a butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it
+grew daily less productive of familiar caresses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant and his
+protectors had not undergone a favorable change, in spite of the momentary
+triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over their sympathies. The scorn
+and bitterness of which he was the object were very grievous to Ilbrahim,
+especially when any circumstance made him sensible that the children his equals
+in age partook of the enmity of their parents. His tender and social nature had
+already overflowed in attachments to everything about him, and still there was
+a residue of unappropriated love which he yearned to bestow upon the little
+ones who were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on Ilbrahim
+was accustomed to remain for hours silent and inactive within hearing of the
+children&rsquo;s voices at their play, yet with his usual delicacy of feeling
+he avoided their notice, and would flee and hide himself from the smallest
+individual among them. Chance, however, at length seemed to open a medium of
+communication between his heart and theirs; it was by means of a boy about two
+years older than Ilbrahim, who was injured by a fall from a tree in the
+vicinity of Pearson&rsquo;s habitation. As the sufferer&rsquo;s own home was at
+some distance, Dorothy willingly received him under her roof and became his
+tender and careful nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy, and it
+would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting to make a friend
+of this boy. The countenance of the latter immediately impressed a beholder
+disagreeably, but it required some examination to discover that the cause was a
+very slight distortion of the mouth and the irregular, broken line and near
+approach of the eyebrows. Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was
+an almost imperceptible twist of every joint and the uneven prominence of the
+breast, forming a body regular in its general outline, but faulty in almost all
+its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and reserved, and the
+village schoolmaster stigmatized him as obtuse in intellect, although at a
+later period of life he evinced ambition and very peculiar talents. But,
+whatever might be his personal or moral irregularities, Ilbrahim&rsquo;s heart
+seized upon and clung to him from the moment that he was brought wounded into
+the cottage; the child of persecution seemed to compare his own fate with that
+of the sufferer, and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had
+created a sort of relationship between them. Food, rest and the fresh air for
+which he languished were neglected; he nestled continually by the bedside of
+the little stranger and with a fond jealousy endeavored to be the medium of all
+the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became convalescent Ilbrahim
+contrived games suitable to his situation or amused him by a faculty which he
+had perhaps breathed in with the air of his barbaric birthplace. It was that of
+reciting imaginary adventures on the spur of the moment, and apparently in
+inexhaustible succession. His tales were, of course, monstrous, disjointed and
+without aim, but they were curious on account of a vein of human tenderness
+which ran through them all and was like a sweet familiar face encountered in
+the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The auditor paid much attention to
+these romances and sometimes interrupted them by brief remarks upon the
+incidents, displaying shrewdness above his years, mingled with a moral
+obliquity which grated very harshly against Ilbrahim&rsquo;s instinctive
+rectitude. Nothing, however, could arrest the progress of the latter&rsquo;s
+affection, and there were many proofs that it met with a response from the dark
+and stubborn nature on which it was lavished. The boy&rsquo;s parents at length
+removed him to complete his cure under their own roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure, but he made anxious
+and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of the day when he
+was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant summer afternoon the
+children of the neighborhood had assembled in the little forest-crowned
+amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the recovering invalid was there,
+leaning on a staff. The glee of a score of untainted bosoms was heard in light
+and airy voices, which danced among the trees like sunshine become audible; the
+grown men of this weary world as they journeyed by the spot marvelled why life,
+beginning in such brightness, should proceed in gloom, and their hearts or
+their imaginations answered them and said that the bliss of childhood gushes
+from its innocence. But it happened that an unexpected addition was made to the
+heavenly little band. It was Ilbrahim, who came toward the children with a look
+of sweet confidence on his fair and spiritual face, as if, having manifested
+his love to one of them, he had no longer to fear a repulse from their society.
+A hush came over their mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood
+whispering to each other while he drew nigh; but all at once the devil of their
+fathers entered into the unbreeched fanatics, and, sending up a fierce, shrill
+cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an instant he was the centre of
+a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks against him, pelted him with stones
+and displayed an instinct of destruction far more loathsome than the
+bloodthirstiness of manhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The invalid, in the mean while, stood apart from the tumult, crying out with a
+loud voice, &ldquo;Fear not, Ilbrahim; come hither and take my hand,&rdquo; and
+his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching the victim&rsquo;s
+struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye, the foul-hearted
+little villain lifted his staff and struck Ilbrahim on the mouth so forcibly
+that the blood issued in a stream. The poor child&rsquo;s arms had been raised
+to guard his head from the storm of blows, but now he dropped them at once. His
+persecutors beat him down, trampled upon him, dragged him by his long fair
+locks, and Ilbrahim was on the point of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever
+entered bleeding into heaven. The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a
+few neighbors, who put themselves to the trouble of rescuing the little
+heretic, and of conveying him to Pearson&rsquo;s door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ilbrahim&rsquo;s bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
+accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was more
+serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a negative
+character, and to be discovered only by those who had previously known him. His
+gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried by the sudden bursts of
+sprightlier motion which had once corresponded to his overflowing gladness; his
+countenance was heavier, and its former play of expression&mdash;the dance of
+sunshine reflected from moving water&mdash;was destroyed by the cloud over his
+existence; his notice was attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and
+he appeared to find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him
+than at a happier period. A stranger founding his judgment upon these
+circumstances would have said that the dulness of the child&rsquo;s intellect
+widely contradicted the promise of his features, but the secret was in the
+direction of Ilbrahim&rsquo;s thoughts, which were brooding within him when
+they should naturally have been wandering abroad. An attempt of Dorothy to
+revive his former sportiveness was the single occasion on which his quiet
+demeanor yielded to a violent display of grief; he burst into passionate
+weeping and ran and hid himself, for his heart had become so miserably sore
+that even the hand of kindness tortured it like fire. Sometimes at night, and
+probably in his dreams, he was heard to cry, &ldquo;Mother! Mother!&rdquo; as
+if her place, which a stranger had supplied while Ilbrahim was happy, admitted
+of no substitute in his extreme affliction. Perhaps among the many life-weary
+wretches then upon the earth there was not one who combined innocence and
+misery like this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the victim of his own
+heavenly nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an earlier
+origin and of different character had come to its perfection in his adopted
+father. The incident with which this tale commences found Pearson in a state of
+religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted and longing for a more fervid faith
+than he possessed. The first effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce
+a softened feeling, an incipient love for the child&rsquo;s whole sect, but
+joined to this, and resulting, perhaps, from self-suspicion, was a proud and
+ostentatious contempt of their tenets and practical extravagances. In the
+course of much thought, however&mdash;for the subject struggled irresistibly
+into his mind&mdash;the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident,
+and the points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another
+aspect or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go on even
+while he slept, and that which had been a doubt when he laid down to rest would
+often hold the place of a truth confirmed by some forgotten demonstration when
+he recalled his thoughts in the morning. But, while he was thus becoming
+assimilated to the enthusiasts, his contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them,
+grew very fierce against himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his
+acquaintance wore a sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe.
+Such was his state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim&rsquo;s misfortune, and
+the emotions consequent upon that event completed the change of which the child
+had been the original instrument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the infatuation
+of their victims had decreased. The dungeons were never empty; the streets of
+almost every village echoed daily with the lash; the life of a woman whose mild
+and Christian spirit no cruelty could embitter had been sacrificed, and more
+innocent blood was yet to pollute the hands that were so often raised in
+prayer. Early after the Restoration the English Quakers represented to Charles
+II. that a &ldquo;vein of blood was open in his dominions,&rdquo; but, though
+the displeasure of the voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not
+prompt. And now the tale must stride forward over many months, leaving Pearson
+to encounter ignominy and misfortune; his wife, to a firm endurance of a
+thousand sorrows; poor Ilbrahim, to pine and droop like a cankered rose-bud;
+his mother, to wander on a mistaken errand, neglectful of the holiest trust
+which can be committed to a woman.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson&rsquo;s
+habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from his broad
+hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and a ruddy light, and
+large logs dripping with half-melted snow lay ready to cast upon the embers.
+But the apartment was saddened in its aspect by the absence of much of the
+homely wealth which had once adorned it, for the exaction of repeated fines and
+his own neglect of temporal affairs had greatly impoverished the owner. And
+with the furniture of peace the implements of war had likewise disappeared; the
+sword was broken, the helm and cuirass were cast away for ever: the soldier had
+done with battles, and might not lift so much as his naked hand to guard his
+head. But the Holy Book remained, and the table on which it rested was drawn
+before the fire, while two of the persecuted sect sought comfort from its
+pages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He who listened while the other read was the master of the house, now emaciated
+in form and altered as to the expression and healthiness of his countenance,
+for his mind had dwelt too long among visionary thoughts and his body had been
+worn by imprisonment and stripes. The hale and weatherbeaten old man who sat
+beside him had sustained less injury from a far longer course of the same mode
+of life. In person he was tall and dignified, and, which alone would have made
+him hateful to the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed
+hat and rested on his shoulders. As the old man read the sacred page the snow
+drifted against the windows or eddied in at the crevices of the door, while a
+blast kept laughing in the chimney and the blaze leaped fiercely up to seek it.
+And sometimes, when the wind struck the hill at a certain angle and swept down
+by the cottage across the wintry plain, its voice was the most doleful that can
+be conceived; it came as if the past were speaking, as if the dead had
+contributed each a whisper, as if the desolation of ages were breathed in that
+one lamenting sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Quaker at length closed the book, retaining, however, his hand between the
+pages which he had been reading, while he looked steadfastly at Pearson. The
+attitude and features of the latter might have indicated the endurance of
+bodily pain; he leaned his forehead on his hands, his teeth were firmly closed
+and his frame was tremulous at intervals with a nervous agitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Friend Tobias,&rdquo; inquired the old man, compassionately, &ldquo;hast
+thou found no comfort in these many blessed passages of Scripture?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thy voice has fallen on my ear like a sound afar off and
+indistinct,&rdquo; replied Pearson, without lifting his eyes. &ldquo;Yea; and
+when I have hearkened carefully, the words seemed cold and lifeless and
+intended for another and a lesser grief than mine. Remove the book,&rdquo; he
+added, in a tone of sullen bitterness; &ldquo;I have no part in its
+consolations, and they do but fret my sorrow the more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, feeble brother; be not as one who hath never known the
+light,&rdquo; said the elder Quaker, earnestly, but with mildness. &ldquo;Art
+thou he that wouldst be content to give all and endure all for
+conscience&rsquo; sake, desiring even peculiar trials that thy faith might be
+purified and thy heart weaned from worldly desires? And wilt thou sink beneath
+an affliction which happens alike to them that have their portion here below
+and to them that lay up treasure in heaven? Faint not, for thy burden is yet
+light.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is heavy! It is heavier than I can bear!&rdquo; exclaimed Pearson,
+with the impatience of a variable spirit. &ldquo;From my youth upward I have
+been a man marked out for wrath, and year by year&mdash;yea, day after
+day&mdash;I have endured sorrows such as others know not in their lifetime. And
+now I speak not of the love that has been turned to hatred, the honor to
+ignominy, the ease and plentifulness of all things to danger, want and
+nakedness. All this I could have borne and counted myself blessed. But when my
+heart was desolate with many losses, I fixed it upon the child of a stranger,
+and he became dearer to me than all my buried ones; and now he too must die as
+if my love were poison. Verily, I am an accursed man, and I will lay me down in
+the dust and lift up my head no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou sinnest, brother, but it is not for me to rebuke thee, for I also
+have had my hours of darkness wherein I have murmured against the cross,&rdquo;
+said the old Quaker. He continued, perhaps in the hope of distracting his
+companion&rsquo;s thoughts from his own sorrows: &ldquo;Even of late was the
+light obscured within me, when the men of blood had banished me on pain of
+death and the constables led me onward from village to village toward the
+wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was wielding the knotted cords; they sunk
+deep into the flesh, and thou mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my
+footsteps by the blood that followed. As we went on&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have I not borne all this, and have I murmured?&rdquo; interrupted
+Pearson, impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, friend, but hear me,&rdquo; continued the other. &ldquo;As we
+journeyed on night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of
+the persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven forbid that I
+should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in the cottage windows, and I
+could discern the inmates as they gathered in comfort and security, every man
+with his wife and children by their own evening hearth. At length we came to a
+tract of fertile land. In the dim light the forest was not visible around it,
+and, behold, there was a straw-thatched dwelling which bore the very aspect of
+my home far over the wild ocean&mdash;far in our own England. Then came bitter
+thoughts upon me&mdash;yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul. The
+happiness of my early days was painted to me, the disquiet of my manhood, the
+altered faith of my declining years. I remembered how I had been moved to go
+forth a wanderer when my daughter, the youngest, the dearest of my flock, lay
+on her dying-bed, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Couldst thou obey the command at such a moment?&rdquo; exclaimed
+Pearson, shuddering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yea! yea!&rdquo; replied the old man, hurriedly. &ldquo;I was kneeling
+by her bedside when the voice spoke loud within me, but immediately I rose and
+took my staff and gat me gone. Oh that it were permitted me to forget her
+woeful look when I thus withdrew my arm and left her journeying through the
+dark valley alone! for her soul was faint and she had leaned upon my prayers.
+Now in that night of horror I was assailed by the thought that I had been an
+erring Christian and a cruel parent; yea, even my daughter with her pale dying
+features seemed to stand by me and whisper, &lsquo;Father, you are deceived; go
+home and shelter your gray head.&rsquo;&mdash;O Thou to whom I have looked in
+my furthest wanderings,&rdquo; continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes
+to heaven, &ldquo;inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the
+unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and suffered
+for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!&mdash;But I yielded not; I
+knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the scourge bit more fiercely
+into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I went on in peace and joy toward the
+wilderness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of reason,
+was deeply moved while reciting this tale, and his unwonted emotion seemed to
+rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat in silence, with their
+faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its red embers new scenes of
+persecution yet to be encountered. The snow still drifted hard against the
+windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of the logs had gradually sunk, came down
+the spacious chimney and hissed upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now
+and then be heard in a neighboring apartment, and the sound invariably drew the
+eyes of both Quakers to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous
+gust of wind had led his thoughts by a natural association to homeless
+travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have wellnigh sunk under my own share of this trial,&rdquo; observed
+he, sighing heavily; &ldquo;yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so
+the child&rsquo;s mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and many,
+but this will be the sorest of all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fear not for Catharine,&rdquo; replied the old Quaker, &ldquo;for I know
+that valiant woman and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother&rsquo;s
+heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with her
+faith; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has been thus
+early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and she will feel that
+he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her. Blessed, blessed are they
+that with so little suffering can enter into peace!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound: it was a
+quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson&rsquo;s wan countenance
+grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him what to dread; the
+old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his glance was firm as that of
+the tried soldier who awaits his enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The men of blood have come to seek me,&rdquo; he observed, with
+calmness. &ldquo;They have heard how I was moved to return from banishment, and
+now am I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long
+looked for. I will open unto them lest they say, &lsquo;Lo, he
+feareth!rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay; I will present myself before them,&rdquo; said Pearson, with
+recovered fortitude. &ldquo;It may be that they seek me alone and know not that
+thou abidest with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us go boldly, both one and the other,&rdquo; rejoined his companion.
+&ldquo;It is not fitting that thou or I should shrink.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they opened,
+bidding the applicant &ldquo;Come in, in God&rsquo;s name!&rdquo; A furious
+blast of wind drove the storm into their faces and extinguished the lamp; they
+had barely time to discern a figure so white from head to foot with the drifted
+snow that it seemed like Winter&rsquo;s self come in human shape to seek refuge
+from its own desolation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it may,&rdquo; said
+Pearson. &ldquo;It must needs be pressing, since thou comest on such a bitter
+night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peace be with this household!&rdquo; said the stranger, when they stood
+on the floor of the inner apartment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pearson started; the elder Quaker stirred the slumbering embers of the fire
+till they sent up a clear and lofty blaze. It was a female voice that had
+spoken; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry, in that
+comfortable light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Catharine, blessed woman,&rdquo; exclaimed the old man, &ldquo;art thou
+come to this darkened land again? Art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as
+in former years? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and from the
+dungeon hast thou come forth triumphant, but strengthen, strengthen now thy
+heart, Catharine, for Heaven will prove thee yet this once ere thou go to thy
+reward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rejoice, friends!&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Thou who hast long been of
+our people, and thou whom a little child hath led to us, rejoice! Lo, I come,
+the messenger of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is over-past. The
+heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in gentleness toward us, and
+he hath sent forth his letters to stay the hands of the men of blood. A
+ship&rsquo;s company of our friends hath arrived at yonder town, and I also
+sailed joyfully among them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Catharine spoke her eyes were roaming about the room in search of him for
+whose sake security was dear to her. Pearson made a silent appeal to the old
+man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task assigned him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sister,&rdquo; he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone,
+&ldquo;thou tellest us of his love manifested in temporal good, and now must we
+speak to thee of that selfsame love displayed in chastenings. Hitherto,
+Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome and difficult path
+and leading an infant by the hand; fain wouldst thou have looked heavenward
+continually, but still the cares of that little child have drawn thine eyes and
+thy affections to the earth. Sister, go on rejoicing, for his tottering
+footsteps shall impede thine own no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled. She shook like a leaf; she
+turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her hair. The firm old man
+extended his hand and held her up, keeping his eye upon hers as if to repress
+any outbreak of passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am a woman&mdash;I am but a woman; will He try me above my
+strength?&rdquo; said Catharine, very quickly and almost in a whisper. &ldquo;I
+have been wounded sore; I have suffered much&mdash;many things in the body,
+many in the mind; crucified in myself and in them that were dearest to me.
+Surely,&rdquo; added she, with a long shudder, &ldquo;he hath spared me in this
+one thing.&rdquo; She broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence:
+&ldquo;Tell me, man of cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast me
+down never to rise again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his hand?&mdash;And
+thou to whom I committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled thy trust? Give me
+back the boy well, sound, alive&mdash;alive&mdash;or earth and heaven shall
+avenge me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint&mdash;the very
+faint&mdash;voice of a child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest and to Dorothy
+that Ilbrahim&rsquo;s brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its close. The
+two former would willingly have remained by him to make use of the prayers and
+pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to the time, and which, if they
+be impotent as to the departing traveller&rsquo;s reception in the world
+whither he goes, may at least sustain him in bidding adieu to earth. But,
+though Ilbrahim uttered no complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked
+upon him; so that Dorothy&rsquo;s entreaties and their own conviction that the
+child&rsquo;s feet might tread heaven&rsquo;s pavement and not soil it had
+induced the two Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm,
+and, except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have been
+thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm began to rise,
+something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy&rsquo;s mind and to render
+his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing wind lingered to shake the
+casement, he strove to turn his head toward it; if the door jarred to and fro
+upon its hinges, he looked long and anxiously thitherward; if the heavy voice
+of the old man as he read the Scriptures rose but a little higher, the child
+almost held his dying-breath to listen; if a snowdrift swept by the cottage
+with a sound like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that some
+visitant should enter. But after a little time he relinquished whatever secret
+hope had agitated him and with one low complaining whisper turned his cheek
+upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy with his usual sweetness and
+besought her to draw near him; she did so, and Ilbrahim took her hand in both
+of his, grasping it with a gentle pressure, as if to assure himself that he
+retained it. At intervals, and without disturbing the repose of his
+countenance, a very faint trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a
+mild but somewhat cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the borders of
+eternity, Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern the near though dim
+delightfulness of the home he was about to reach; she would not have enticed
+the little wanderer back, though she bemoaned herself that she must leave him
+and return. But just when Ilbrahim&rsquo;s feet were pressing on the soil of
+Paradise he heard a voice behind him, and it recalled him a few, few paces of
+the weary path which he had travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features she
+perceived that their placid expression was again disturbed. Her own thoughts
+had been so wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and of human speech
+were lost to her; but when Catharine&rsquo;s shriek pierced through the room,
+the boy strove to raise himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Friend, she is come! Open unto her!&rdquo; cried he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside; she drew Ilbrahim to her
+bosom, and he nestled there with no violence of joy, but contentedly as if he
+were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into her face, and, reading its agony,
+said with feeble earnestness,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now;&rdquo; and with these words
+the gentle boy was dead.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+The king&rsquo;s mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual in
+preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities, trusting in the
+remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the supposed instability of the
+royal government, shortly renewed their severities in all other respects.
+Catharine&rsquo;s fanaticism had become wilder by the sundering of all human
+ties; and wherever a scourge was lifted, there was she to receive the blow; and
+whenever a dungeon was unbarred, thither she came to cast herself upon the
+floor. But in process of time a more Christian spirit&mdash;a spirit of
+forbearance, though not of cordiality or approbation&mdash;began to pervade the
+land in regard to the persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims
+eyed her rather in pity than in wrath, when the matrons fed her with the
+fragments of their children&rsquo;s food and offered her a lodging on a hard
+and lowly bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their sports to cast
+stones after the roving enthusiast,&mdash;then did Catharine return to
+Pearson&rsquo;s dwelling, and made that her home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As if Ilbrahim&rsquo;s sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his gentle
+spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true religion, her fierce
+and vindictive nature was softened by the same griefs which had once irritated
+it. When the course of years had made the features of the unobtrusive mourner
+familiar in the settlement, she became a subject of not deep but general
+interest&mdash;a being on whom the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all
+might be bestowed. Every one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is
+pleasant to experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses
+which are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a long
+train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent sadness and tears
+that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim&rsquo;s green and sunken grave.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a> MR. HIGGINBOTHAM&rsquo;S CATASTROPHE</h2>
+
+<p>
+A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from Morristown,
+where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the
+village of Parker&rsquo;s Falls, on Salmon River. He had a neat little cart
+painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each side-panel, and an Indian
+chief holding a pipe and a golden tobacco-stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a
+smart little mare and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a
+bargain, but none the worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them
+say, would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was
+he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to
+court by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock, knowing well that
+the country-lasses of New England are generally great performers on pipes.
+Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedler was inquisitive
+and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the news and anxious to tell
+it again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler&mdash;whose name was
+Dominicus Pike&mdash;had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of
+woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare.
+It being nearly seven o&rsquo;clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip
+as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An opportunity seemed at hand
+when, after lighting a cigar with a sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man
+coming over the brow of the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped
+his green cart. Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he
+carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a
+weary yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the
+freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do the same
+all day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-morning, mister,&rdquo; said Dominicus, when within
+speaking-distance. &ldquo;You go a pretty good jog. What&rsquo;s the latest
+news at Parker&rsquo;s Falls?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and answered, rather
+sullenly, that he did not come from Parker&rsquo;s Falls, which, as being the
+limit of his own day&rsquo;s journey, the pedler had naturally mentioned in his
+inquiry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; rejoined Dominicus Pike, &ldquo;let&rsquo;s have the
+latest news where you did come from. I&rsquo;m not particular about
+Parker&rsquo;s Falls. Any place will answer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being thus importuned, the traveller&mdash;who was as ill-looking a fellow as
+one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods&mdash;appeared to
+hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news or
+weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on the step of the
+cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he might have shouted aloud
+and no other mortal would have heard him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do remember one little trifle of news,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Old Mr.
+Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight o&rsquo;clock
+last night by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to the branch of a
+St. Michael&rsquo;s pear tree where nobody would find him till the
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger betook
+himself to his journey again with more speed than ever, not even turning his
+head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish cigar and relate all the
+particulars. The pedler whistled to his mare and went up the hill, pondering on
+the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade,
+having sold him many a bunch of long nines and a great deal of pig-tail,
+lady&rsquo;s twist and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity
+with which the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a
+straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o&rsquo;clock the
+preceding night, yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the morning, when,
+in all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s own family had but just
+discovered his corpse hanging on the St. Michael&rsquo;s pear tree. The
+stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots, to travel at such a rate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ill-news flies fast, they say,&rdquo; thought Dominicus Pike, &ldquo;but
+this beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
+President&rsquo;s message.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a mistake of
+one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend did not hesitate to
+introduce the story at every tavern and country-store along the road, expending
+a whole bunch of Spanish wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He
+found himself invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so
+pestered with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline till it
+became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of corroborative
+evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader, and a former clerk of his to whom
+Dominicus related the facts testified that the old gentleman was accustomed to
+return home through the orchard about nightfall with the money and valuable
+papers of the store in his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr.
+Higginbotham&rsquo;s catastrophe, hinting&mdash;what the pedler had discovered
+in his own dealings with him&mdash;that he was a crusty old fellow as close as
+a vise. His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping school
+in Kimballton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What with telling the news for the public good and driving bargains for his
+own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put up at a
+tavern about five miles short of Parker&rsquo;s Falls. After supper, lighting
+one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the bar-room and went through the
+story of the murder, which had grown so fast that it took him half an hour to
+tell. There were as many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom
+received it all for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer who had
+arrived on horseback a short time before and was now seated in a corner,
+smoking his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately,
+brought his chair right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in the face,
+puffing out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever smelt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you make affidavit,&rdquo; demanded he, in the tone of a
+country-justice taking an examination, &ldquo;that old Squire Higginbotham of
+Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last and found hanging
+on his great pear tree yesterday morning?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell the story as I heard it, mister,&rdquo; answered Dominicus,
+dropping his half-burnt cigar. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say that I saw the thing
+done, so I can&rsquo;t take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that
+way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I can take mine,&rdquo; said the farmer, &ldquo;that if Squire
+Higginbotham was murdered night before last I drank a glass of bitters with his
+ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his store as I
+was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a little business for
+him on the road. He didn&rsquo;t seem to know any more about his own murder
+than I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, then it can&rsquo;t be a fact!&rdquo; exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guess he&rsquo;d have mentioned, if it was,&rdquo; said the old
+farmer; and he removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite
+down in the mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no heart to
+mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself with a glass of gin
+and water and went to bed, where all night long he dreamed of hanging on the
+St. Michael&rsquo;s pear tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would have
+pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s), Dominicus rose in the gray
+of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart and trotted swiftly
+away toward Parker&rsquo;s Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy road and the
+pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have encouraged him to
+repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to bear it, but he met
+neither ox-team, light wagon, chaise, horseman nor foot-traveller till, just as
+he crossed Salmon River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle
+over his shoulder, on the end of a stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-morning, mister,&rdquo; said the pedler, reining in his mare.
+&ldquo;If you come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, maybe you can tell me
+the real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow
+actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a nigger?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the stranger
+himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden question the
+Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow hue becoming a ghastly white,
+while, shaking and stammering, he thus replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him
+last night at eight o&rsquo;clock; I came away at seven. His folks can&rsquo;t
+have looked for him in the orchard yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself and, though he
+seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace which would have
+kept the pedler&rsquo;s mare on a smart trot. Dominicus stared after him in
+great perplexity. If the murder had not been committed till Tuesday night, who
+was the prophet that had foretold it in all its circumstances on Tuesday
+morning? If Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s corpse were not yet discovered by his own
+family, how came the mulatto, at above thirty miles&rsquo; distance, to know
+that he was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before
+the unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with the
+stranger&rsquo;s surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a
+hue-and-cry after him as an accomplice in the murder, since a murder, it
+seemed, had really been perpetrated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But let the poor devil go,&rdquo; thought the pedler. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t want his black blood on my head, and hanging the nigger
+wouldn&rsquo;t unhang Mr. Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman? It&rsquo;s a
+sin, I know, but I should hate to have him come to life a second time and give
+me the lie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these meditations Dominicus Pike drove into the street of Parker&rsquo;s
+Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as three
+cotton-factories and a slitting-mill can make it. The machinery was not in
+motion and but a few of the shop doors unbarred when he alighted in the
+stable-yard of the tavern and made it his first business to order the mare four
+quarts of oats. His second duty, of course, was to impart Mr.
+Higginbotham&rsquo;s catastrophe to the hostler. He deemed it advisable,
+however, not to be too positive as to the date of the direful fact, and also to
+be uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto or by the
+son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate it on his own authority or
+that of any one person, but mentioned it as a report generally diffused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and became so
+much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had originated. Mr.
+Higginbotham was as well known at Parker&rsquo;s Falls as any citizen of the
+place, being part-owner of the slitting-mill and a considerable stockholder in
+the cotton-factories. The inhabitants felt their own prosperity interested in
+his fate. Such was the excitement that the Parker&rsquo;s Falls <i>Gazette</i>
+anticipated its regular day of publication, and came out with half a form of
+blank paper and a column of double pica emphasized with capitals and headed
+&ldquo;HORRID MURDER OF MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!&rdquo; Among other dreadful details,
+the printed account described the mark of the cord round the dead man&rsquo;s
+neck and stated the number of thousand dollars of which he had been robbed;
+there was much pathos, also, about the affliction of his niece, who had gone
+from one fainting-fit to another ever since her uncle was found hanging on the
+St. Michael&rsquo;s pear tree with his pockets inside out. The village poet
+likewise commemorated the young lady&rsquo;s grief in seventeen stanzas of a
+ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and in consideration of Mr.
+Higginbotham&rsquo;s claims on the town determined to issue handbills offering
+a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of his murderers and the
+recovery of the stolen property.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker&rsquo;s Falls, consisting of
+shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory-girls, mill-men and
+schoolboys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible loquacity as
+more than compensated for the silence of the cotton-machines, which refrained
+from their usual din out of respect to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared
+about posthumous renown, his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend Dominicus in his vanity of heart forgot his intended precautions,
+and, mounting on the town-pump, announced himself as the bearer of the
+authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a sensation. He
+immediately became the great man of the moment, and had just begun a new
+edition of the narrative with a voice like a field-preacher when the mail-stage
+drove into the village street. It had travelled all night, and must have
+shifted horses at Kimballton at three in the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we shall hear all the particulars!&rdquo; shouted the crowd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern followed by a thousand people;
+for if any man had been minding his own business till then, he now left it at
+sixes and sevens to hear the news. The pedler, foremost in the race, discovered
+two passengers, both of whom had been startled from a comfortable nap to find
+themselves in the centre of a mob. Every man assailing them with separate
+questions, all propounded at once, the couple were struck speechless, though
+one was a lawyer and the other a young lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about old
+Mr. Higginbotham!&rdquo; bawled the mob. &ldquo;What is the coroner&rsquo;s
+verdict? Are the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s niece come
+out of her fainting-fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The coachman said not a word except to swear awfully at the hostler for not
+bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had generally his wits
+about him even when asleep; the first thing he did after learning the cause of
+the excitement was to produce a large red pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike,
+being an extremely polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue
+would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer&rsquo;s, had handed the lady out of
+the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button,
+and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have
+heard a love-tale from it as a tale of murder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gentlemen and ladies,&rdquo; said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the
+mill-men and the factory-girls, &ldquo;I can assure you that some unaccountable
+mistake&mdash;or, more probably, a wilful falsehood maliciously contrived to
+injure Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s credit&mdash;has excited this singular uproar.
+We passed through Kimballton at three o&rsquo;clock this morning, and most
+certainly should have been informed of the murder had any been perpetrated. But
+I have proof nearly as strong as Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s own oral testimony in
+the negative. Here is a note relating to a suit of his in the Connecticut
+courts which was delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find it dated at
+ten o&rsquo;clock last evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, the lawyer, exhibited the date and signature of the note, which
+irrefragably proved either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham was alive when
+he wrote it, or, as some deemed the more probable case of two doubtful ones,
+that he was so absorbed in worldly business as to continue to transact it even
+after his death. But unexpected evidence was forthcoming. The young lady, after
+listening to the pedler&rsquo;s explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth
+her gown and put her curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern door,
+making a modest signal to be heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good people,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I am Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s
+niece.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy and
+bright&mdash;that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the authority
+of the Parker&rsquo;s Falls <i>Gazette</i>, to be lying at death&rsquo;s door
+in a fainting-fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted all along whether a
+young lady would be quite so desperate at the hanging of a rich old uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, &ldquo;that
+this strange story is quite unfounded as to myself, and I believe I may affirm
+it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham. He has the
+kindness to give me a home in his house, though I contribute to my own support
+by teaching a school. I left Kimballton this morning to spend the vacation of
+commencement-week with a friend about five miles from Parker&rsquo;s Falls. My
+generous uncle, when he heard me on the stairs, called me to his bedside and
+gave me two dollars and fifty cents to pay my stage-fare, and another dollar
+for my extra expenses. He then laid his pocketbook under his pillow, shook
+hands with me, and advised me to take some biscuit in my bag instead of
+breakfasting on the road. I feel confident, therefore, that I left my beloved
+relative alive, and trust that I shall find him so on my return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so sensible and
+well worded, and delivered with such grace and propriety, that everybody
+thought her fit to be preceptress of the best academy in the State. But a
+stranger would have supposed that Mr. Higginbotham was an object of abhorrence
+at Parker&rsquo;s Falls and that a thanksgiving had been proclaimed for his
+murder, so excessive was the wrath of the inhabitants on learning their
+mistake. The mill-men resolved to bestow public honors on Dominicus Pike, only
+hesitating whether to tar and feather him, ride him on a rail or refresh him
+with an ablution at the town-pump, on the top of which he had declared himself
+the bearer of the news. The selectmen, by advice of the lawyer, spoke of
+prosecuting him for a misdemeanor in circulating unfounded reports, to the
+great disturbance of the peace of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus
+either from mob-law or a court of justice but an eloquent appeal made by the
+young lady in his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt gratitude to his
+benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out of town under a discharge
+of artillery from the schoolboys, who found plenty of ammunition in the
+neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he turned his head to exchange a
+farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s niece a ball of the consistence
+of hasty-pudding hit him slap in the mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His
+whole person was so bespattered with the like filthy missiles that he had
+almost a mind to ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the
+town-pump; for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been a deed of
+charity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud&mdash;an emblem of
+all stains of undeserved opprobrium&mdash;was easily brushed off when dry.
+Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he refrain from a
+hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had excited. The handbills of the
+selectmen would cause the commitment of all the vagabonds in the State, the
+paragraph in the Parker&rsquo;s Falls <i>Gazette</i> would be reprinted from
+Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in the London newspapers, and many a
+miser would tremble for his moneybags and life on learning the catastrophe of
+Mr. Higginbotham. The pedler meditated with much fervor on the charms of the
+young schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke nor looked so
+like an angel as Miss Higginbotham while defending him from the wrathful
+populace at Parker&rsquo;s Falls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along determined to
+visit that place, though business had drawn, him out of the most direct road
+from Morristown. As he approached the scene of the supposed murder he continued
+to revolve the circumstances in his mind, and was astonished at the aspect
+which the whole case assumed. Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of
+the first traveller, it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the
+yellow man was evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact, and
+there was a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly
+questioned. When to this singular combination of incidents it was added that
+the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham&rsquo;s character and habits of
+life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael&rsquo;s pear tree, near
+which he always passed at nightfall, the circumstantial evidence appeared so
+strong that Dominicus doubted whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or
+even the niece&rsquo;s direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making
+cautious inquiries along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr.
+Higginbotham had in his service an Irishman of doubtful character whom he had
+hired without a recommendation, on the score of economy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I be hanged myself,&rdquo; exclaimed Dominicus Pike, aloud, on
+reaching the top of a lonely hill, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;ll believe old
+Higginbotham is unhanged till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his
+own mouth. And, as he&rsquo;s a real shaver, I&rsquo;ll have the minister, or
+some other responsible man, for an endorser.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton turnpike,
+about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name. His little mare was
+fast bringing him up with a man on horseback who trotted through the gate a few
+rods in advance of him, nodded to the toll-gatherer and kept on towards the
+village. Dominicus was acquainted with the toll-man, and while making change
+the usual remarks on the weather passed between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said the pedler, throwing back his whiplash to bring
+it down like a feather on the mare&rsquo;s flank, &ldquo;you have not seen
+anything of old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the toll-gatherer; &ldquo;he passed the gate just
+before you drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the
+dusk. He&rsquo;s been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff&rsquo;s
+sale there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat with me,
+but to-night he nodded, as if to say, &lsquo;Charge my toll,&rsquo; and jogged
+on; for, wherever he goes, he must always be at home by eight
+o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So they tell me,&rdquo; said Dominicus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,&rdquo;
+continued the toll-gatherer. &ldquo;Says I to myself tonight, &lsquo;He&rsquo;s
+more like a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just discern the
+horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to recognize the rear of
+Mr. Higginbotham, but through the evening shadows and amid the dust from the
+horse&rsquo;s feet the figure appeared dim and unsubstantial, as if the shape
+of the mysterious old man were faintly moulded of darkness and gray light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dominicus shivered. &ldquo;Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other world
+by way of the Kimballton turnpike,&rdquo; thought he. He shook the reins and
+rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the rear of the gray old
+shadow till the latter was concealed by a bend of the road. On reaching this
+point the pedler no longer saw the man on horseback, but found himself at the
+head of the village street, not far from a number of stores and two taverns
+clustered round the meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a
+gate, the boundary of a wood-lot beyond which lay an orchard, farther still a
+mowing-field, and last of all a house. These were the premises of Mr.
+Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had been left in
+the background by the Kimballton turnpike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dominicus knew the place, and the little mare stopped short by instinct, for he
+was not conscious of tightening the reins. &ldquo;For the soul of me, I cannot
+get by this gate!&rdquo; said he, trembling. &ldquo;I never shall be my own man
+again till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is hanging on the St. Michael&rsquo;s
+pear tree.&rdquo; He leaped from the cart, gave the rein a turn round the
+gate-post, and ran along the green path of the wood-lot as if Old Nick were
+chasing behind. Just then the village clock tolled eight, and as each deep
+stroke fell Dominicus gave a fresh bound and flew faster than before, till, dim
+in the solitary centre of the orchard, he saw the fated pear tree. One great
+branch stretched from the old contorted trunk across the path and threw the
+darkest shadow on that one spot. But something seemed to struggle beneath the
+branch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of peaceable
+occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful emergency. Certain
+it is, however, that he rushed forward, prostrated a sturdy Irishman with the
+butt-end of his whip, and found&mdash;not, indeed, hanging on the St.
+Michael&rsquo;s pear tree, but trembling beneath it with a halter round his
+neck&mdash;the old identical Mr. Higginbotham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Higginbotham,&rdquo; said Dominicus, tremulously,
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;re an honest man, and I&rsquo;ll take your word for it. Have
+you been hanged, or not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the simple
+machinery by which this &ldquo;coming event&rdquo; was made to cast its
+&ldquo;shadow before.&rdquo; Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of
+Mr. Higginbotham; two of them successively lost courage and fled, each delaying
+the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in the act of
+perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of fate, like the
+heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of Dominicus Pike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into high favor,
+sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress and settled his whole
+property on their children, allowing themselves the interest. In due time the
+old gentleman capped the climax of his favors by dying a Christian death in
+bed; since which melancholy event, Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton
+and established a large tobacco-manufactory in my native village.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a> LITTLE ANNIE&rsquo;S RAMBLE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The town-crier has rung his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie stands
+on her father&rsquo;s doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the loud voice
+is talking about. Let me listen too. Oh, he is telling the people that an
+elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with horns, and other strange
+beasts from foreign countries, have come to town and will receive all visitors
+who choose to wait upon them. Perhaps little Annie would like to go? Yes, and I
+can see that the pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street with
+the green trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine and the
+pavements and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept
+them with her broom. She feels that impulse to go strolling away&mdash;that
+longing after the mystery of the great world&mdash;which many children feel,
+and which I felt in my childhood. Little Annie shall take a ramble with me.
+See! I do but hold out my hand, and like some bright bird in the sunny air,
+with her blue silk frock fluttering upward from her white pantalets, she comes
+bounding on tiptoe across the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smooth back your brown curls, Annie, and let me tie on your bonnet, and we will
+set forth. What a strange couple to go on their rambles together! One walks in
+black attire, with a measured step and a heavy brow and his thoughtful eyes
+bent down, while the gay little girl trips lightly along as if she were forced
+to keep hold of my hand lest her feet should dance away from the earth. Yet
+there is sympathy between us. If I pride myself on anything, it is because I
+have a smile that children love; and, on the other hand, there are few grown
+ladies that could entice me from the side of little Annie, for I delight to let
+my mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless child. So come, Annie; but
+if I moralize as we go, do not listen to me: only look about you and be merry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now we turn the corner. Here are hacks with two horses and stage-coaches with
+four thundering to meet each other, and trucks and carts moving at a slower
+pace, being heavily laden with barrels from the wharves; and here are rattling
+gigs which perhaps will be smashed to pieces before our eyes. Hitherward, also,
+comes a man trundling a wheelbarrow along the pavement. Is not little Annie
+afraid of such a tumult? No; she does not even shrink closer to my side, but
+passes on with fearless confidence, a happy child amidst a great throng of
+grown people who pay the same reverence to her infancy that they would to
+extreme old age. Nobody jostles her: all turn aside to make way for little
+Annie; and, what is most singular, she appears conscious of her claim to such
+respect. Now her eyes brighten with pleasure. A street-musician has seated
+himself on the steps of yonder church and pours forth his strains to the busy
+town&mdash;a melody that has gone astray among the tramp of footsteps, the buzz
+of voices and the war of passing wheels. Who heeds the poor organ-grinder? None
+but myself and little Annie, whose feet begin to move in unison with the lively
+tune, as if she were loth that music should be wasted without a dance. But
+where would Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes or the
+rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age, some feeble with disease;
+some are so lean that their bones would rattle, and others of such ponderous
+size that their agility would crack the flagstones; but many, many have leaden
+feet because their hearts are far heavier than lead. It is a sad thought that I
+have chanced upon. What a company of dancers should we be! For I too am a
+gentleman of sober footsteps, and therefore, little Annie, let us walk sedately
+on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a question with me whether this giddy child or my sage self have most
+pleasure in looking at the shop-windows. We love the silks of sunny hue that
+glow within the darkened premises of the spruce dry-goods men; we are
+pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver and the chased gold, the rings of
+wedlock and the costly love-ornaments, glistening at the window of the
+jeweller; but Annie, more than I, seeks for a glimpse of her passing figure in
+the dusty looking-glasses at the hardware-stores. All that is bright and gay
+attracts us both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood as well as present
+partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the fancy revel on
+the dainties of a confectioner&mdash;those pies with such white and flaky
+paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich mince with whole plums
+intermixed, or piquant apple delicately rose-flavored; those cakes,
+heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty pyramid; those sweet little circlets
+sweetly named kisses; those dark majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the
+wedding of an heiress, mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered
+with sugar! Then the mighty treasures of sugarplums, white and crimson and
+yellow, in large glass vases, and candy of all varieties, and those little
+cockles&mdash;or whatever they are called&mdash;much prized by children for
+their sweetness, and more for the mottoes which they enclose, by love-sick
+maids and bachelors! Oh, my mouth waters, little Annie, and so doth yours, but
+we will not be tempted except to an imaginary feast; so let us hasten onward
+devouring the vision of a plum-cake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here are pleasures, as some people would say, of a more exalted kind, in the
+window of a bookseller. Is Annie a literary lady? Yes; she is deeply read in
+Peter Parley&rsquo;s tomes and has an increasing love for fairy-tales, though
+seldom met with nowadays, and she will subscribe next year to the <i>Juvenile
+Miscellany</i>. But, truth to tell, she is apt to turn away from the printed
+page and keep gazing at the pretty pictures, such as the gay-colored ones which
+make this shop-window the continual loitering-place of children. What would
+Annie think if, in the book which I mean to send her on New Year&rsquo;s day,
+she should find her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco with gilt
+edges, there to remain till she become a woman grown with children of her own
+to read about their mother&rsquo;s childhood? That would be very queer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand, till
+suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town. Oh, my stars! Is
+this a toyshop, or is it fairy-land? For here are gilded chariots in which the
+king and queen of the fairies might ride side by side, while their courtiers on
+these small horses should gallop in triumphal procession before and behind the
+royal pair. Here, too, are dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of
+those same princely personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest
+hall of their palace&mdash;full five feet high&mdash;and behold their nobles
+feasting adown the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen
+should sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here stands a
+turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly heathen as he is, and
+next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at Annie and myself. Here we may
+review a whole army of horse and foot in red-and-blue uniforms, with drums,
+fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of noiseless music; they have halted on the
+shelf of this window after their weary march from Liliput. But what cares Annie
+for soldiers? No conquering queen is she&mdash;neither a Semiramis nor a
+Catharine; her whole heart is set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a
+fashionable stare. This is the little girl&rsquo;s true plaything. Though made
+of wood, a doll is a visionary and ethereal personage endowed by childish fancy
+with a peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of romance, an actor and a
+sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the chief inhabitant of that wild world
+with which children ape the real one. Little Annie does not understand what I
+am saying, but looks wishfully at the proud lady in the window. We will invite
+her home with us as we return.&mdash;Meantime, good-bye, Dame Doll! A toy
+yourself, you look forth from your window upon many ladies that are also toys,
+though they walk and speak, and upon a crowd in pursuit of toys, though they
+wear grave visages. Oh, with your never-closing eyes, had you but an intellect
+to moralize on all that flits before them, what a wise doll would you
+be!&mdash;Come, little Annie, we shall find toys enough, go where we may.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now we elbow our way among the throng again. It is curious in the most crowded
+part of a town to meet with living creatures that had their birthplace in some
+far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in the wilderness of men. Look
+up, Annie, at that canary-bird hanging out of the window in his cage. Poor
+little fellow! His golden feathers are all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he
+would have glistened twice as brightly among the summer islands, but still he
+has become a citizen in all his tastes and habits, and would not sing half so
+well without the uproar that drowns his music. What a pity that he does not
+know how miserable he is! There is a parrot, too, calling out, &ldquo;Pretty
+Poll! Pretty Poll!&rdquo; as we pass by. Foolish bird, to be talking about her
+prettiness to strangers, especially as she is not a pretty Poll, though gaudily
+dressed in green and yellow! If she had said &ldquo;Pretty Annie!&rdquo; there
+would have been some sense in it. See that gray squirrel at the door of the
+fruit-shop whirling round and round so merrily within his wire wheel! Being
+condemned to the treadmill, he makes it an amusement. Admirable philosophy!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here comes a big, rough dog&mdash;a countryman&rsquo;s dog&mdash;in search of
+his master, smelling at everybody&rsquo;s heels and touching little
+Annie&rsquo;s hand with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain
+have patted him.&mdash;Success to your search, Fidelity!&mdash;And there sits a
+great yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat,
+gazing at this transitory world with owl&rsquo;s eyes, and making pithy
+comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.&mdash;Oh, sage
+puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a pair of philosophers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here we see something to remind us of the town-crier and his ding-dong-bell.
+Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air, pictured all over with
+wild beasts, as if they had met together to choose a king, according to their
+custom in the days of &AElig;sop. But they are choosing neither a king nor a
+President, else we should hear a most horrible snarling! They have come from
+the deep woods and the wild mountains and the desert sands and the polar snows
+only to do homage to my little Annie. As we enter among them the great elephant
+makes us a bow in the best style of elephantine courtesy, bending lowly down
+his mountain bulk, with trunk abased and leg thrust out behind. Annie returns
+the salute, much to the gratification of the elephant, who is certainly the
+best-bred monster in the caravan. The lion and the lioness are busy with two
+beef-bones. The royal tiger, the beautiful, the untamable, keeps pacing his
+narrow cage with a haughty step, unmindful of the spectators or recalling the
+fierce deeds of his former life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such
+inferior animals from the jungles of Bengal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here we see the very same wolf&mdash;do not go near him, Annie!&mdash;the
+selfsame wolf that devoured little Red Riding-Hood and her grandmother. In the
+next cage a hyena from Egypt who has doubtless howled around the pyramids and a
+black bear from our own forests are fellow-prisoners and most excellent
+friends. Are there any two living creatures who have so few sympathies that
+they cannot possibly be friends? Here sits a great white bear whom common
+observers would call a very stupid beast, though I perceive him to be only
+absorbed in contemplation; he is thinking of his voyages on an iceberg, and of
+his comfortable home in the vicinity of the north pole, and of the little cubs
+whom he left rolling in the eternal snows. In fact, he is a bear of sentiment.
+But oh those unsentimental monkeys! The ugly, grinning, aping, chattering,
+ill-natured, mischievous and queer little brutes! Annie does not love the
+monkeys; their ugliness shocks her pure, instinctive delicacy of taste and
+makes her mind unquiet because it bears a wild and dark resemblance to
+humanity. But here is a little pony just big enough for Annie to ride, and
+round and round he gallops in a circle, keeping time with his trampling hoofs
+to a band of music. And here, with a laced coat and a cocked hat, and a
+riding-whip in his hand&mdash;here comes a little gentleman small enough to be
+king of the fairies and ugly enough to be king of the gnomes, and takes a
+flying leap into the saddle. Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily
+gallops the pony, and merrily rides the little old gentleman.&mdash;Come,
+Annie, into the street again; perchance we may see monkeys on horseback there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie ever read
+the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder man proclaim that
+his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes another, mounted on a cart and
+blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast from a tin horn, as much as to say,
+&ldquo;Fresh fish!&rdquo; And hark! a voice on high, like that of a muezzin
+from the summit of a mosque, announcing that some chimney-sweeper has emerged
+from smoke and soot and darksome caverns into the upper air. What cares the
+world for that? But, well-a-day, we hear a shrill voice of affliction&mdash;the
+scream of a little child, rising louder with every repetition of that smart,
+sharp, slapping sound produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie
+sympathizes, though without experience of such direful woe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear. Will he tell
+us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of beautiful wax figures,
+or of some monstrous beast more horrible than any in the caravan? I guess the
+latter. See how he uplifts the bell in his right hand and shakes it slowly at
+first, then with a hurried motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides
+at once, and the sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It drowns the
+buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man&rsquo;s mind from his own
+business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends to the hushed
+chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the cellar kitchen where the
+hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who of all that address the public ear,
+whether in church or court-house or hall of state, has such an attentive
+audience as the town-crier! What saith the people&rsquo;s orator?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue silk
+frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel eyes. Whoever will
+bring her back to her afflicted mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.&mdash;Oh, my pretty Annie, we forgot
+to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and has sent the
+town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting old and young, for
+the loss of a little girl who has not once let go my hand? Well, let us hasten
+homeward; and as we go forget not to thank Heaven, my Annie, that after
+wandering a little way into the world you may return at the first summons with
+an untainted and unwearied heart, and be a happy child again. But I have gone
+too far astray for the town-crier to call me back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my ramble with
+little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious moments, an idle
+matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of childish imaginations about
+topics unworthy of a grown man&rsquo;s notice. Has it been merely this? Not
+so&mdash;not so. They are not truly wise who would affirm it. As the pure
+breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is our moral nature revived
+by their free and simple thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for
+little cause or none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence
+on us is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
+forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as yesterday, when
+life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether to call ourselves young
+any more,&mdash;then it is good to steal away from the society of bearded men,
+and even of gentler woman, and spend an hour or two with children. After
+drinking from those fountains of still fresh existence we shall return into the
+crowd, as I do now, to struggle onward and do our part in life&mdash;perhaps as
+fervently as ever, but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit
+more lightly wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>
+WAKEFIELD</h2>
+
+<p>
+In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a
+man&mdash;let us call him Wakefield&mdash;who absented himself for a long time
+from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very uncommon, nor,
+without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be condemned either as
+naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is
+perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delinquency, and, moreover,
+as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The
+wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took
+lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife
+or friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt
+upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home every day, and
+frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his
+matrimonial felicity&mdash;when his death was reckoned certain, his estate
+settled, his name dismissed from memory and his wife long, long ago resigned to
+her autumnal widowhood&mdash;he entered the door one evening quietly as from a
+day&rsquo;s absence, and became a loving spouse till death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the purest
+originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is one, I think,
+which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We know, each for himself,
+that none of us would perpetrate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might.
+To my own contemplations, at least, it has often recurred, always exciting
+wonder, but with a sense that the story must be true and a conception of its
+hero&rsquo;s character. Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time
+is well spent in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own
+meditation; or if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of
+Wakefield&rsquo;s vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be a
+pervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done up neatly
+and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy and
+every striking incident its moral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea and
+call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his matrimonial
+affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm, habitual sentiment; of all
+husbands, he was likely to be the most constant, because a certain sluggishness
+would keep his heart at rest wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual,
+but not actively so; his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that
+tended to no purpose or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
+energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning of the
+term, made no part of Wakefield&rsquo;s gifts. With a cold but not depraved nor
+wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous thoughts nor perplexed
+with originality, who could have anticipated that our friend would entitle
+himself to a foremost place among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his
+acquaintances been asked who was the man in London the surest to perform
+nothing to-day which should be remembered on the morrow, they would have
+thought of Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She,
+without having analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness
+that had rusted into his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most
+uneasy attribute about him; of a disposition to craft which had seldom produced
+more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets hardly worth revealing;
+and, lastly, of what she called a little strangeness sometimes in the good man.
+This latter quality is indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk of an
+October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat covered with an
+oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small portmanteau in the
+other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to take the night-coach into
+the country. She would fain inquire the length of his journey, its object and
+the probable time of his return, but, indulgent to his harmless love of
+mystery, interrogates him only by a look. He tells her not to expect him
+positively by the return-coach nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four
+days, but, at all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening.
+Wakefield, himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is before him.
+He holds out his hand; she gives her own and meets his parting kiss in the
+matter-of-course way of a ten years&rsquo; matrimony, and forth goes the
+middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplex his good lady by a whole
+week&rsquo;s absence. After the door has closed behind him, she perceives it
+thrust partly open and a vision of her husband&rsquo;s face through the
+aperture, smiling on her and gone in a moment. For the time this little
+incident is dismissed without a thought, but long afterward, when she has been
+more years a widow than a wife, that smile recurs and flickers across all her
+reminiscences of Wakefield&rsquo;s visage. In her many musings she surrounds
+the original smile with a multitude of fantasies which make it strange and
+awful; as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is
+frozen on his pale features; or if she dreams of him in heaven, still his
+blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its sake, when all
+others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along the street
+ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass of London life. It
+would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow close at his heels,
+therefore, until, after several superfluous turns and doublings, we find him
+comfortably established by the fireside of a small apartment previously
+bespoken. He is in the next street to his own and at his journey&rsquo;s end.
+He can scarcely trust his good-fortune in having got thither unperceived,
+recollecting that at one time he was delayed by the throng in the very focus of
+a lighted lantern, and again there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind
+his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he heard a
+voice shouting afar and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless a dozen
+busybodies had been watching him and told his wife the whole affair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great
+world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish
+man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee home to good Mrs.
+Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself even for a little week
+from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she for a single moment to deem thee
+dead or lost or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious
+of a change in thy true wife for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in
+human affections&mdash;not that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly
+close again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield lies
+down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads forth his arms into the
+wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed, &ldquo;No,&rdquo; thinks he,
+gathering the bedclothes about him; &ldquo;I will not sleep alone another
+night.&rdquo; In the morning he rises earlier than usual and sets himself to
+consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of
+thought that he has taken this very singular step with the consciousness of a
+purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it sufficiently for his own
+contemplation. The vagueness of the project and the convulsive effort with
+which he plunges into the execution of it are equally characteristic of a
+feeble-minded man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may,
+and finds himself curious to know the progress of matters at home&mdash;how his
+exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and, briefly, how the
+little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which he was a central object
+will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the
+bottom of the affair. But how is he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by
+keeping close in this comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in
+the next street to his home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach
+had been whirling him away all night. Yet should he reappear, the whole project
+is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with this
+dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the
+street and send one hasty glance toward his forsaken domicile. Habit&mdash;for
+he is a man of habits&mdash;takes him by the hand and guides him, wholly
+unaware, to his own door, where, just at the critical moment, he is aroused by
+the scraping of his foot upon the step.&mdash;Wakefield, whither are you going?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of the doom
+to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless with
+agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his head at the distant
+corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him? Will not the whole
+household&mdash;the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid-servant and the dirty
+little footboy&mdash;raise a hue-and-cry through London streets in pursuit of
+their fugitive lord and master? Wonderful escape! He gathers courage to pause
+and look homeward, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar
+edifice such as affects us all when, after a separation of months or years, we
+again see some hill or lake or work of art with which we were friends of old.
+In ordinary cases this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and
+contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield the
+magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because in that
+brief period a great moral change has been effected. But this is a secret from
+himself. Before leaving the spot he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his
+wife passing athwart the front window with her face turned toward the head of
+the street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea that
+among a thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must have detected him. Right
+glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by
+the coal-fire of his lodgings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial
+conception and the stirring up of the man&rsquo;s sluggish temperament to put
+it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train. We may
+suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying a new wig of reddish
+hair and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike his customary suit of
+brown, from a Jew&rsquo;s old-clothes bag. It is accomplished: Wakefield is
+another man. The new system being now established, a retrograde movement to the
+old would be almost as difficult as the step that placed him in his
+unparalleled position. Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness
+occasionally incident to his temper and brought on at present by the inadequate
+sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs.
+Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death. Well,
+twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a heavier step,
+a paler cheek and more anxious brow, and in the third week of his
+non-appearance he detects a portent of evil entering the house in the guise of
+an apothecary. Next day the knocker is muffled. Toward nightfall comes the
+chariot of a physician and deposits its big-wigged and solemn burden at
+Wakefield&rsquo;s door, whence after a quarter of an hour&rsquo;s visit he
+emerges, perchance the herald of a funeral. Dear woman! will she die?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling, but
+still lingers away from his wife&rsquo;s bedside, pleading with his conscience
+that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught else restrains him,
+he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks she gradually recovers. The
+crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps, but quiet, and, let him return soon
+or late, it will never be feverish for him again. Such ideas glimmer through
+the mist of Wakefield&rsquo;s mind and render him indistinctly conscious that
+an almost impassable gulf divides his hired apartment from his former home.
+&ldquo;It is but in the next street,&rdquo; he sometimes says. Fool! it is in
+another world. Hitherto he has put off&rsquo; his return from one particular
+day to another; henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined&mdash;not
+to-morrow; probably next week; pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have nearly as
+much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the self-banished Wakefield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen pages! Then
+might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays its strong hand on
+every deed which we do and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of
+necessity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for ten years or so to haunt around
+his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be faithful to his wife
+with all the affection of which his heart is capable, while he is slowly fading
+out of hers. Long since, it must be remarked, he has lost the perception of
+singularity in his conduct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now for a scene. Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a man, now
+waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless observers, yet
+bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no common fate for such as have
+the skill to read it. He is meagre; his low and narrow forehead is deeply
+wrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless, sometimes wander apprehensively about
+him, but oftener seem to look inward. He bends his head and moves with an
+indescribable obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to
+the world. Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you will
+allow that circumstances&mdash;which often produce remarkable men from
+Nature&rsquo;s ordinary handiwork&mdash;have produced one such here. Next,
+leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite
+direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of life, with a
+prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid
+mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away or have become so
+essential to her heart that they would be poorly exchanged for joy. Just as the
+lean man and well-conditioned woman are passing a slight obstruction occurs and
+brings these two figures directly in contact. Their hands touch; the pressure
+of the crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder; they stand face to face,
+staring into each other&rsquo;s eyes. After a ten years&rsquo; separation thus
+Wakefield meets his wife. The throng eddies away and carries them asunder. The
+sober widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the
+portal and throws a perplexed glance along the street. She passes in, however,
+opening her prayer-book as she goes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the man? With so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands to gaze
+after him he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and throws himself upon
+the bed. The latent feelings of years break out; his feeble mind acquires a
+brief energy from their strength; all the miserable strangeness of his life is
+revealed to him at a glance, and he cries out passionately, &ldquo;Wakefield,
+Wakefield! You are mad!&rdquo; Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his
+situation must have so moulded him to itself that, considered in regard to his
+fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to possess his
+right mind. He had contrived&mdash;or, rather, he had happened&mdash;to
+dissever himself from the world, to vanish, to give up his place and privileges
+with living men without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is
+nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city as of old, but the
+crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside
+his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the
+affection of the other. It was Wakefield&rsquo;s unprecedented fate to retain
+his original share of human sympathies and to be still involved in human
+interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them. It would be a
+most curious speculation to trace out the effect of such circumstances on his
+heart and intellect separately and in unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would
+seldom be conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of
+the truth, indeed, would come, but only for the moment, and still he would keep
+saying, &ldquo;I shall soon go back,&rdquo; nor reflect that he had been saying
+so for twenty years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear in the retrospect
+scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at first limited his
+absence. He would look on the affair as no more than an interlude in the main
+business of his life. When, after a little while more, he should deem it time
+to re-enter his parlor, his wife would clap her hands for joy on beholding the
+middle-aged Mr. Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close
+of our favorite follies, we should be young men&mdash;all of us&mdash;and till
+Doomsday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is taking his
+customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his own. It is a gusty
+night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter down upon the pavement and
+are gone before a man can put up his umbrella. Pausing near the house,
+Wakefield discerns through the parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow
+and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears
+a grotesque shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin and the
+broad waist form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the
+up-flickering and down-sinking blaze almost too merrily for the shade of an
+elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall, and is driven by the
+unmannerly gust full into Wakefield&rsquo;s face and bosom. He is quite
+penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand wet and shivering here, when
+his own hearth has a good fire to warm him and his own wife will run to fetch
+the gray coat and small-clothes which doubtless she has kept carefully in the
+closet of their bedchamber? No; Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the
+steps&mdash;heavily, for twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came
+down, but he knows it not.&mdash;Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home
+that is left you? Then step into your grave.&mdash;The door opens. As he passes
+in we have a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smile
+which was the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing
+off at his wife&rsquo;s expense. How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor
+woman! Well, a good night&rsquo;s rest to Wakefield!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This happy event&mdash;supposing it to be such&mdash;could only have occurred
+at an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the
+threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend
+its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion
+of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and
+systems to one another and to a whole, that by stepping aside for a moment a
+man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place for ever. Like
+Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the outcast of the universe.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>
+A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+(SCENE, <i>the corner of two principal streets</i>,<a href="#fn3" name="fnref3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>
+<i>the</i> TOWN-PUMP <i>talking through its nose</i>.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Noon by the north clock! Noon by the east! High noon, too, by these hot
+sunbeams, which full, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almost make the water
+bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly, we public characters have
+a tough time of it! And among all the town-officers chosen at March meeting,
+where is he that sustains for a single year the burden of such manifold duties
+as are imposed in perpetuity upon the town-pump? The title of
+&ldquo;town-treasurer&rdquo; is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best
+treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their
+chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper without expense to him
+that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire department and one of the
+physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace all water-drinkers
+will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the
+town-clerk by promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To
+speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit,
+moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady,
+upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy
+with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for
+all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching
+out my arms to rich and poor alike, and at night I hold a lantern over my head
+both to show where I am and keep people out of the gutters. At this sultry
+noontide I am cupbearer to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron
+goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dramseller on the mall at muster-day, I
+cry aloud to all and sundry in my plainest accents and at the very tiptop of my
+voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen!
+Walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the unadulterated ale of
+Father Adam&mdash;better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer or wine of
+any price; here it is by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to
+pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they
+come.&mdash;A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff and away again, so as to keep
+yourselves in a nice cool sweat.&mdash;You, my friend, will need another cupful
+to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as it is on your
+cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day, and
+like a wise man have passed by the taverns and stopped at the running brooks
+and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat without and fire within, you would have
+been burnt to a cinder or melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a
+jelly-fish. Drink and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to
+quench the fiery fever of last night&rsquo;s potations, which he drained from
+no cup of mine.&mdash;Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great
+strangers hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a
+closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on
+you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet and is converted
+quite to steam in the miniature Tophet which you mistake for a stomach. Fill
+again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar,
+tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children&rsquo;s
+food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you
+know the flavor of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, remember
+that I keep a constant supply at the old stand.&mdash;Who next?&mdash;Oh, my
+little friend, you are let loose from school and come hither to scrub your
+blooming face and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other
+schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the town-pump? Take it, pure as the
+current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be
+scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child! put down the cup
+and yield your place to this elderly gentleman who treads so tenderly over the
+paving-stones that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by
+without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for
+people who have no wine-cellars.&mdash;Well, well, sir, no harm done, I hope?
+Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you
+a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant
+titillation of the gout, it is all one to the town-pump. This thirsty dog with
+his red tongue lolling out does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his
+hind legs and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away
+again!&mdash;Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends, and while my
+spout has a moment&rsquo;s leisure I will delight the town with a few
+historical remniscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow of
+venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn earth in the very
+spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and
+clear and deemed as precious as liquid diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of
+it from time immemorial till the fatal deluge of the firewater burst upon the
+red men and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and
+his followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long
+beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark. Governor
+Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here out of the hollow of
+his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm and laid it on the brow of the
+first town-born child. For many years it was the watering-place, and, as it
+were, the washbowl, of the vicinity, whither all decent folks resorted to
+purify their visages and gaze at them afterward&mdash;at least, the pretty
+maidens did&mdash;in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath-days, whenever a babe
+was to be baptized, the sexton filled his basin here and placed it on the
+communion-table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the site of
+yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after another was consecrated to
+Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy
+bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image
+in a fountain. Finally the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all
+sides and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid
+stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months,
+when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the
+forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the course of time
+a town-pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring; and when the first
+decayed, another took its place, and then another, and still another, till here
+stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my iron goblet. Drink and be
+refreshed. The water is as pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the
+red sagamore beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is
+treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick
+buildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as this wasted and long-lost
+fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold
+water&mdash;too little valued since your fathers&rsquo; days&mdash;be
+recognized by all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence and spout
+forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two
+yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No
+part of my business is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look! how
+rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of the trough, till their
+capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece and they can
+afford time to breathe it in with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their
+quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your
+true toper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the remainder of
+my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty if I insist a
+little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifarious merits. It is
+altogether for your good. The better you think of me, the better men and women
+you will find yourselves. I shall say nothing of my all-important aid on
+washing-days, though on that account alone I might call myself the household
+god of a hundred families. Far be it from me, also, to hint, my respectable
+friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to
+keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight bells make
+you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the town-pump and found
+me always at my post firm amid the confusion and ready to drain my vital
+current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my
+claims to a medical diploma as the physician whose simple rule of practice is
+preferable to all the nauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so,
+since the days of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial
+influence on mankind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede to
+me&mdash;if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a
+class&mdash;of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such
+spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast
+portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from the fiery fountains of
+the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall be my great confederate.
+Milk and water&mdash;the TOWN-PUMP and the Cow! Such is the glorious
+copartnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the
+vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and
+finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed
+consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so
+wretched where her squalid form may shelter herself. Then Disease, for lack of
+other victims, shall gnaw its own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do not die,
+shall lose half her strength. Until now the frenzy of hereditary fever has
+raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son and rekindled in every
+generation by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fire shall be
+extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war&mdash;the
+drunkenness of nations&mdash;perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war
+of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy&mdash;a calm
+bliss of temperate affections&mdash;shall pass hand in hand through life and
+lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close. To them the past will be no
+turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the
+delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces shall express what their spirits
+were and are to be by a lingering smile of memory and hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised orator. I never
+conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake;
+hereafter they shall have the business to themselves.&mdash;Do, some kind
+Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle.&mdash;Thank you,
+sir!&mdash;My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my
+instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor-casks into one
+great pile and make a bonfire in honor of the town-pump. And when I shall have
+decayed like my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble
+fountain richly sculptured take my place upon this spot. Such monuments should
+be erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of the distinguished
+champions of my cause. Now, listen, for something very important is to come
+next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are two or three honest friends of mine&mdash;and true friends I know
+they are&mdash;who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do put me
+in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow upon the pavement
+and the loss of the treasure which I guard.&mdash;I pray you, gentlemen, let
+this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for
+temperance and take up the honorable cause of the town-pump in the style of a
+toper fighting for his brandy-bottle? Or can the excellent qualities of cold
+water be no otherwise exemplified than by plunging slapdash into hot water and
+woefully scalding yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral
+warfare which you are to wage&mdash;and, indeed, in the whole conduct of your
+lives&mdash;you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never
+permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and manifold
+disquietudes, of the world around me to reach that deep, calm well of purity
+which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to cool
+earth&rsquo;s fever or cleanse its stains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One o&rsquo;clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as well
+hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance with a large
+stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband while drawing her water,
+as Rachel did of old!&mdash;Hold out your vessel, my dear! There it is, full to
+the brim; so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher as you
+go, and forget not in a glass of my own liquor to drink &ldquo;SUCCESS TO THE
+TOWN-PUMP.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE<a href="#fn4" name="fnref4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></h2>
+
+<h4>A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS</h4>
+
+<p>
+At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the Crystal
+Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after a toilsome and
+fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come thither, not as friends
+nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one youthful pair, impelled by
+his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of
+brotherhood, however, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual
+aid in building a rude hut of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered
+pines that had drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the
+lower bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their
+number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies by the
+absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight
+of human faces in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A
+vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while
+scant a mile above their heads was that bleak verge where the hills throw off
+their shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either robe themselves in clouds or
+tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful
+for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the mountain-stream
+talked with the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and welcomed one
+another to the hut where each man was the host and all were the guests of the
+whole company. They spread their individual supplies of food on the flat
+surface of a rock and partook of a general repast; at the close of which a
+sentiment of good-fellowship was perceptible among the party, though repressed
+by the idea that the renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make them
+strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one young woman, they warmed
+themselves together at the fire, which extended its bright wall along the whole
+front of their wigwam. As they observed the various and contrasted figures that
+made up the assemblage, each man looking like a caricature of himself in the
+unsteady light that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion
+that an odder society had never met in city or wilderness, on mountain or
+plain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eldest of the group&mdash;a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man some sixty years
+of age&mdash;was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of dress he
+did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the bear had long been his
+most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated mortals, such as the
+Indians told of, whom in their early youth the Great Carbuncle smote with a
+peculiar madness and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who
+visited that region knew him as &ldquo;the Seeker,&rdquo; and by no other name.
+As none could remember when he first took up the search, there went a fable in
+the valley of the Saco that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle
+he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still
+with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near this
+miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing a high-crowned hat
+shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea&mdash;a Doctor
+Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually
+stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling unwholesome fumes during his
+researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of him&mdash;whether truly or
+not&mdash;that at the commencement of his studies he had drained his body of
+all its richest blood and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an
+unsuccessful experiment, and had never been a well man since. Another of the
+adventurers was Master Ichabod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of
+Boston, and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton&rsquo;s church. His enemies had a
+ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour
+after prayer-time every morning and evening in wallowing naked among an immense
+quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of
+Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his companions
+knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his
+thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles which were supposed to
+deform and discolor the whole face of nature to this gentleman&rsquo;s
+perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater
+pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined
+away, which was no more than natural if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary
+diet was fog, morning mist and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach,
+sauced with moonshine whenever he could get it. Certain it is that the poetry
+which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of the party
+was a young man of haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing
+his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the rich
+embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely on the jewelled pommel of his
+sword. This was the lord De Vere, who when at home was said to spend much of
+his time in the burial-vault of his dead progenitors rummaging their mouldy
+coffins in search of all the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among
+bones and dust; so that, besides his own share, he had the collected
+haughtiness of his whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a handsome youth
+in rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little person in whom a delicate
+shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young
+wife&rsquo;s affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband&rsquo;s
+Matthew&mdash;two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair who
+seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had
+been set agog by the Great Carbuncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire, sat this
+varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single object that of
+whatever else they began to speak their closing words were sure to be
+illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related the circumstances that
+brought them thither. One had listened to a traveller&rsquo;s tale of this
+marvellous stone in his own distant country, and had immediately been seized
+with such a thirst for beholding it as could only be quenched in its intensest
+lustre. Another, so long ago as when the famous Captain Smith visited these
+coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the
+intervening years till now that he took up the search. A third, being encamped
+on a hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at
+midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so that the
+shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the innumerable
+attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the singular fatality
+which had hitherto withheld success from all adventurers, though it might seem
+so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon and almost
+matched the sun. It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness
+of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
+scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to
+allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions that a
+spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those who sought it either by
+removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills or by calling up a mist from
+the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of
+credit, all professing to believe that the search had been baffled by want of
+sagacity or perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might
+naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the intricacies of
+forest, valley and mountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles looked
+round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object of the sneer
+which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So, fellow-pilgrims,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;here we are, seven wise men
+and one fair damsel, who doubtless is as wise as any graybeard of the company.
+Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks, now, it
+were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do with the Great
+Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it.&mdash;What says our
+friend in the bearskin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy the prize which you
+have been seeking the Lord knows how long among the Crystal Hills?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How enjoy it!&rdquo; exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. &ldquo;I hope
+for no enjoyment from it--that folly has past, long ago! I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has become a
+fate upon me, in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength--the energy of my
+soul--the warmth of my blood, and the pith and marrow of my bones! Were I to
+turn my back upon it, I should fall down dead, on the hither side of the Notch,
+which is the gate-way of this mountain region. Yet, not to have my wasted life
+time back again, would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle! Having found
+it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it
+in my arms, lie down and die, and keep it buried with me for ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, wretch, regardless of the interests of science!&rdquo; cried Doctor
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. &ldquo;Thou art not worthy to behold,
+even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that ever was
+concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose for which a
+wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle. Immediately on
+obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good people, that the prize is
+reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I shall return to Europe, and
+employ my remaining years in reducing it to its first elements. A portion of
+the stone will I grind to impalpable powder; other parts shall be dissolved in
+acids, or whatever solvents will act upon so admirable a composition; and the
+remainder I design to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe.
+By these various methods, I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
+the result of my labours upon the world, in a folio volume.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Excellent!&rdquo; quoth the man with the spectacles. &ldquo;Nor need you
+hesitate, learned Sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem;
+since the perusal of your folio may teach every mother&rsquo;s son of us to
+concoct a Great Carbuncle of his own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, verily,&rdquo; said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, &ldquo;for mine own
+part, I object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to
+reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, Sirs, I have an
+interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic,
+leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my credit to great
+hazard, and furthermore, have put myself to peril of death or captivity by the
+accursed heathen savages--and all this without daring to ask the prayers of the
+congregation, because the quest for the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better
+than a traffic with the evil one. Now think ye that I would have done this
+grievous wrong to my soul, body, reputation and estate, without a reasonable
+chance of profit?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,&rdquo; said the man with the spectacles.
+&ldquo;I never laid such a great folly to thy charge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Truly, I hope not,&rdquo; said the merchant. &ldquo;Now, as touching
+this Great Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it,
+but, be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely
+outvalue the Great Mogul&rsquo;s best diamond, which he holds at an
+incalculable sum; wherefore I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on shipboard
+and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into heathendom if
+Providence should send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem to the
+best bidder among the potentates of the earth, that he may place it among his
+crown-jewels. If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expound it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That have I, thou sordid man!&rdquo; exclaimed the poet. &ldquo;Dost
+thou desire nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this
+ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself,
+hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic-chamber in one
+of the darksome alleys of London. There night and day will I gaze upon it. My
+soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual
+powers and gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I indite. Thus long ages
+after I am gone the splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my
+name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well said, Master Poet!&rdquo; cried he of the spectacles. &ldquo;Hide
+it under thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes and make
+thee look like a jack-o&rsquo;-lantern!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To think,&rdquo; ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather to himself than his
+companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
+intercourse&mdash;&ldquo;to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
+of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grubb street! Have not I
+resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the
+great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a
+noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners and
+escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of
+heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain but that
+I might win it and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never
+on the diadem of the White Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half
+so honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a noble thought,&rdquo; said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer.
+&ldquo;Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral
+lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship&rsquo;s progenitors more
+truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle-hall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, forsooth,&rdquo; observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand
+in hand with his bride, &ldquo;the gentleman has bethought himself of a
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it for a
+like purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How, fellow?&rdquo; exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise. &ldquo;What
+castle-hall hast thou to hang it in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No castle,&rdquo; replied Matthew, &ldquo;but as neat a cottage as any
+within sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I,
+being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle
+because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings and it will be such
+a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us! It will shine through
+the house, so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and will set all the
+windows a-glowing as if there were a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney.
+And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night, to be able to see one
+another&rsquo;s faces!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the young
+couple&rsquo;s project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone, with
+which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn his palace.
+Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all the company in turn,
+now twisted his visage into such an expression of ill-natured mirth that
+Matthew asked him rather peevishly what he himself meant to do with the Great
+Carbuncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Great Carbuncle!&rdquo; answered the cynic, with ineffable scorn.
+&ldquo;Why, you blockhead, there is no such thing in <i>rerum natur&acirc;</i>.
+I have come three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak
+of these mountains and poke my head into every chasm for the sole purpose of
+demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than thyself
+that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the adventurers to
+the Crystal Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so impious too, as that of
+the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He was one of those wretched and
+evil men whose yearnings are downward to the darkness instead of heavenward,
+and who, could they but extinguish the lights which God hath kindled for us,
+would count the midnight gloom their chiefest glory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the cynic spoke several of the party were startled by a gleam of red
+splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and the
+rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with an illumination unlike that of
+their fire, on the trunks and black boughs of the forest-trees. They listened
+for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, and were glad that the tempest came
+not near them. The stars&mdash;those dial-points of heaven&mdash;now warned the
+adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing logs and open them in dreams to
+the glow of the Great Carbuncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest corner of the
+wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by a curtain of
+curiously-woven twigs such as might have hung in deep festoons around the
+bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this piece of tapestry
+while the other guests were talking. She and her husband fell asleep with hands
+tenderly clasped, and awoke from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more
+blessed light of one another&rsquo;s eyes. They awoke at the same instant and
+with one happy smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with
+their consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
+recollect where they were than the bride peeped through the interstices of the
+leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of the hut was deserted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Up, dear Matthew!&rdquo; cried she, in haste. &ldquo;The strange folk
+are all gone. Up this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize which
+had lured them thither that they had slept peacefully all night and till the
+summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine, while the other adventurers
+had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness or dreamed of climbing
+precipices, and set off to realize their dreams with the curliest peep of dawn.
+But Matthew and Hannah after their calm rest were as light as two young deer,
+and merely stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of
+the Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food ere they turned their faces
+to the mountain-side. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection as they
+toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength from the mutual aid which
+they afforded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe and the
+entanglement of Hannah&rsquo;s hair in a bough, they reached the upper verge of
+the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course. The innumerable
+trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts,
+which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind and cloud and naked rocks
+and desolate sunshine that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the
+obscure wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again in
+its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall we go on?&rdquo; said Matthew, throwing his arm round
+Hannah&rsquo;s waist both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing
+her close to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman&rsquo;s love of jewels,
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the world, in
+spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us climb a little higher,&rdquo; whispered she, yet tremulously, as
+she turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, then,&rdquo; said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing
+her along with him; for she became timid again the moment that he grew bold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now treading
+upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines which by the
+growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three feet in
+altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped
+confusedly together like a cairn reared by giants in memory of a giant chief.
+In this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew; there was no
+life but what was concentred in their two hearts; they had climbed so high that
+Nature herself seemed no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them
+within the verge of the forest-trees, and sent a farewell glance after her
+children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But
+soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to
+gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape and sailing
+heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain-peak had summoned a council
+of its kindred clouds. Finally the vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a
+mass, presenting the appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might
+have trodden, but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed
+earth which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth
+again&mdash;more intensely, alas! than beneath a clouded sky they had ever
+desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation
+when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely peak,
+and thus annihilated&mdash;at least, for them&mdash;the whole region of visible
+space. But they drew closer together with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading
+lest the universal cloud should snatch them from each other&rsquo;s sight.
+Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as high
+between earth and heaven as they could find foothold if Hannah&rsquo;s strength
+had not begun to fail, and with that her courage also. Her breath grew short.
+She refused to burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered against
+his side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last she sank
+down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are lost, dear Matthew,&rdquo; said she, mournfully; &ldquo;we shall
+never find our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in
+our cottage!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear heart, we will yet be happy there,&rdquo; answered Matthew.
+&ldquo;Look! In this direction the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its
+aid I can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love,
+and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sun cannot be yonder,&rdquo; said Hannah, with despondence.
+&ldquo;By this time it must be noon; if there could ever be any sunshine here,
+it would come from above our heads.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But look!&rdquo; repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. &ldquo;It
+is brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking through
+the mist and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which continually grew more
+vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused with the gloom. Now, also, the
+cloud began to roll away from the mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one
+object after another started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with
+precisely the effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old
+chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on they saw the
+gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very border
+of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly beautiful, spreading from
+brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of
+glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed,
+but closed their eyes, with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid
+splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted
+lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery and found the long-sought
+shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms around each other and
+trembled at their own success, for as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed
+thick upon their memory they felt themselves marked out by fate, and the
+consciousness was fearful. Often from childhood upward they had seen it shining
+like a distant star, and now that star was throwing its intensest lustre on
+their hearts. They seemed changed to one another&rsquo;s eyes in the red
+brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the
+lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its
+power. But with their next glance they beheld an object that drew their
+attention even from the mighty stone. At the base of the cliff, directly
+beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure of a man with his arms
+extended in the act of climbing and his face turned upward as if to drink the
+full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if changed to marble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the Seeker,&rdquo; whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
+husband&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Matthew, he is dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The joy of success has killed him,&rdquo; replied Matthew, trembling
+violently. &ldquo;Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
+death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;The Great Carbuncle&rsquo;!&rdquo; cried a peevish voice behind
+them. &ldquo;The great humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They turned their heads, and there was the cynic with his prodigious spectacles
+set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at the rocks, now at
+the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great Carbuncle itself, yet
+seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were
+condensed about his person. Though its radiance actually threw the shadow of
+the unbeliever at his own feet as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel,
+he would not be convinced that there was the least glimmer there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is your great humbug?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;I challenge you
+to make me see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There!&rdquo; said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
+turning the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. &ldquo;Take off those
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic&rsquo;s sight in at
+least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze at an
+eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from his nose and
+fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the Great Carbuncle. But
+scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep, shuddering groan, he dropped
+his head and pressed both hands across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there
+was in very truth no light of the Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on
+earth, nor light of heaven itself, for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to
+view all objects through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of
+brightness, a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
+vision, had blinded him for ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Matthew,&rdquo; said Hannah, clinging to him, &ldquo;let us go
+hence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling down, supported her in his arms
+while he threw some of the thrillingly-cold water of the enchanted lake upon
+her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not renovate her courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, dearest,&rdquo; cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
+breast; &ldquo;we will go hence and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
+sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will kindle
+the cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and be happy in its light. But
+never again will we desire more light than all the world may share with
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said his bride, &ldquo;for how could we live by day or sleep
+by night in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the hollow of their hands they drank each a draught from the lake, which
+presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then, lending their
+guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered not a word, and even stifled his
+groans in his own most wretched heart, they began to descend the mountain. Yet
+as they left the shore, till then untrodden, of the spirit&rsquo;s lake, they
+threw a farewell glance toward the cliff and beheld the vapors gathering in
+dense volumes, through which the gem burned duskily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes on to
+tell that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the quest as a
+desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself again to his
+warehouse, near the town-dock, in Boston. But as he passed through the Notch of
+the mountains a war-party of Indians captured our unlucky merchant and carried
+him to Montreal, there holding him in bondage till by the payment of a heavy
+ransom he had woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his
+long absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the rest
+of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence-worth of
+copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a
+prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder, dissolved in acids,
+melted in the crucible and burnt with the blowpipe, and published the result of
+his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of the day. And for all these
+purposes the gem itself could not have answered better than the granite. The
+poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice which
+he found in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded in
+all points with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say that, if his
+poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of the ice.
+The lord De Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where he contented himself
+with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled in due course of time another coffin
+in the ancestral vault. As the funeral torches gleamed within that dark
+receptacle, there was no need of the Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of
+earthly pomp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world a
+miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light for the
+wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long he would lift his
+splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned his face eastward at
+sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a pilgrimage to Rome to witness
+the magnificent illumination of Saint Peter&rsquo;s church, and finally
+perished in the Great Fire of London, into the midst of which he had thrust
+himself with the desperate idea of catching one feeble ray from the blaze that
+was kindling earth and heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of telling the
+legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward the close of their
+lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence that had been accorded to
+it by those who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed
+that from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to
+reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned.
+When our pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone with
+particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that as
+the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff
+and fell into the enchanted lake, and that at noontide the Seeker&rsquo;s form
+may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and say that
+they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer lightning, far down the
+valley of the Saco. And be it owned that many a mile from the Crystal Hills I
+saw a wondrous light around their summits, and was lured by the faith of poesy
+to be the latest pilgrim of the Great Carbuncle.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>
+THE PROPHETIC PICTURES<a href="#fn5" name="fnref5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But this painter!&rdquo; cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. &ldquo;He
+not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all
+other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures
+in anatomy to Dr. Boylston. In a word, he will meet the best-instructed man
+among us on his own ground. Moreover, he is a polished gentleman, a citizen of
+the world&mdash;yes, a true cosmopolite; for he will speak like a native of
+each clime and country on the globe, except our own forests, whither he is now
+going. Nor is all this what I most admire in him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said Elinor, who had listened with a women&rsquo;s
+interest to the description of such a man. &ldquo;Yet this is admirable
+enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely it is,&rdquo; replied her lover, &ldquo;but far less so than his
+natural gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that
+all men&mdash;and all women too, Elinor&mdash;shall find a mirror of themselves
+in this wonderful painter. But the greatest wonder is yet to be told.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these,&rdquo; said
+Elinor, laughing, &ldquo;Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are
+you telling me of a painter, or a wizard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In truth,&rdquo; answered he, &ldquo;that question might be asked much
+more seriously than you suppose. They say that he paints not merely a
+man&rsquo;s features, but his mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments
+and passions and throws them upon the canvas like sunshine, or perhaps, in the
+portraits of dark-souled men, like a gleam of infernal fire. It is an awful
+gift,&rdquo; added Walter, lowering his voice from its tone of enthusiasm.
+&ldquo;I shall be almost afraid to sit to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Walter, are you in earnest?&rdquo; exclaimed Elinor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Heaven&rsquo;s sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look
+which you now wear,&rdquo; said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed.
+&ldquo;There! it is passing away now; but when you spoke, you seemed frightened
+to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, nothing!&rdquo; answered Elinor, hastily. &ldquo;You paint my
+face with your own fantasies. Well, come for me tomorrow, and we will visit
+this wonderful artist.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a remarkable
+expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face of his mistress. It
+was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance with what should have been the
+feelings of a maiden on the eve of wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of
+her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A look!&rdquo; said Elinor to herself. &ldquo;No wonder that it startled
+him if it expressed what I sometimes feel. I know by my own experience how
+frightful a look may be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of it at the
+time; I have seen nothing of it since; I did but dream it;&rdquo; and she
+busied herself about the embroidery of a ruff in which she meant that her
+portrait should be taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native artists
+who at a later period than this borrowed their colors from the Indians and
+manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts. Perhaps, if he could
+have revoked his life and prearranged his destiny, he might have chosen to
+belong to that school without a master in the hope of being at least original,
+since there were no works of art to imitate nor rules to follow. But he had
+been born and educated in Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur
+or beauty of conception and every touch of the master-hand in all the most
+famous pictures in cabinets and galleries and on the walls of churches till
+there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn. Art could add nothing to
+its lessons, but Nature might. He had, therefore, visited a world whither none
+of his professional brethren had preceded him, to feast his eyes on visible
+images that were noble and picturesque, yet had never been transferred to
+canvas. America was too poor to afford other temptations to an artist of
+eminence, though many of the colonial gentry on the painter&rsquo;s arrival had
+expressed a wish to transmit their lineaments to posterity by moans of his
+skill. Whenever such proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the
+applicant and seemed to look him through and through. If he beheld only a sleek
+and comfortable visage, though there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the
+picture and golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly rejected the task and the
+reward; but if the face were the index of anything uncommon in thought,
+sentiment or experience, or if he met a beggar in the street with a white beard
+and a furrowed brow, or if sometimes a child happened to look up and smile, he
+would exhaust all the art on them that he denied to wealth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an object of
+general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the technical merit of his
+productions, yet there were points in regard to which the opinion of the crowd
+was as valuable as the refined judgment of the amateur. He watched the effect
+that each picture produced on such untutored beholders, and derived profit from
+their remarks, while they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature
+herself as him who seemed to rival her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was
+tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it an offence
+against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of the Creator, to
+bring into existence such lively images of his creatures. Others, frightened at
+the art which could raise phantoms at will and keep the form of the dead among
+the living, were inclined to consider the painter as a magician, or perhaps the
+famous Black Man of old witch-times plotting mischief in a new guise. These
+foolish fancies were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior
+circles his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising like
+smoke-wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused by the varied
+knowledge and talents which he made subservient to his profession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to obtain
+their portraits as the first of what, they doubtless hoped, would be a long
+series of family pictures. The day after the conversation above recorded they
+visited the painter&rsquo;s rooms. A servant ushered them into an apartment
+where, though the artist himself was not visible, there were personages whom
+they could hardly forbear greeting with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the
+whole assembly were but pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the idea
+of life and intellect from such striking counterfeits. Several of the portraits
+were known to them either as distinguished characters of the day or their
+private acquaintances. There was Governor Burnett, looking as if he had just
+received an undutiful communication from the House of Representatives and were
+inditing a most sharp response. Mr. Cooke hung beside the ruler whom he
+opposed, sturdy and somewhat puritanical, as befitted a popular leader. The
+ancient lady of Sir William Phipps eyed them from the wall in ruff and
+farthingale, an imperious old dame not unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow,
+then a very young man, wore the expression of warlike enterprise which long
+afterward made him a distinguished general. Their personal friends were
+recognized at a glance. In most of the pictures the whole mind and character
+were brought out on the countenance and concentrated into a single look; so
+that, to speak paradoxically, the originals hardly resembled themselves so
+strikingly as the portraits did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had almost
+vanished into the darkening canvas. There was also a pale but unfaded Madonna
+who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now regarded the lovers with such
+a mild and holy look that they longed to worship too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How singular a thought,&rdquo; observed Walter Ludlow, &ldquo;that this
+beautiful face has been beautiful for above two hundred years! Oh, if all
+beauty would endure so well! Do you not envy her, Elinor?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If earth were heaven, I might,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;But, where all
+things fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he
+be,&rdquo; continued Walter; &ldquo;he troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly
+at us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks,&rdquo; said Elinor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that had been
+recently commenced. After a little inspection they began to recognize the
+features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman, growing into shape and
+life, as it were, out of a cloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kind old man!&rdquo; exclaimed Elinor. &ldquo;He gazes at me as if he
+were about to utter a word of paternal advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And at me,&rdquo; said Walter, &ldquo;as if he were about to shake his
+head and rebuke me for some suspected iniquity. But so does the original. I
+shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before him to be
+married.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the painter, who
+had been some moments in the room and had listened to a few of their remarks.
+He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well worthy of his own pencil.
+Indeed, by the picturesque though careless arrangement of his rich dress, and
+perhaps because his soul dwelt always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat
+like a portrait himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the
+artist and his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the
+canvas to salute them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the object of
+their visit. While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart his figure and
+Elinor&rsquo;s with so happy an effect that they also seemed living pictures of
+youth and beauty gladdened by bright fortune. The artist was evidently struck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston
+must be brief,&rdquo; said he, thoughtfully; then, after an observant glance,
+he added, &ldquo;But your wishes shall be gratified though I disappoint the
+chief-justice and Madame Oliver. I must not lose this opportunity for the sake
+of painting a few ells of broadcloth and brocade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into one
+picture and represent them engaged in some appropriate action. This plan would
+have delighted the lovers, but was necessarily rejected because so large a
+space of canvas would have been unfit for the room which it was intended to
+decorate. Two half-length portraits were therefore fixed upon. After they had
+taken leave, Walter Ludlow asked Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an
+influence over their fates the painter was about to acquire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The old women of Boston affirm,&rdquo; continued he, &ldquo;that after
+he has once got possession of a person&rsquo;s face and figure he may paint him
+in any act or situation whatever, and the picture will be prophetic. Do you
+believe it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite,&rdquo; said Elinor, smiling. &ldquo;Yet if he has such magic,
+there is something so gentle in his manner that I am sure he will use it
+well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the painter&rsquo;s choice to proceed with both the portraits at the
+same time, assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he sometimes
+used, that the faces threw light upon each other. Accordingly, he gave now a
+touch to Walter and now to Elinor, and the features of one and the other began
+to start forth so vividly that it appeared as if his triumphant art would
+actually disengage them from the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade
+they beheld their phantom selves, but, though the likeness promised to be
+perfect, they were not quite satisfied with the expression: it seemed more
+vague than in most of the painter&rsquo;s works. He, however, was satisfied
+with the prospect of success, and, being much interested in the lovers,
+employed his leisure moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon sketch of
+their two figures. During their sittings he engaged them in conversation and
+kindled up their faces with characteristic traits, which, though continually
+varying, it was his purpose to combine and fix. At length he announced that at
+their next visit both the portraits would be ready for delivery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If my pencil will but be true to my conception in the few last touches
+which I meditate,&rdquo; observed he, &ldquo;these two pictures will be my very
+best performances. Seldom indeed has an artist such subjects.&rdquo; While
+speaking he still bent his penetrative eye upon them, nor withdrew it till they
+had reached the bottom of the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing in the whole circle of human vanities takes stronger hold of the
+imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why should it be
+so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the andirons, the mirror-like
+water, and all other reflecting surfaces, continually present us with
+portraits&mdash;or, rather, ghosts&mdash;of ourselves which we glance at and
+straightway forget them. But we forget them only because they vanish. It is the
+idea of duration&mdash;of earthly immortality&mdash;that gives such a
+mysterious interest to our own portraits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Walter and Elinor were not insensible to this feeling, and hastened to the
+painter&rsquo;s room punctually at the appointed hour to meet those pictured
+shapes which were to be their representatives with posterity. The sunshine
+flashed after them into the apartment, but left it somewhat gloomy as they
+closed the door. Their eyes were immediately attracted to their portraits,
+which rested against the farthest wall of the room. At the first glance through
+the dim light and the distance, seeing themselves in precisely their natural
+attitudes and with all the air that they recognized so well, they uttered a
+simultaneous exclamation of delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There we stand,&rdquo; cried Walter, enthusiastically, &ldquo;fixed in
+sunshine for ever. No dark passions can gather on our faces.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Elinor, more calmly; &ldquo;no dreary change can sadden
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was said while they were approaching and had yet gained only an imperfect
+view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them, busied himself at a
+table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his visitors to form their own
+judgment as to his perfected labors. At intervals he sent a glance from beneath
+his deep eyebrows, watching their countenances in profile with his pencil
+suspended over the sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of
+the other&rsquo;s picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but
+without uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward, then back, viewing
+Elinor&rsquo;s portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there not a change?&rdquo; said he, in a doubtful and meditative
+tone. &ldquo;Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid the longer I look. It
+is certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress, the features,
+all are the same, and yet something is altered.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?&rdquo; inquired
+the painter, now drawing near with irrepressible interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The features are perfect Elinor,&rdquo; answered Walter, &ldquo;and at
+the first glance the expression seemed also hers; but I could fancy that the
+portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it. The eyes are
+fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression. Nay, it is grief and
+terror. Is this like Elinor?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Compare the living face with the pictured one,&rdquo; said the painter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and absorbed,
+fascinated, as it were, in contemplation of Walter&rsquo;s portrait,
+Elinor&rsquo;s face had assumed precisely the expression of which he had just
+been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before a mirror, she could
+not have caught the look so successfully. Had the picture itself been a mirror,
+it could not have thrown back her present aspect with stronger and more
+melancholy truth. She appeared quite unconscious of the dialogue between the
+artist and her lover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Elinor,&rdquo; exclaimed Walter, in amazement, &ldquo;what change has
+come over you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her hand,
+and thus attracted her notice; then with a sudden tremor she looked from the
+picture to the face of the original.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you see no change in your portrait?&rdquo; asked she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In mine? None,&rdquo; replied Walter, examining it. &ldquo;But let me
+see. Yes; there is a slight change&mdash;an improvement, I think, in the
+picture, though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than
+yesterday, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes and about to
+be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look, it becomes very
+decided.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he was intent on these observations Elinor turned to the painter. She
+regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid her with sympathy and
+commiseration, though wherefore she could but vaguely guess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That look!&rdquo; whispered she, and shuddered. &ldquo;How came it
+there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; said the painter, sadly, taking her hand and leading her
+apart, &ldquo;in both these pictures I have painted what I saw. The
+artist&mdash;the true artist&mdash;must look beneath the exterior. It is his
+gift&mdash;his proudest, but often a melancholy one&mdash;to see the inmost
+soul, and by a power indefinable even to himself to make it glow or darken upon
+the canvas in glances that express the thought and sentiment of years. Would
+that I might convince myself of error in the present instance!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands almost
+as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched cottages, old
+thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume, and all such picturesque
+vagaries of an artist&rsquo;s idle moments. Turning them over with seeming
+carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures was disclosed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I have failed,&rdquo; continued he&mdash;&ldquo;if your heart does
+not see itself reflected in your own portrait, if you have no secret cause to
+trust my delineation of the other&mdash;it is not yet too late to alter them. I
+might change the action of these figures too. But would it influence the
+event?&rdquo; He directed her notice to the sketch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thrill ran through Elinor&rsquo;s frame; a shriek was upon her lips, but she
+stifled it with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who hide thoughts
+of fear and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from the table, she perceived
+that Walter had advanced near enough to have seen the sketch, though she could
+not determine whether it had caught his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will not have the pictures altered,&rdquo; said she, hastily.
+&ldquo;If mine is sad, I shall but look the gayer for the contrast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be it so,&rdquo; answered the painter, bowing. &ldquo;May your griefs be
+such fanciful ones that only your pictures may mourn for them! For your joys,
+may they be true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely face till it
+quite belie my art!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the marriage of Walter and Elinor the pictures formed the two most
+splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side, separated by a
+narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly, yet always returning the
+gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen who professed a knowledge of such
+subjects reckoned these among the most admirable specimens of modern
+portraiture, while common observers compared them with the originals, feature
+by feature, and were rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third
+class&mdash;neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people of
+natural sensibility&mdash;that the pictures wrought their strongest effect.
+Such persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming interested, would
+return day after day and study these painted faces like the pages of a mystic
+volume. Walter Ludlow&rsquo;s portrait attracted their earliest notice. In the
+absence of himself and his bride they sometimes disputed as to the expression
+which the painter had intended to throw upon the features, all agreeing that
+there was a look of earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was
+less diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor&rsquo;s picture. They differed,
+indeed, in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the gloom that
+dwelt upon her face, but agreed that it was gloom and alien from the natural
+temperament of their youthful friend. A certain fanciful person announced as
+the result of much scrutiny that both these pictures were parts of one design,
+and that the melancholy strength of feeling in Elinor&rsquo;s countenance bore
+reference to the more vivid emotion&mdash;or, as he termed it, the wild
+passion&mdash;in that of Walter. Though unskilled in the art, he even began a
+sketch in which the action of the two figures was to correspond with their
+mutual expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor&rsquo;s face was assuming
+a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render her too true a
+counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the other hand, instead of
+acquiring the vivid look which the painter had given him on the canvas, became
+reserved and downcast, with no outward flashes of emotion, however it might be
+smouldering within. In course of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple
+silk wrought with flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the
+pictures, under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light
+dim them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the silk
+must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to the north
+to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look over the vast round
+of cloud and forest from the summit of New England&rsquo;s loftiest mountain.
+But he did not profane that scene by the mockery of his art. He had also lain
+in a canoe on the bosom of Lake George, making his soul the mirror of its
+loveliness and grandeur till not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than
+his recollection. He had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there,
+again, had flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could
+as soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous
+cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery except as
+a framework for the delineations of the human form and face, instinct with
+thought, passion or suffering. With store of such his adventurous ramble had
+enriched him. The stern dignity of Indian chiefs, the dusky loveliness of
+Indian girls, the domestic life of wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle
+beneath gloomy pine trees, the frontier fortress with its garrison, the anomaly
+of the old French partisan bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy
+deserts,&mdash;such were the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The
+glow of perilous moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles of fierce power,
+love, hate, grief, frenzy&mdash;in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old
+earth&mdash;had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was filled
+with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which genius would
+transmute into its own substance and imbue with immortality. He felt that the
+deep wisdom in his art which he had sought so far was found.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its
+overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the companions of
+his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing purpose wreathes itself,
+he was insulated from the mass of humankind. He had no aim, no pleasure, no
+sympathies, but what were ultimately connected with his art. Though gentle in
+manner and upright in intent and action, he did not possess kindly feelings;
+his heart was cold: no living creature could be brought near enough to keep him
+warm. For these two beings, however, he had felt in its greatest intensity the
+sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil. He had
+pried into their souls with his keenest insight and pictured the result upon
+their features with his utmost skill, so as barely to fall short of that
+standard which no genius ever reached, his own severe conception. He had caught
+from the duskiness of the future&mdash;at least, so he fancied&mdash;a fearful
+secret, and had obscurely revealed it on the portraits. So much of
+himself&mdash;of his imagination and all other powers&mdash;had been lavished
+on the study of Walter and Elinor that he almost regarded them as creations of
+his own, like the thousands with which he had peopled the realms of Picture.
+Therefore did they flit through the twilight of the woods, hover on the mist of
+waterfalls, look forth from the mirror of the lake, nor melt away in the
+noontide sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries of life nor
+pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits, each with an
+unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of the soul.
+He could not recross the Atlantic till he had again beheld the originals of
+those airy pictures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O glorious Art!&rdquo; Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod
+the street. &ldquo;Thou art the image of the Creator&rsquo;s own. The
+innumerable forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The
+dead live again; thou recallest them to their old scenes and givest their gray
+shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou
+snatchest back the fleeting moments of history. With thee there is no past, for
+at thy touch all that is great becomes for ever present, and illustrious men
+live through long ages in the visible performance of the very deeds which made
+them what they are. O potent Art! as thou bringest the faintly-revealed past to
+stand in that narrow strip of sunlight which we call &lsquo;now,&rsquo; canst
+thou summon the shrouded future to meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I
+not thy prophet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus with a proud yet melancholy fervor did he almost cry aloud as he passed
+through the toilsome street among people that knew not of his reveries nor
+could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man to cherish a
+solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him by whose example he may
+regulate himself, his thoughts, desires and hopes will become extravagant and
+he the semblance&mdash;perhaps the reality&mdash;of a madman. Reading other
+bosoms with an acuteness almost preternatural, the painter failed to see the
+disorder of his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this should be the house,&rdquo; said he, looking up and down the
+front before he knocked. &ldquo;Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks
+it will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it is
+framed within them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest tints&mdash;the
+faces of the portraits, the figures and action of the sketch!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The portraits&mdash;are they within?&rdquo; inquired he of the domestic;
+then, recollecting himself, &ldquo;Your master and mistress&mdash;are they at
+home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are, sir,&rdquo; said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
+picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself, &ldquo;and
+the portraits too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door with an
+interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was empty, he passed to
+the entrance of the second, within which his eyes were greeted by those living
+personages, as well as their pictured representatives, who had long been the
+objects of so singular an interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing before the
+portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich and voluminous folds
+of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel with one hand, while the other
+grasped that of his bride. The pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth
+again in undiminished splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across the
+room rather than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had
+been almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had
+successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of time into
+a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made it the very
+expression of the portrait. Walter&rsquo;s face was moody and dull or animated
+only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness for their momentary
+illumination. He looked from Elinor to her portrait, and thence to his own, in
+the contemplation of which he finally stood absorbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him on its
+progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his mind. Was not
+his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied itself, and he a chief
+agent of the coming evil which he had foreshadowed?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as with his
+own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil influence that the
+painter had cast upon the features. Gradually his eyes kindled, while as Elinor
+watched the increasing wildness of his face her own assumed a look of terror;
+and when, at last, he turned upon her, the resemblance of both to their
+portraits was complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our fate is upon us!&rdquo; howled Walter. &ldquo;Die!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground, and aimed
+it at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude of each the painter
+beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture, with all its tremendous
+coloring, was finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold, madman!&rdquo; cried he, sternly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the wretched
+beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny as to alter a
+scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician controlling the phantoms which
+he had evoked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce
+excitement into sullen gloom. &ldquo;Does Fate impede its own decree?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wretched lady,&rdquo; said the painter, &ldquo;did I not warn
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You did,&rdquo; replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the
+quiet grief which it had disturbed. &ldquo;But I loved him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one or all our deeds
+be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate and hurry onward,
+others be swept along by their passionate desires, and none be turned aside by
+the prophetic pictures.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>
+DAVID SWAN</h2>
+
+<h4>A FANTASY</h4>
+
+<p>
+We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually
+influence our course through life and our final destiny. There are innumerable
+other events, if such they may be called, which come close upon us, yet pass
+away without actual results or even betraying their near approach by the
+reflection of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the
+vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be too full of hope and fear,
+exultation or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This
+idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of twenty, on
+the high road from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a
+small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind the counter. Be it
+enough to say that he was a native of New Hampshire, born of respectable
+parents, and had received an ordinary school education with a classic finish by
+a year at Gilmanton Academy. After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly
+noon of a summer&rsquo;s day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined
+him to sit down in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the
+stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little
+tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling
+spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan.
+Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips and then flung himself along
+the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up
+in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust
+did not yet rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday, and his
+grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured
+drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead,
+and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its depths, fell upon David
+Swan. But we are to relate events which he did not dream of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he lay sound asleep in the shade other people were wide awake, and passed
+to and fro, afoot, on horseback and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny
+road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left and
+knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way without admitting the
+slumberer among their busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept,
+and several whose hearts were brimming full of scorn ejected their venomous
+superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near,
+thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow
+looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor
+David into the texture of his evening&rsquo;s discourse as an awful instance of
+dead drunkenness by the roadside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But censure, praise, merriment, scorn and indifference were all one&mdash;or,
+rather, all nothing&mdash;to David Swan. He had slept only a few moments when a
+brown carriage drawn by a handsome pair of horses bowled easily along and was
+brought to a standstill nearly in front of David&rsquo;s resting-place. A
+linch-pin had fallen out and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The
+damage was slight and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly
+merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the
+coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel the lady and gentleman
+sheltered themselves beneath the maple trees, and there espied the bubbling
+fountain and David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the
+humblest sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the
+gout would allow, and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown
+lest David should start up all of a sudden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How soundly he sleeps!&rdquo; whispered the old gentleman. &ldquo;From
+what a depth he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on without
+an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income, for it would suppose
+health and an untroubled mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And youth besides,&rdquo; said the lady. &ldquo;Healthy and quiet age
+does not sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his than our
+wakefulness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The longer they looked, the more did this elderly couple feel interested in the
+unknown youth to whom the wayside and the maple shade were as a secret chamber
+with the rich gloom of damask curtains brooding over him. Perceiving that a
+stray sunbeam glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived to twist a
+branch aside so as to intercept it, and, having done this little act of
+kindness, she began to feel like a mother to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Providence seems to have laid him here,&rdquo; whispered she to her
+husband, &ldquo;and to have brought us hither to find him, after our
+disappointment in our cousin&rsquo;s son. Methinks I can see a likeness to our
+departed Henry. Shall we waken him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To what purpose?&rdquo; said the merchant, hesitating. &ldquo;We know
+nothing of the youth&rsquo;s character.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That open countenance!&rdquo; replied his wife, in the same hushed
+voice, yet earnestly. &ldquo;This innocent sleep!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While these whispers were passing, the sleeper&rsquo;s heart did not throb, nor
+his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least token of
+interest. Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let fall a burden of
+gold. The old merchant had lost his only son, and had no heir to his wealth
+except a distant relative with whose conduct he was dissatisfied. In such cases
+people sometimes do stranger things than to act the magician and awaken a young
+man to splendor who fell asleep in poverty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall we not waken him?&rdquo; repeated the lady, persuasively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The coach is ready, sir,&rdquo; said the servant, behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old couple started, reddened and hurried away, mutually wondering that they
+should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very ridiculous. The merchant
+threw himself back in the carriage and occupied his mind with the plan of a
+magnificent asylum for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan
+enjoyed his nap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two when a pretty young girl
+came along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how her little heart was
+dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry kind of motion that
+caused&mdash;is there any harm in saying it?&mdash;her garter to slip its knot.
+Conscious that the silken girth&mdash;if silk it were&mdash;was relaxing its
+hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple trees, and there found a
+young man asleep by the spring. Blushing as red as any rose that she should
+have intruded into a gentleman&rsquo;s bedchamber, and for such a purpose too,
+she was about to make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the
+sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering overhead&mdash;buzz, buzz,
+buzz&mdash;now among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine,
+and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the
+eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted
+as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief,
+brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How sweet a
+picture! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath and a deeper blush
+she stole a glance at the youthful stranger for whom she had been battling with
+a dragon in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is handsome!&rdquo; thought she, and blushed redder yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him that,
+shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder and allow him to
+perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile of welcome
+brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul, according to the old
+and beautiful idea, had been severed from his own, and whom in all his vague
+but passionate desires he yearned to meet. Her only could he love with a
+perfect love, him only could she receive into the depths of her heart, and now
+her image was faintly blushing in the fountain by his side; should it pass
+away, its happy lustre would never gleam upon his life again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How sound he sleeps!&rdquo; murmured the girl. She departed, but did not
+trip along the road so lightly as when she came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, this girl&rsquo;s father was a thriving country merchant in the
+neighborhood, and happened at that identical time to be looking out for just
+such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside acquaintance with
+the daughter, he would have become the father&rsquo;s clerk, and all else in
+natural succession. So here, again, had good fortune&mdash;the best of
+fortunes&mdash;stolen so near that her garments brushed against him, and he
+knew nothing of the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the maple
+shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down aslant
+over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These
+were a couple of rascals who got their living by whatever the devil sent them,
+and now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits of
+their next piece of villainy on a game of cards which was to have been decided
+here under the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the
+rogues whispered to his fellow:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hist! Do you see that bundle under his head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other villain nodded, winked and leered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bet you a horn of brandy,&rdquo; said the first, &ldquo;that
+the chap has either a pocketbook or a snug little hoard of small change stowed
+away amongst his shirts. And if not there, we will find it in his pantaloons
+pocket.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how if he wakes?&rdquo; said the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a dirk and
+nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So be it!&rdquo; muttered the second villain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the dagger toward
+his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath his head. Their two
+faces, grim, wrinkled and ghastly with guilt and fear, bent over their victim,
+looking horrible enough to be mistaken for fiends should he suddenly awake.
+Nay, had the villains glanced aside into the spring, even they would hardly
+have known themselves as reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more
+tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother&rsquo;s breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must take away the bundle,&rdquo; whispered one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he stirs, I&rsquo;ll strike,&rdquo; muttered the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the maple
+trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then at the quiet
+sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; said one villain. &ldquo;We can do nothing now. The
+dog&rsquo;s master must be close behind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s take a drink and be off,&rdquo; said the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew forth a
+pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single discharge. It was a
+flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed upon the mouth. Each drank a
+comfortable dram, and left the spot with so many jests and such laughter at
+their unaccomplished wickedness that they might be said to have gone on their
+way rejoicing. In a few hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once
+imagined that the recording angel had written down the crime of murder against
+their souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
+slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung over him
+nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was withdrawn. He slept, but
+no longer so quietly as at first. An hour&rsquo;s repose had snatched from his
+elastic frame the weariness with which many hours of toil had burdened it. Now
+he stirred, now moved his lips without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to
+the noonday spectres of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder
+and louder along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of
+David&rsquo;s slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his
+ideas about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?&rdquo; shouted he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Room on top!&rdquo; answered the driver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so much as a
+parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew not that a
+phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters, nor that one of Love
+had sighed softly to their murmur, nor that one of Death had threatened to
+crimson them with his blood, all in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep.
+Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that
+almost happen. Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while
+viewless and unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path,
+there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even
+partially available?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>
+SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE</h2>
+
+<p>
+So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with wearied
+knees&mdash;earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far, far beyond
+me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith, where man never
+breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal azure melts away from the
+eye and appears only a deepened shade of nothingness! And yet I shiver at that
+cold and solitary thought. What clouds are gathering in the golden west with
+direful intent against the brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon?
+They are ponderous air-ships, black as death and freighted with the tempest,
+and at intervals their thunder&mdash;the signal-guns of that unearthly
+squadron&mdash;rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps of
+fleecy vapor&mdash;methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole day
+long&mdash;seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired pilgrims
+through the sky. Perhaps&mdash;for who can tell?&mdash;beautiful spirits are
+disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the brief
+appearance of their curly locks of golden light and laughing faces fair and
+faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or where the floating mass so imperfectly
+obstructs the color of the firmament a slender foot and fairy limb resting too
+heavily upon the frail support may be thrust through and suddenly withdrawn,
+while longing fancy follows them in vain. Yonder, again, is an airy archipelago
+where the sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space. Every one
+of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in radiance which the
+slightest pressure might disengage in silvery profusion like water wrung from a
+sea-maid&rsquo;s hair. Bright they are as a young man&rsquo;s visions, and,
+like them, would be realized in dullness, obscurity and tears. I will look on
+them no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In three parts of the visible circle whose centre is this spire I discern
+cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving lines of rivulets,
+little placid lakes, and here and there a rising ground that would fain be
+termed a hill. On the fourth side is the sea, stretching away toward a viewless
+boundary, blue and calm except where the passing anger of a shadow flits across
+its surface and is gone. Hitherward a broad inlet penetrates far into the land;
+on the verge of the harbor formed by its extremity is a town, and over it am I,
+a watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. Oh that the multitude of chimneys could
+speak, like those of Madrid, and betray in smoky whispers the secrets of all
+who since their first foundation have assembled at the hearths within! Oh that
+the Limping Devil of Le Sage would perch beside me here, extend his wand over
+this contiguity of roofs, uncover every chamber and make me familiar with their
+inhabitants! The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a
+spiritualized Paul Pry hovering invisible round man and woman, witnessing their
+deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity
+and shade from their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But
+none of these things are possible; and if I would know the interior of brick
+walls or the mystery of human bosoms, I can but guess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yonder is a fair street extending north and south. The stately mansions are
+placed each on its carpet of verdant grass, and a long flight of steps descends
+from every door to the pavement. Ornamental trees&mdash;the broadleafed
+horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending, the graceful but infrequent
+willow, and others whereof I know not the names&mdash;grow thrivingly among
+brick and stone. The oblique rays of the sun are intercepted by these green
+citizens and by the houses, so that one side of the street is a shaded and
+pleasant walk. On its whole extent there is now but a single passenger,
+advancing from the upper end, and he, unless distance and the medium of a
+pocket spyglass do him more than justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He
+saunters slowly forward, slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending
+his eyes upon the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a glance before
+him. Certainly he has a pensive air. Is he in doubt or in debt? Is he&mdash;if
+the question be allowable&mdash;in love? Does he strive to be melancholy and
+gentlemanlike, or is he merely overcome by the heat? But I bid him farewell for
+the present. The door of one of the houses&mdash;an aristocratic edifice with
+curtains of purple and gold waving from the windows&mdash;is now opened, and
+down the steps come two ladies swinging their parasols and lightly arrayed for
+a summer ramble. Both are young, both are pretty; but methinks the left-hand
+lass is the fairer of the twain, and, though she be so serious at this moment,
+I could swear that there is a treasure of gentle fun within her. They stand
+talking a little while upon the steps, and finally proceed up the street.
+Meantime, as their faces are now turned from me, I may look elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon that wharf and down the corresponding street is a busy contrast to the
+quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has its centre there,
+and many a man is wasting the summer afternoon in labor and anxiety, in losing
+riches or in gaining them, when he would be wiser to flee away to some pleasant
+country village or shaded lake in the forest or wild and cool sea-beach. I see
+vessels unlading at the wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground
+abundantly as at the bottom of the sea&mdash;that market whence no goods
+return, and where there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of
+sales. Here the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and sailors
+ply the block and tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying their toil with
+cries long-drawn and roughly melodious till the bales and puncheons ascend to
+upper air. At a little distance a group of gentlemen are assembled round the
+door of a warehouse. Grave seniors be they, and I would wager&mdash;if it were
+safe, in these times, to be responsible for any one&mdash;that the least
+eminent among them might vie with old Vincentio, that incomparable trafficker
+of Pisa. I can even select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly
+personage in somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair the superfluous whiteness
+of which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are wafted on
+some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and his name, I will
+venture to say, though I know it not, is a familiar sound among the
+far-separated merchants of Europe and the Indies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking again to the
+long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls have encountered the
+young man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition, he turns back with them.
+Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard to his companions by placing
+himself on the inner side of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I,
+enacting on a steeple-top the part of Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged the
+golden apple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In two streets converging at right angles toward my watch-tower I distinguish
+three different processions. One is a proud array of voluntary soldiers in
+bright uniform, resembling, from the height whence I look down, the painted
+veterans that garrison the windows of a toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart.
+Their regular advance, their nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets
+and musket-barrels, the roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife
+ever and anon piercing through,&mdash;these things have wakened a warlike fire,
+peaceful though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
+ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping a harsh
+and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously aping the
+intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as slight differences
+are scarcely perceptible from a church-spire, one might be tempted to ask,
+&ldquo;Which are the boys?&rdquo; or, rather, &ldquo;Which the men?&rdquo; But,
+leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which, though sadder in
+outward show, may excite identical reflections in the thoughtful mind. It is a
+funeral&mdash;a hearse drawn by a black and bony steed and covered by a dusty
+pall, two or three coaches rumbling over the stones, their drivers half asleep,
+a dozen couple of careless mourners in their every-day attire. Such was not the
+fashion of our fathers when they carried a friend to his grave. There is now no
+doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King of
+Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and philosophy
+have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a proof that he retains
+his proper majesty. The military men and the military boys are wheeling round
+the corner, and meet the funeral full in the face. Immediately the drum is
+silent, all but the tap that regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers
+yield the path to the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children
+quit their ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive
+curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the steeple and
+pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the lightning glimmers on them
+as they lower down the coffin, and the thunder rattles heavily while they throw
+the earth upon its lid. Verily, the shower is near, and I tremble for the young
+man and the girls, who have now disappeared from the long and shady street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs beneath me,
+and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling them! The new-born,
+the aged, the dying, the strong in life and the recent dead are in the chambers
+of these many mansions. The full of hope, the happy, the miserable and the
+desperate dwell together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses
+over which my eyes roam so coldly guilt is entering into hearts that are still
+tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue; guilt is on the very edge of
+commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the
+criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts struggling in
+my mind, and, were I able to give them distinctness, they would make their way
+in eloquence. Lo! the raindrops are descending.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clouds within a little time have gathered over all the sky, hanging
+heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At intervals
+the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers, disappears, and then
+comes the thunder, travelling slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind
+has sprung up, howls through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense
+bodies to rebel against the approaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the
+funeral has already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry
+homeward&mdash;all that have a home&mdash;while a few lounge by the corners or
+trudge on desperately at their leisure. In a narrow lane which communicates
+with the shady street I discern the rich old merchant putting himself to the
+top of his speed lest the rain should convert his hair-powder to a paste.
+Unhappy gentleman! By the slow vehemence and painful moderation wherewith he
+journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its thrilling tenderness
+in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid pace, come three other of my
+acquaintance, the two pretty girls and the young man unseasonably interrupted
+in their walk. Their footsteps are supported by the risen dust, the wind lends
+them its velocity, they fly like three sea-birds driven landward by the
+tempestuous breeze. The ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew
+that any one were at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward,
+laughing in the angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has chanced. At the
+corner where the narrow lane enters into the street they come plump against the
+old merchant, whose tortoise-motion has just brought him to that point. He
+likes not the sweet encounter; the darkness of the whole air gathers speedily
+upon his visage, and there is a pause on both sides. Finally he thrusts aside
+the youth with little courtesy, seizes an arm of each of the two girls, and
+plods onward like a magician with a prize of captive fairies. All this is easy
+to be understood. How disconsolate the poor lover stands, regardless of the
+rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his well-fashioned habiliments, till
+he catches a backward glance of mirth from a bright eye, and turns away with
+whatever comfort it conveys!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm lets loose
+its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they
+shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous shower and shrinking away from
+the quick fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs
+and rise again in smoke. There is a rush and roar as of a river through the
+air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their
+dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did
+Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult
+which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on
+my brow and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I will
+descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam breaks out
+in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness or boils up in
+far-distant points like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let
+me look once more at the green plain and little hills of the country, over
+which the giant of the storm is striding in robes of mist, and at the town
+whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and,
+turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author&rsquo;s prospects,
+I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of
+azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage and go
+rejoicing through the tempest, and on yonder darkest cloud, born like hallowed
+hopes of the glory of another world and the trouble and tears of this,
+brightens forth the rainbow.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>
+THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS</h2>
+
+<p>
+In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen&rsquo;s reveries
+were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met together
+at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful in form and fair of
+feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an untimely blight in what
+should have been the fullest bloom of her years; the other was an ancient and
+meanly-dressed woman of ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken and
+decrepit that even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the
+ordinary term of human existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortal
+could observe them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down in the
+midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically circular, two or three
+hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just
+be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills and partly
+fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow, within which there was
+nothing but the brown grass of October and here and there a tree-trunk that had
+fallen long ago and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One
+of these masses of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close beside
+a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin. Such scenes as
+this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of a power of evil and his
+plighted subjects, and here at midnight or on the dim verge of evening they
+were said to stand round the mantling pool disturbing its putrid waters in the
+performance of an impious baptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal
+sunset was now gilding the three hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down
+their sides into the hollow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass,&rdquo; said the aged crone,
+&ldquo;according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
+me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance like
+lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast her eyes
+upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return with her purpose
+unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am stranger in this land, as you know,&rdquo; said she, at length.
+&ldquo;Whence I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me with whom
+my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for ever. There is a
+weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I have come hither to inquire
+of their welfare.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the
+ends of the earth?&rdquo; cried the old woman, peering into the lady&rsquo;s
+face. &ldquo;Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold,
+and the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wish be
+granted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will do your bidding though I die,&rdquo; replied the lady,
+desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw aside the
+hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companion to draw near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kneel down,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and lay your forehead on my
+knees.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling burned
+fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of her garment was dipped
+into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old woman&rsquo;s knees, and the
+latter drew a cloak about the lady&rsquo;s face, so that she was in darkness.
+Then she heard the muttered words of prayer, in the midst of which she started
+and would have arisen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon
+me!&rdquo; she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself and
+was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar in infancy and
+unforgotten through many wanderings and in all the vicissitudes of her heart
+and fortune, were mingling with the accents of the prayer. At first the words
+were faint and indistinct&mdash;not rendered so by distance, but rather
+resembling the dim pages of a book which we strive to read by an imperfect and
+gradually brightening light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did
+those voices strengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and
+the conversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed like himself
+became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those strangers
+appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three hills. Their voices
+were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a chamber the windows of which
+were rattling in the breeze; the regular vibration of a clock, the crackling of
+a fire and the tinkling of the embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the
+scene almost as vivid as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat
+these two old people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and
+tearful, and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a
+wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her and leaving shame
+and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave. They alluded also to
+other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk their voices seemed
+to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves;
+and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between
+three hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it,&rdquo; remarked
+the old woman, smiling in the lady&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And did you also hear them?&rdquo; exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
+humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yea, and we have yet more to hear,&rdquo; replied the old woman,
+&ldquo;wherefore cover thy face quickly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer that was
+not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pauses of her breath
+strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually increasing, so as to drown and
+overpower the charm by which they grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity
+of sound and were succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which in
+their turn gave way to a wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and
+sobs, forming altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.
+Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the scourge
+resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and became substantial to
+the listener&rsquo;s ear, till she could distinguish every soft and dreamy
+accent of the love-songs that died causelessly into funeral-hymns. She
+shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed up like the spontaneous kindling
+of flume, and she grew faint at the fearful merriment raging miserably around
+her. In the midst of this wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other
+in a drunken career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and
+melodious voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and
+his feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company whose
+own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought an auditor for
+the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted their laughter and tears as
+his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman&rsquo;s perfidy, of a wife who
+had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart made desolate. Even as he went
+on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they
+changed into the hollow, fitful and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among
+the pine trees on those three lonely hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a
+mad-house?&rdquo; inquired the latter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True, true!&rdquo; said the lady to herself; &ldquo;there is mirth
+within its walls, but misery, misery without.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wouldst thou hear more?&rdquo; demanded the old woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is one other voice I would fain listen to again,&rdquo; replied
+the lady, faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get thee
+hence before the hour be past.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep shades
+obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to
+overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to weave her spell. Long did
+it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals
+of her words like a clang that had travelled far over valley and rising ground
+and was just ready to die in the air. The lady shook upon her companion&rsquo;s
+knees as she heard that boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and
+deepened into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some
+ivy-mantled tower and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to
+the hall and to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom
+appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly, slowly
+on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on the ground, so
+that the ear could measure the length of their melancholy array. Before them
+went the priest, reading the burial-service, while the leaves of his book were
+rustling in the breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud,
+still there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women
+and from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of
+her parents, the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondness of her husband,
+the mother who had sinned against natural affection and left her child to die.
+The sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a thin vapor, and the
+wind, that just before had seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned sadly round
+the verge of the hollow between three hills. But when the old woman stirred the
+kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here has been a sweet hour&rsquo;s sport!&rdquo; said the withered
+crone, chuckling to herself.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>
+THE TOLL-GATHERER&rsquo;S DAY</h2>
+
+<h4>A SKETCH OF TRANSITORY LIFE</h4>
+
+<p>
+Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the current
+of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no undesirable retreat were a
+toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare of the land. In youth, perhaps, it
+is good for the observer to run about the earth, to leave the track of his
+footsteps far and wide, to mingle himself with the action of numberless
+vicissitudes, and, finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing spirit on
+all that he has seen and felt. But there are natures too indolent or too
+sensitive to endure the dust, the sunshine or the rain, the turmoil of moral
+and physical elements, to which all the wayfarers of the world expose
+themselves. For such a man how pleasant a miracle could life be made to roll
+its variegated length by the threshold of his own hermitage, and the great
+globe, as it were, perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before
+his eyes without whirling him onward in its course! If any mortal be favored
+with a lot analogous to this, it is the toll-gatherer. So, at least, have I
+often fancied while lounging on a bench at the door of a small square edifice
+which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge. Beneath the
+timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea, while above, like the life-blood
+through a great artery, the travel of the north and east is continually
+throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid bench, I amuse myself with a conception,
+illustrated by numerous pencil-sketches in the air, of the
+toll-gatherer&rsquo;s day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning&mdash;dim, gray, dewy summer&rsquo;s morn&mdash;the distant roll
+of ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend&rsquo;s slumbers,
+creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and gradually
+replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change from sleep to
+wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing wide the toll-gates for
+the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The timbers groan beneath the
+slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman stalks beside the oxen, and, peering
+from the summit of the hay, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern
+over the toll-house is seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a
+nap some ten miles long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels,
+and the huge hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but half
+awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from the
+shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter of hoofs,
+comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the same headlong,
+restless rate all through the quiet night. The bridge resounds in one continued
+peal as the coach rolls on without a pause, merely affording the toll-gatherer
+a glimpse at the sleepy passengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff
+a cordial in the briny air. The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and they
+forget how wearily the darkness toiled away. And behold now the fervid day in
+his bright chariot, glittering aslant over the waves, nor scorning to throw a
+tribute of his golden beams on the toll-gatherer&rsquo;s little hermitage. The
+old man looks eastward, and (for he is a moralizer) frames a simile of the
+stage-coach and the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the world is rousing itself we may glance slightly at the scene of our
+sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood&mdash;a spot not of earth,
+but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound among the massive
+beams beneath. Over the door is a weatherbeaten board inscribed with the rates
+of toll in letters so nearly effaced that the gilding of the sunshine can
+hardly make them legible. Beneath the window is a wooden bench on which a long
+succession of weary wayfarers have reposed themselves. Peeping within-doors, we
+perceive the whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and
+advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a wandering
+caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer, glorified by the early
+sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may announce, of quiet soul and
+thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, who of the wisdom which the passing world
+scatters along the wayside has gathered a reasonable store.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon the sky.
+Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer&rsquo;s practised ear can
+distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number of its wheels and how many
+horses beat the resounding timbers with their iron tramp. Here, in a
+substantial family chaise, setting forth betimes to take advantage of the dewy
+road, come a gentleman and his wife with their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting
+gladsomely between them. The bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious
+bandboxes and carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty
+with yesterday&rsquo;s journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled
+with a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse and driven
+by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a whole summer day to be
+the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome maidens! Bolt upright in a
+sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man who as he pays his toll hands the
+toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon the wall. The vinegar-faced
+traveller proves to be a manufacturer of pickles. Now paces slowly from timber
+to timber a horseman clad in black, with a meditative brow, as of one who,
+whithersoever his steed might bear him, would still journey through a mist of
+brooding thought. He is a country preacher going to labor at a protracted
+meeting. The next object passing townward is a butcher&rsquo;s cart canopied
+with its arch of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a &ldquo;sauceman&rdquo;
+driving a wagon full of new potatoes, green ears of corn, beets, carrots,
+turnips and summer squashes, and next two wrinkled, withered witch-looking old
+gossips in an antediluvian chaise drawn by a horse of former generations and
+going to peddle out a lot of huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a
+wheelbarrow-load of lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly onward,
+covered with green canvas and conveying the contributions of a whole herd of
+cows, in large tin canisters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But let all these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that causes
+the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the travellers brought
+sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome influence all along the road. It
+is a barouche of the newest style, the varnished panels of which reflect the
+whole moving panorama of the landscape, and show a picture, likewise, of our
+friend with his visage broadened, so that his meditative smile is transformed
+to grotesque merriment. Within sits a youth fresh as the summer morn, and
+beside him a young lady in white with white gloves upon her slender hands and a
+white veil flowing down over her face. But methinks her blushing cheek burns
+through the snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in front. And who are
+these on whom, and on all that appertains to them, the dust of earth seems
+never to have settled? Two lovers whom the priest has blessed this blessed morn
+and sent them forth, with one of the bride-maids, on the matrimonial
+tour.&mdash;Take my blessing too, ye happy ones! May the sky not frown upon you
+nor clouds bedew you with their chill and sullen rain! May the hot sun kindle
+no fever in your hearts! May your whole life&rsquo;s pilgrimage be as blissful
+as this first day&rsquo;s journey, and its close be gladdened with even
+brighter anticipations than those which hallow your bridal-night! They pass,
+and ere the reflection of their joy has faded from his face another spectacle
+throws a melancholy shadow over the spirit of the observing man. In a close
+carriage sits a fragile figure muffled carefully and shrinking even from the
+mild breath of summer. She leans against a manly form, and his arm enfolds her
+as if to guard his treasure from some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when
+he shall strive to embrace that loved one, he will press only desolation to his
+heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now has Morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sun rolls
+blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his face with. The
+horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave their glistening sides in
+short quick pantings when the reins are tightened at the toll-house. Glisten,
+too, the faces of the travellers. Their garments are thickly bestrewn with
+dust; their whiskers and hair look hoary; their throats are choked with the
+dusty atmosphere which they have left behind them. No air is stirring on the
+road. Nature dares draw no breath lest she should inhale a stifling cloud of
+dust. &ldquo;A hot and dusty day!&rdquo; cry the poor pilgrims as they wipe
+their begrimed foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the river bears
+along with it.&mdash;&ldquo;Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!&rdquo; answers the
+sympathetic toll-gatherer. They start again to pass through the fiery furnace,
+while he re-enters his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with a pail of briny
+water from the stream beneath. He thinks within himself that the sun is not so
+fierce here as elsewhere, and that the gentle air doth not forget him in these
+sultry days. Yes, old friend, and a quiet heart will make a dog-day temperate.
+He hears a weary footstep, and perceives a traveller with pack and staff, who
+sits down upon the hospitable bench and removes the hat from his wet brow. The
+toll-gatherer administers a cup of cold water, and, discovering his guest to be
+a man of homely sense, he engages him in profitable talk, uttering the maxims
+of a philosophy which he has found in his own soul, but knows not how it came
+there. And as the wayfarer makes ready to resume his journey he tells him a
+sovereign remedy for blistered feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now comes the noontide hour&mdash;of all the hours, nearest akin to midnight,
+for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world begins to
+turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the day, when an
+accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The draw being lifted to permit
+the passage of a schooner laden with wood from the Eastern forests, she sticks
+immovably right athwart the bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a
+throng of impatient travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig
+with the top thrown back, both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of
+forecastle oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly-dressed gentleman and
+lady, he from a tailor&rsquo;s shop-board and she from a milliner&rsquo;s back
+room&mdash;the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest
+of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer&rsquo;s day? Here is a
+tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders like a travelling
+meteor or opposition sun, and on the other side a seller of spruce beer, which
+brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here conic a party
+of ladies on horseback, in green ridings habits, and gentlemen attendant, and
+there a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a
+multitude nous clatter of their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a
+hand-organ on his shoulder, and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On this
+side, heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train of wagons
+conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a company of summer
+soldiers marching from village to village on a festival campaign, attended by
+the &ldquo;brass band.&rdquo; Now look at the scene, and it presents an emblem
+of the mysterious confusion, the apparently insolvable riddle, in which
+individuals, or the great world itself, seem often to be involved. What miracle
+shall set all things right again?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm; the draw
+descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge vacant from end to
+end. &ldquo;And thus,&rdquo; muses the toll-gatherer, &ldquo;have I found it
+with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at a stand.&rdquo;
+The sage old man!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor across the
+flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly among the timbers of
+the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff the freshening breeze. One or
+two let down long lines and haul up flapping flounders or cunners or small cod,
+or perhaps an eel. Others, and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot
+day still on their cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed
+floating upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily along the
+bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.&mdash;Rest, rest, thou
+weary world! for to-morrow&rsquo;s round of toil and pleasure will be as
+wearisome as to-day&rsquo;s has been, yet both shall bear thee onward a
+day&rsquo;s march of eternity.&mdash;Now the old toll-gatherer looks seaward
+and discerns the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the stars, too,
+kindling in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of
+heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers,
+all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of
+phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>
+THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN</h2>
+
+<p>
+At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a hundred miles
+from home. The morning after my arrival&mdash;a September morning, but warm and
+bright as any in July&mdash;I rambled into a wood of oaks with a few walnut
+trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The ground was
+rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young saplings and traversed
+only by cattle-paths. The track which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal
+spring with a border of grass as freshly green as on May morning, and
+overshadowed by the limb of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way
+down and played like a goldfish in the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled a
+circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of which were
+covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated hue&mdash;reddish,
+white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand, which sparkled in the
+lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate the spring with an unborrowed light. In
+one spot the gush of the water violently agitated the sand, but without
+obscuring the fountain or breaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared
+as if some living creature were about to emerge&mdash;the naiad of the spring,
+perhaps, in the shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy
+water-moss, a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance.
+How would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her sitting on
+one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples and throwing up water
+to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on grass and flowers, they
+would immediately be moist, as with morning dew. Then would she set about her
+labors, like a careful housewife, to clear the fountain of withered leaves, and
+bits of slimy wood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left
+by cattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like a
+treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he would find
+only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spot where he had seen
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should have been, I
+bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery mirror. They were
+the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo! another face, deeper in the
+fountain than my own image, more distinct in all the features, yet faint as
+thought. The vision had the aspect of a fair young girl with locks of paly
+gold. A mirthful expression laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole
+shadowy countenance, till it seemed just what a fountain would be if, while
+dancing merrily into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through
+the dim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy twigs,
+the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was diffused among the
+golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness and became a glory round
+that head so beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus tenanted and
+how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was the face; I held my
+breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or faded into nothing? I doubted
+whether it had ever been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend where that
+vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still, waiting till
+it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest motion, or even the flutter
+of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus have I often started from a pleasant
+dream, and then kept quiet in hopes to wile it back. Deep were my musings as to
+the race and attributes of that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the
+daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under the lids of
+children&rsquo;s eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that one moment and
+then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain, or fairy or woodland
+goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of some forsaken maid who had
+drowned herself for love? Or, in good truth, had a lovely girl with a warm
+heart and lips that would bear pressure stolen softly behind me and thrown her
+image into the spring?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a spell
+upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the haunted spring. There was
+the water gushing, the sand sparkling and the sunbeam glimmering. There the
+vision was not, but only a great frog, the hermit of that solitude, who
+immediately withdrew his speckled snout and made himself invisible&mdash;all
+except a pair of long legs&mdash;beneath a stone. Methought he had a devilish
+look. I could have slain him as an enchanter who kept the mysterious beauty
+imprisoned in the fountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and the church-spire
+rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees insulated from all the
+rest of the wood, with their own share of radiance hovering on them from the
+west and their own solitary shadow falling to the east. The afternoon being far
+declined, the sunshine was almost pensive and the shade almost cheerful; glory
+and gloom were mingled in the placid light, as if the spirits of the Day and
+Evening had met in friendship under those trees and found themselves akin. I
+was admiring the picture when the shape of a young girl emerged from behind the
+clump of oaks. My heart knew her: it was the vision, but so distant and
+ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbued with the pensive glory
+of the spot where she was standing, that my spirit sunk within me, sadder than
+before. How could I ever reach her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves. In a moment
+the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching a portion of sunlight as
+it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearing like a mist, just substantial
+enough to bear the burden of radiance. A rainbow vivid as Niagara&rsquo;s was
+painted in the air. Its southern limb came down before the group of trees and
+enveloped the fair vision as if the hues of heaven were the only garment for
+her beauty. When the rainbow vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no
+longer there. Was her existence absorbed in nature&rsquo;s loveliest
+phenomenon, and did her pure frame dissolve away in the varied light? Yet I
+would not despair of her return, for, robed in the rainbow, she was the emblem
+of Hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded to the parting
+moment. By the spring and in the wood and on the hill and through the village,
+at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magic hour of sunset, when she had
+vanished from my sight, I sought her, but in vain. Weeks came and went, months
+rolled away, and she appeared not in them. I imparted my mystery to none, but
+wandered to and fro or sat in solitude like one that had caught a glimpse of
+heaven and could take no more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner world
+where my thoughts lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of them.
+Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a romance,
+conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my own, and
+experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and despair had their end
+in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of my early youth with manhood&rsquo;s
+colder gift, the power of expression, your hearts, sweet ladies, should flutter
+at my tale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the middle of January I was summoned home. The day before my departure,
+visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the vision, I found that the
+spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and a glare of winter
+sunshine on the hill of the rainbow. &ldquo;Let me hope,&rdquo; thought I,
+&ldquo;or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the whole world as
+desolate as this snowy hill.&rdquo; Most of the day was spent in preparing for
+the journey, which was to commence at four o&rsquo;clock the next morning.
+About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, I descended from my
+chamber to the sitting-room to take leave of the old clergyman and his family
+with whom I had been an inmate. A gust of wind blew out my lamp as I passed
+through the entry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to their invariable custom&mdash;so pleasant a one when the fire
+blazes cheerfully&mdash;the family were sitting in the parlor with no other
+light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman&rsquo;s scanty
+stipend compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation of his fires
+was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would smoulder away from
+morning till night with a dull warmth and no flame. This evening the heap of
+tan was newly put on and surmounted with three sticks of red oak full of
+moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine that had not yet kindled. There was no
+light except the little that came sullenly from two half-burnt brands, without
+even glimmering on the andirons. But I knew the position of the old
+minister&rsquo;s arm-chair, and also where his wife sat with her knitting-work,
+and how to avoid his two daughters&mdash;one a stout country lass, and the
+other a consumptive girl. Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next
+to that of the son, a learned collegian who had come home to keep school in the
+village during the winter vacation. I noticed that there was less room than
+usual to-night between the collegian&rsquo;s chair and mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for some time
+after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the regular click of the
+matron&rsquo;s knitting-needles. At times the fire threw out a brief and dusky
+gleam which twinkled on the old man&rsquo;s glasses and hovered doubtfully
+round our circle, but was far too faint to portray the individuals who composed
+it. Were we not like ghosts? Dreamy as the scene was, might it not be a type of
+the mode in which departed people who had known and loved each other here would
+hold communion in eternity? We were aware of each other&rsquo;s presence, not
+by sight nor sound nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be
+so among the dead?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing a remark to
+some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous and decayed
+accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice that made me start and
+bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded. Had I ever heard that sweet, low
+tone? If not, why did it rouse up so many old recollections, or mockeries of
+such, the shadows of things familiar yet unknown, and fill my mind with
+confused images of her features who had spoken, though buried in the gloom of
+the parlor? Whom had my heart recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened to
+catch her gentle breathing, and strove by the intensity of my gaze to picture
+forth a shape where none was visible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow, and where
+the darkness had been, there was she&mdash;the vision of the fountain. A spirit
+of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow and appeared again in the
+firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze and be gone. Yet her cheek was
+rosy and lifelike, and her features, in the bright warmth of the room, were
+even sweeter and tenderer than my recollection of them. She knew me. The
+mirthful expression that had laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her
+countenance when I beheld her faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and
+dimpling there now. One moment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the
+heap of tan upon the kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of
+the light, and gave her back to me no more!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be
+revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire and had left
+home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and returned the day
+before my departure? If I transformed her to an angel, it is what every
+youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein consists the essence of my story.
+But slight the change, sweet maids, to make angels of yourselves.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>
+FANCY&rsquo;S SHOW-BOX</h2>
+
+<h4>A MORALITY</h4>
+
+<p>
+What is guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast interest
+whether the soul may contract such stains in all their depth and flagrancy from
+deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon, but which physically have
+never had existence. Must the fleshly hand and visible frame of man set its
+seal to the evil designs of the soul, in order to give them their entire
+validity against the sinner? Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are
+cognizable before an earthly tribunal, will guilty thoughts&mdash;of which
+guilty deeds are no more than shadows,&mdash;will these draw down the full
+weight of a condemning sentence in the supreme court of eternity? In the
+solitude of a midnight chamber or in a desert afar from men or in a church
+while the body is kneeling the soul may pollute itself even with those crimes
+which we are accustomed to deem altogether carnal. If this be true, it is a
+fearful truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary example. A venerable
+gentleman&mdash;one Mr. Smith&mdash;who had long been regarded as a pattern of
+moral excellence was warming his aged blood with a glass or two of generous
+wine. His children being gone forth about their worldly business and his
+grandchildren at school, he sat alone in a deep luxurious arm-chair with his
+feet beneath a richly-carved mahogany table. Some old people have a dread of
+solitude, and when better company may not be had rejoice even to hear the quiet
+breathing of a babe asleep upon the carpet. But Mr. Smith, whose silver hair
+was the bright symbol of a life unstained except by such spots as are
+inseparable from human nature&mdash;he had no need of a babe to protect him by
+its purity, nor of a grown person to stand between him and his own soul.
+Nevertheless, either manhood must converse with age, or womanhood must soothe
+him with gentle cares, or infancy must sport around his chair, or his thoughts
+will stray into the misty region of the past and the old man be chill and sad.
+Wine will not always cheer him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the brilliant
+medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures entering the room.
+These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman,
+with a box of pictures on her back; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk,
+with a pen behind her ear, an inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript
+volume beneath her arm; and lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in
+a dusky mantle which concealed both face and form. But Mr. Smith had a shrewd
+idea that it was Conscience. How kind of Fancy, Memory and Conscience to visit
+the old gentleman just as he was beginning to imagine that the wine had neither
+so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as when himself and the liquor
+were less aged! Through the dim length of the apartment, where crimson curtains
+muffled the glare of sunshine and created a rich obscurity, the three guests
+drew near the silver-haired old man. Memory, with a finger between the leaves
+of her huge volume, placed herself at his right hand; Conscience, with her face
+still hidden in the dusky mantle, took her station on the left, so as to be
+next his heart; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon the table with the
+magnifying-glass convenient to his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many pictures
+which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box with the
+semblances of living scenes. One was a moonlight picture, in the background a
+lowly dwelling, and in front, partly shadowed by a tree, yet besprinkled with
+flakes of radiance, two youthful figures, male and female. The young man stood
+with folded arms, a haughty smile upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his
+eye as he glanced downward at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate at
+his feet, evidently sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly
+allowed her to lift her clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not
+lift. But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on which it was depicted,
+nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed, appeared to soften the
+obduracy of the young man. He was the personification of triumphant scorn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, strange to say, as old Mr. Smith peeped through the magnifying-glass,
+which made the objects start out from the canvas with magical deception, he
+began to recognize the farmhouse, the tree and both the figures of the picture.
+The young man in times long past had often met his gaze within the
+looking-glass; the girl was the very image of his first love&mdash;his
+cottage-love, his Martha Burroughs. Mr. Smith was scandalized. &ldquo;Oh, vile
+and slanderous picture!&rdquo; he exclaims. &ldquo;When have I triumphed over
+ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded in her teens to David Tomkins, who won
+her girlish love and long enjoyed her affection as a wife? And ever since his
+death she has lived a reputable widow!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling them to
+and fro with uncertain fingers, until among the earlier pages she found one
+which had reference to this picture. She reads it close to the old
+gentleman&rsquo;s ear: it is a record merely of sinful thought which never was
+embodied in an act, but, while Memory is reading, Conscience unveils her face
+and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith. Though not a death-blow, the
+torture was extreme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The exhibition proceeded. One after another Fancy displayed her pictures, all
+of which appeared to have been painted by some malicious artist on purpose to
+vex Mr. Smith. Not a shadow of proof could have been adduced in any earthly
+court that he was guilty of the slightest of those sins which were thus made to
+stare him in the face. In one scene there was a table set out, with several
+bottles and glasses half filled with wine, which threw back the dull ray of an
+expiring lamp. There had been mirth and revelry until the hand of the clock
+stood just at midnight, when Murder stepped between the boon-companions. A
+young man had fallen on the floor, and lay stone dead with a ghastly wound
+crushed into his temple, while over him, with a delirium of mingled rage and
+horror in his countenance, stood the youthful likeness of Mr. Smith. The
+murdered youth wore the features of Edward Spencer. &ldquo;What does this
+rascal of a painter mean?&rdquo; cries Mr. Smith, provoked beyond all patience.
+&ldquo;Edward Spencer was my earliest and dearest friend, true to me as I to
+him through more than half a century. Neither I nor any other ever murdered
+him. Was he not alive within five years, and did he not, in token of our long
+friendship, bequeath me his gold-headed cane and a mourning-ring?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again had Memory been turning over her volume, and fixed at length upon so
+confused a page that she surely must have scribbled it when she was tipsy. The
+purport was, however, that while Mr. Smith and Edward Spencer were heating
+their young blood with wine a quarrel had flashed up between them, and Mr.
+Smith, in deadly wrath, had flung a bottle at Spencer&rsquo;s head. True, it
+missed its aim and merely smashed a looking-glass; and the next morning, when
+the incident was imperfectly remembered, they had shaken hands with a hearty
+laugh. Yet, again, while Memory was reading, Conscience unveiled her face,
+struck a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith and quelled his remonstrance with her
+iron frown. The pain was quite excruciating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch, and in colors
+so faint and pale, that the subjects could barely be conjectured. A dull,
+semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the surface of the canvas, into
+which the figures seemed to vanish while the eye sought most earnestly to fix
+them. But in every scene, however dubiously portrayed, Mr. Smith was invariably
+haunted by his own lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror. After
+poring several minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable
+pictures, he began to see that the painter had intended to represent him, now
+in the decline of life, as stripping the clothes from the backs of three
+half-starved children. &ldquo;Really, this puzzles me!&rdquo; quoth Mr. Smith,
+with the irony of conscious rectitude. &ldquo;Asking pardon of the painter, I
+pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave. A man of my standing in the
+world to be robbing little children of their clothes! Ridiculous!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a page which
+with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear. It was not altogether
+inapplicable to the misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had been grievously
+tempted by many devilish sophistries, on the ground of a legal quibble, to
+commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children, joint-heirs to a considerable
+estate. Fortunately, before he was quite decided, his claims had turned out
+nearly as devoid of law as justice. As Memory ceased to read Conscience again
+thrust aside her mantle, and would have struck her victim with the envenomed
+dagger only that he struggled and clasped his hands before his heart. Even
+then, however, he sustained an ugly gash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why should we follow Fancy through the whole series of those awful pictures?
+Painted by an artist of wondrous power and terrible acquaintance with the
+secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the never-perpetrated sins that
+had glided through the lifetime of Mr. Smith. And could such beings of cloudy
+fantasy, so near akin to nothingness, give valid evidence against him at the
+day of judgment? Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one
+truly penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture and left the
+canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too keen to be
+endured, bellowed aloud with impatient agony, and suddenly discovered that his
+three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a silver-haired and
+highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the crimsoned-curtained room,
+with no box of pictures on the table, but only a decanter of most excellent
+Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed to fester with the venom of the dagger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might have argued the matter with
+Conscience and alleged many reasons wherefore she should not smite him so
+pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should be somewhat in the
+following fashion. A scheme of guilt, till it be put in execution, greatly
+resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale. The latter, in order to
+produce a sense of reality in the reader&rsquo;s mind, must be conceived with
+such proportionate strength by the author as to seem in the glow of fancy more
+like truth, past, present or to come, than purely fiction. The prospective
+sinner, on the other hand, weaves his plot of crime, but seldom or never feels
+a perfect certainty that it will be executed. There is a dreaminess diffused
+about his thoughts; in a dream, as it were, he strikes the death-blow into his
+victim&rsquo;s heart and starts to find an indelible blood-stain on his hand.
+Thus a novel-writer or a dramatist, in creating a villain of romance and
+fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in projecting
+crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other halfway between
+reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is accomplished that Guilt
+clenches its gripe upon the guilty heart and claims it for his own. Then, and
+not before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by
+repentance, grows a thousandfold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it
+considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a
+distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice and
+its results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it. They may take the
+steps which lead to crime, impelled by the same sort of mental action as in
+working out a mathematical problem, yet be powerless with compunction at the
+final moment. They knew not what deed it was that they deemed themselves
+resolved to do. In truth, there is no such thing in man&rsquo;s nature as a
+settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very moment of
+execution. Let us hope, therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin
+will not be incurred unless the act have set its seal upon the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, with the slight fancy-work which we have framed, some sad and awful truths
+are interwoven. Man must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest,
+since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by the
+flitting phantoms of iniquity. He must feel that when he shall knock at the
+gate of heaven no semblance of an unspotted life can entitle him to entrance
+there. Penitence must kneel and Mercy come from the footstool of the throne, or
+that golden gate will never open.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>
+DR. HEIDEGGER&rsquo;S EXPERIMENT</h2>
+
+<p>
+That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable friends to
+meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen&mdash;Mr.
+Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne&mdash;and a withered gentlewoman
+whose name was the widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures who
+had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they
+were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had
+been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and
+was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best
+years and his health and substance in the pursuit of sinful pleasures which had
+given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout and divers other torments of
+soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil
+fame&mdash;or, at least, had been so till time had buried him from the
+knowledge of the present generation and made him obscure instead of infamous.
+As for the widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in
+her day, but for a long while past she had lived in deep seclusion on account
+of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town
+against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old
+gentlemen&mdash;Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne&mdash;were
+early lovers of the widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting
+each other&rsquo;s throats for her sake. And before proceeding farther I will
+merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought
+to be a little beside themselves, as is not infrequently the case with old
+people when worried either by present troubles or woeful recollections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old friends,&rdquo; said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be
+seated, &ldquo;I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little
+experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger&rsquo;s study must have been a very
+curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber festooned with cobwebs and
+besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases,
+the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and
+black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos.
+Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which,
+according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold
+consultations in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner
+of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet with its door ajar, within
+which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a
+looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt
+frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that
+the spirits of all the doctor&rsquo;s deceased patients dwelt within its verge
+and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite
+side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young
+lady arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin and brocade, and with a
+visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been
+on the point of marriage with this young lady, but, being affected with some
+slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover&rsquo;s prescriptions and
+died on the bridal-evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be
+mentioned: it was a ponderous folio volume bound in black leather, with massive
+silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the
+title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic, and once, when
+a chambermaid had lifted it merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had
+rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon
+the floor and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror, while the
+brazen head of Hippocrates frowned and said, &ldquo;Forbear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was Dr. Heidegger&rsquo;s study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a
+small round table as black as ebony stood in the centre of the room, sustaining
+a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came
+through the window between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains and
+fell directly across this vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it
+on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four
+champagne-glasses were also on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old friends,&rdquo; repeated Dr. Heidegger, &ldquo;may I reckon
+on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman whose eccentricity had
+become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these
+fables&mdash;to my shame be it spoken&mdash;might possibly be traced back to
+mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale should startle
+the reader&rsquo;s faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a
+fiction-monger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the doctor&rsquo;s four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment,
+they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an
+air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar
+nonsense with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates.
+But without waiting for a reply Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and
+returned with the same ponderous folio bound in black leather which common
+report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the
+volume and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a
+rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish
+hue and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the
+doctor&rsquo;s hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This rose,&rdquo; said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh&mdash;&ldquo;this same
+withered and crumbling flower&mdash;blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was
+given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to wear it in
+my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the
+leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of
+half a century could ever bloom again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said the widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her
+head. &ldquo;You might as well ask whether an old woman&rsquo;s wrinkled face
+could ever bloom again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See!&rdquo; answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase and threw the
+faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly on the
+surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however,
+a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred and
+assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a
+deathlike slumber, the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green, and
+there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had
+first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its
+delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or
+three dewdrops were sparkling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is certainly a very pretty deception,&rdquo; said the
+doctor&rsquo;s friends&mdash;carelessly, however, for they had witnessed
+greater miracles at a conjurer&rsquo;s show. &ldquo;Pray, how was it
+effected?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth?&rdquo; asked Dr. Heidegger,
+&ldquo;which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or
+three centuries ago?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?&rdquo; said the widow Wycherly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Dr. Heidegger, &ldquo;for he never sought it in the
+right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is
+situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake
+Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias which, though
+numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets by the virtues of
+this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such
+matters, has sent me what you see in the vase.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ahem!&rdquo; said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the
+doctor&rsquo;s story; &ldquo;and what may be the effect of this fluid on the
+human frame?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel,&rdquo; replied Dr.
+Heidegger.&mdash;&ldquo;And all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
+much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my
+own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow
+young again. With your permission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress
+of the experiment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne-glasses with
+the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an
+effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths
+of the glasses and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor
+diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed
+cordial and comfortable properties, and, though utter sceptics as to its
+rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
+Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Before you drink, my respectable old friends,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;it
+would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
+draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time through
+the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be if, with your
+peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all
+the young people of the age!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor&rsquo;s four venerable friends made him no answer except by a feeble
+and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea that, knowing how closely
+Repentance treads behind the steps of Error, they should ever go astray again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drink, then,&rdquo; said the doctor, bowing; &ldquo;I rejoice that I
+have so well selected the subjects of my experiment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it
+really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have
+been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more woefully. They looked as
+if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring
+of Nature&rsquo;s dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable
+creatures who now sat stooping round the doctor&rsquo;s table without life
+enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing
+young again. They drank off the water and replaced their glasses on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the
+party&mdash;not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous
+wine&mdash;together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over
+all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks
+instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at
+one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away
+the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on
+their brows. The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a
+woman again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give us more of this wondrous water,&rdquo; cried they, eagerly.
+&ldquo;We are younger, but we are still too old. Quick! give us more!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Patience, patience!&rdquo; quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the
+experiment with philosophic coolness. &ldquo;You have been a long time growing
+old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an hour. But the water
+is at your service.&rdquo; Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of
+youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people
+in the city to the age of their own grandchildren.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor&rsquo;s four guests
+snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the contents at a single
+gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was passing down their throats it
+seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear
+and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks: they sat around
+the table three gentlemen of middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom
+prime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear widow, you are charming!&rdquo; cried Colonel Killigrew, whose
+eyes had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting from
+it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew&rsquo;s compliments were not
+always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still
+dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that the
+water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating
+qualities&mdash;unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a
+lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr.
+Gascoigne&rsquo;s mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating
+to the past, present or future could not easily be determined, since the same
+ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth
+full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory and the people&rsquo;s
+right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful
+whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the
+secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a deeply-deferential
+tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel
+Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle-song and ringing
+his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom
+figure of the widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was
+involved in a calculation of dollars and cents with which was strangely
+intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by harnessing a
+team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the widow Wycherly, she stood
+before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image and greeting it as
+the friend whom she loved better than all the world besides. She thrust her
+face close to the glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or
+crow&rsquo;s-foot had indeed vanished; she examined whether the snow had so
+entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown
+aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old doctor,&rdquo; cried she, &ldquo;pray favor me with another
+glass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, my dear madam&mdash;certainly,&rdquo; replied the complaisant
+doctor. &ldquo;See! I have already filled the glasses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this wonderful water, the
+delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the
+tremulous glitter of diamonds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever, but a
+mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase and rested alike on the
+four guests and on the doctor&rsquo;s venerable figure. He sat in a
+high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair with a gray dignity of aspect
+that might have well befitted that very Father Time whose power had never been
+disputed save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught
+of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his
+mysterious visage. But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot
+through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its
+miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the
+trouble of a dream from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the
+soul, so early lost and without which the world&rsquo;s successive scenes had
+been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all
+their prospects. They felt like new-created beings in a new-created universe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are young! We are young!&rdquo; they cried, exultingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
+characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all. They were a
+group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of
+their years. The most singular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock
+the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims.
+They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire&mdash;the wide-skirted coats
+and flapped waistcoats of the young men and the ancient cap and gown of the
+blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a
+pair of spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the
+black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair
+and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted
+mirthfully and leaped about the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The widow Wycherly&mdash;if so fresh a damsel could be called a
+widow&mdash;tripped up to the doctor&rsquo;s chair with a mischievous merriment
+in her rosy face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doctor, you dear old soul,&rdquo; cried she, &ldquo;get up and dance
+with me;&rdquo; and then the four young people laughed louder than ever to
+think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray excuse me,&rdquo; answered the doctor, quietly. &ldquo;I am old and
+rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago. But either of these gay
+young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dance with me, Clara,&rdquo; cried Colonel Killigrew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! I will be her partner,&rdquo; shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She promised me her hand fifty years ago,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr.
+Medbourne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp,
+another threw his arm about her waist, the third buried his hand among the
+glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow&rsquo;s cap. Blushing, panting,
+struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by
+turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple
+embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with
+bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the
+duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still wore, the
+tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray,
+withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a
+shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their burning passions proved them so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor
+quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening
+glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one
+another&rsquo;s throats. As they struggled to and fro the table was overturned
+and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth
+flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly
+which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The
+insect fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of
+Dr. Heidegger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!&rdquo; exclaimed the
+doctor. &ldquo;I really must protest against this riot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them
+back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and darksome vale of years.
+They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved armchair holding the
+rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the
+shattered vase. At the motion of his hand the four rioters resumed their
+seats&mdash;the more readily because their violent exertions had wearied them,
+youthful though they were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My poor Sylvia&rsquo;s rose!&rdquo; ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it
+in the light of the sunset clouds. &ldquo;It appears to be fading again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower continued to
+shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first
+thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to
+its petals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness,&rdquo; observed he,
+pressing the withered rose to his withered lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor&rsquo;s snowy head
+and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange
+dullness&mdash;whether of the body or spirit they could not tell&mdash;was
+creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that
+each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a deepening furrow where
+none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been
+crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people sitting with
+their old friend Dr. Heidegger?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are we grown old again so soon?&rdquo; cried they, dolefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient
+than that of wine; the delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes,
+they were old again. With a shuddering impulse that showed her a woman still,
+the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face and wished that the
+coffin-lid were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, friends, ye are old again,&rdquo; said Dr. Heidegger, &ldquo;and,
+lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not;
+for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my
+lips in it&mdash;no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments.
+Such is the lesson ye have taught me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the doctor&rsquo;s four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.
+They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida and quaff at morning,
+noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>
+Legends of the Province-House</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>
+I.<br/>
+HOWE&rsquo;S MASQUERADE</h2>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon last summer, while walking along Washington street, my eye was
+attracted by a sign-board protruding over a narrow archway nearly opposite the
+Old South Church. The sign represented the front of a stately edifice which was
+designated as the &ldquo;OLD PROVINCE HOUSE, kept by Thomas Waite.&rdquo; I was
+glad to be thus reminded of a purpose, long entertained, of visiting and
+rambling over the mansion of the old royal governors of Massachusetts, and,
+entering the arched passage which penetrated through the middle of a brick row
+of shops, a few steps transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into
+a small and secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the
+square front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted by a
+cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow bent
+and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of
+the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more,
+ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on
+his long sentinel&rsquo;s watch over the city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to have been
+overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red freestone steps
+fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron ascends from the court-yard
+to the spacious porch, over which is a balcony with an iron balustrade of
+similar pattern and workmanship to that beneath. These letters and
+figures&mdash;&ldquo;16 P.S. 79&rdquo;&mdash;are wrought into the ironwork of
+the balcony, and probably express the date of the edifice, with the initials of
+its founder&rsquo;s name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on the right
+of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this apartment, I presume,
+that the ancient governors held their levees with vice-regal pomp, surrounded
+by the military men, the counsellors, the judges, and other officers of the
+Crown, while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor. But the
+room in its present condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The
+panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from
+the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick block that
+shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never visits this
+apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches which have been
+extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most venerable and ornamental
+object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured china,
+representing scenes from Scripture, and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall
+or Bernard may have sat beside this fireplace and told her children the story
+of each blue tile. A bar in modern style, well replenished with decanters,
+bottles, cigar-boxes and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump
+and a soda-fount, extends along one side of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At my entrance an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest which
+satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold good liquor,
+though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by the old governors.
+After sipping a glass of port-sangaree prepared by the skilful hands of Mr.
+Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy successor and representative of so many
+historic personages to conduct me over their time-honored mansion. He readily
+complied, but, to confess the truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my
+imagination in order to find aught that was interesting in a house which,
+without its historic associations, would have seemed merely such a tavern as is
+usually favored by the custom of decent city boarders and old-fashioned country
+gentlemen. The chambers, which were probably spacious in former times, are now
+cut up by partitions and subdivided into little nooks, each affording scanty
+room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger: The
+great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of
+grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house by flights
+of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square landing-place, whence the
+ascent is continued toward the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in
+the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with
+its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these
+stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor
+have trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola which afforded them so wide a
+view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an
+octagon with several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. From this
+station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his
+disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened),
+and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington&rsquo;s besieging army,
+although the buildings since erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every
+object save the steeple of the Old South, which seems almost within arm&rsquo;s
+length. Descending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the
+ponderous white-oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern
+houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the
+materials of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the mansion,
+are still as sound as ever, but, the floors and other interior parts being
+greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole and build a new house
+within the ancient frame-and brickwork. Among other inconveniences of the
+present edifice, mine host mentioned that any jar or motion was apt to shake
+down the dust of ages out of the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that
+beneath it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony where in old
+times it was doubtless the custom of the king&rsquo;s representative to show
+himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up hats with
+stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days the front of the
+Province House looked upon the street, and the whole site now occupied by the
+brick range of stores, as well as the present court-yard, was laid out in
+grass-plats overshadowed by trees and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the
+old aristocratic edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern
+building; at one of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses sewing
+and chatting and laughing, with now and then a careless glance toward the
+balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly
+gentleman above mentioned&mdash;the smack of whose lips had spoken so favorably
+for Mr. Waite&rsquo;s good liquor&mdash;was still lounging in his chair. He
+seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the house who
+might be supposed to have his regular score at the bar, his summer seat at the
+open window and his prescriptive corner at the winter&rsquo;s fireside. Being
+of a sociable aspect, I ventured to address him with a remark calculated to
+draw forth his historical reminiscences, if any such were in his mind, and it
+gratified me to discover that, between memory and tradition, the old gentleman
+was really possessed of some very pleasant gossip about the Province House. The
+portion of his talk which chiefly interested me was the outline of the
+following legend. He professed to have received it at one or two removes from
+an eye-witness, but this derivation, together with the lapse of time, must have
+afforded opportunities for many variations of the narrative; so that,
+despairing of literal and absolute truth, I have not scrupled to make such
+further changes as seemed conducive to the reader&rsquo;s profit and delight.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+At one of the entertainments given at the province-house during the latter part
+of the siege of Boston there passed a scene which has never yet been
+satisfactorily explained. The officers of the British army and the loyal gentry
+of the province, most of whom were collected within the beleaguered town, had
+been invited to a masqued ball, for it was the policy for Sir William Howe to
+hide the distress and danger of the period and the desperate aspect of the
+siege under an ostentation of festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the
+oldest members of the provincial court circle might be believed, was the most
+gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the government. The
+brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with figures that seemed to have
+stepped from the dark canvas of historic portraits or to have flitted forth
+from the magic pages of romance, or at least to have flown hither from one of
+the London theatres without a change of garments. Steeled knights of the
+Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth and high-ruffed ladies of her
+court were mingled with characters of comedy, such as a parti-colored Merry
+Andrew jingling his cap and bells, a Falstaff almost as provocative of laughter
+as his prototype, and a Don Quixote with a bean-pole for a lance and a pot-lid
+for a shield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the broadest merriment was excited by a group of figures ridiculously
+dressed in old regimentals which seemed to have been purchased at a military
+rag-fair or pilfered from some receptacle of the cast-off clothes of both the
+French and British armies. Portions of their attire had probably been worn at
+the siege of Louisburg, and the coats of most recent cut might have been rent
+and tattered by sword, ball or bayonet as long ago as Wolfe&rsquo;s victory.
+One of these worthies&mdash;a tall, lank figure brandishing a rusty sword of
+immense longitude&mdash;purported to be no less a personage than General George
+Washington, and the other principal officers of the American army, such as
+Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented by similar
+scarecrows. An interview in the mock-heroic style between the rebel warriors
+and the British commander-in-chief was received with immense applause, which
+came loudest of all from the loyalists of the colony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, eying these antics
+sternly and scornfully at once with a frown and a bitter smile. It was an old
+man formerly of high station and great repute in the province, and who had been
+a very famous soldier in his day. Some surprise had been expressed that a
+person of Colonel Joliffe&rsquo;s known Whig principles, though now too old to
+take an active part in the contest, should have remained in Boston during the
+siege, and especially that he should consent to show himself in the mansion of
+Sir William Howe. But thither he had come with a fair granddaughter under his
+arm, and there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern old figure,
+the best-sustained character in the masquerade, because so well representing
+the antique spirit of his native land. The other guests affirmed that Colonel
+Joliffe&rsquo;s black puritanical scowl threw a shadow round about him,
+although, in spite of his sombre influence, their gayety continued to blaze
+higher, like&mdash;an ominous comparison&mdash;the flickering brilliancy of a
+lamp which has but a little while to burn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eleven strokes full half an hour ago had pealed from the clock of the Old
+South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new spectacle or
+pageant was about to be exhibited which should put a fitting close to the
+splendid festivities of the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What new jest has Your Excellency in hand?&rdquo; asked the Reverend
+Mather Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had not kept him from the
+entertainment. &ldquo;Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than beseems
+my cloth at your Homeric confabulation with yonder ragamuffin general of the
+rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must throw off my clerical wig
+and band.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not so, good Dr. Byles,&rdquo; answered Sir William Howe; &ldquo;if
+mirth were a crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this
+new foolery, I know no more about it than yourself&mdash;perhaps not so much.
+Honestly, now, doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of some of your
+countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; slyly remarked the granddaughter of Colonel Joliffe,
+whose high spirit had been stung by many taunts against New
+England&mdash;&ldquo;perhaps we are to have a masque of allegorical
+figures&mdash;Victory with trophies from Lexington and Bunker Hill, Plenty with
+her overflowing horn to typify the present abundance in this good town, and
+Glory with a wreath for His Excellency&rsquo;s brow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one of his
+darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard. He was spared
+the necessity of a retort by a singular interruption. A sound of music was
+heard without the house, as if proceeding from a full band of military
+instruments stationed in the street, playing, not such a festal strain as was
+suited to the occasion, but a slow funeral-march. The drums appeared to be
+muffled, and the trumpets poured forth a wailing breath which at once hushed
+the merriment of the auditors, filling all with wonder and some with
+apprehension. The idea occurred to many that either the funeral procession of
+some great personage had halted in front of the province-house, or that a
+corpse in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to be
+borne from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe called in a
+stern voice to the leader of the musicians, who had hitherto enlivened the
+entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies. The man was drum-major to one of
+the British regiments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dighton,&rdquo; demanded the general, &ldquo;what means this foolery?
+Bid your band silence that dead march, or, by my word, they shall have
+sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, sirrah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please, Your Honor,&rdquo; answered the drum-major, whose rubicund
+visage had lost all its color, &ldquo;the fault is none of mine. I and my band
+are all here together, and I question whether there be a man of us that could
+play that march without book. I never heard it but once before, and that was at
+the funeral of his late Majesty, King George II.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure;
+&ldquo;it is the prelude to some masquerading antic. Let it pass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A figure now presented itself, but among the many fantastic masks that were
+dispersed through the apartments none could tell precisely from whence it came.
+It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge and having the aspect of
+a steward or principal domestic in the household of a nobleman or great English
+landholder. This figure advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and,
+throwing both its leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side and looked
+back toward the grand staircase, as if expecting some person to descend. At the
+same time, the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful summons. The eyes
+of Sir William Howe and his guests being directed to the staircase, there
+appeared on the uppermost landing-place, that was discernible from the bottom,
+several personages descending toward the door. The foremost was a man of stern
+visage, wearing a steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap beneath it, a dark cloak
+and huge wrinkled boots that came halfway up his legs. Under his arm was a
+rolled-up banner which seemed to be the banner of England, but strangely rent
+and torn; he had a sword in his right hand and grasped a Bible in his left. The
+next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad ruff,
+over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet and a doublet and hose
+of black satin; he carried a roll of manuscript in his hand. Close behind these
+two came a young man of very striking countenance and demeanor with deep
+thought and contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his
+eye; his garb, like that of his predecessors, was of an antique fashion, and
+there was a stain of blood upon his ruff. In the same group with these were
+three or four others, all men of dignity and evident command, and bearing
+themselves like personages who were accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. It
+was the idea of the beholders that these figures went to join the mysterious
+funeral that had halted in front of the province-house, yet that supposition
+seemed to be contradicted by the air of triumph with which they waved their
+hands as they crossed the threshold and vanished through the portal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the devil&rsquo;s name, what is this?&rdquo; muttered Sir William
+Howe to a gentleman beside him. &ldquo;A procession of the regicide judges of
+King Charles the martyr?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These,&rdquo; said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence almost for the
+first time that evening&mdash;&ldquo;these, if I interpret them aright, are the
+Puritan governors, the rulers of the old original democracy of
+Massachusetts&mdash;Endicott with the banner from which he had torn the symbol
+of subjection, and Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane and Dudley, Haynes, Bellingham
+and Leverett.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his ruff?&rdquo; asked Miss
+Joliffe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because in after-years,&rdquo; answered her grandfather, &ldquo;he laid
+down the wisest head in England upon the block for the principles of
+liberty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will not Your Excellency order out the guard?&rdquo; whispered Lord
+Percy, who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general.
+&ldquo;There may be a plot under this mummery.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tush! we have nothing to fear,&rdquo; carelessly replied Sir William
+Howe. &ldquo;There can be no worse treason in the matter than a jest, and that
+somewhat of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best policy
+would be to laugh it off. See! here come more of these gentry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another group of characters had now partly descended the staircase. The first
+was a venerable and white-bearded patriarch who cautiously felt his way
+downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and stretching forth his
+gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man&rsquo;s shoulder, came a tall
+soldier-like figure equipped with a plumed cap of steel, a bright breastplate
+and a long sword, which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man
+dressed in rich and courtly attire, but not of courtly demeanor; his gait had
+the swinging motion of a seaman&rsquo;s walk, and, chancing to stumble on the
+staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful and was heard to mutter an oath. He was
+followed by a noble-looking personage in a curled wig such as are represented
+in the portraits of Queen Anne&rsquo;s time and earlier, and the breast of his
+coat was decorated with an embroidered star. While advancing to the door he
+bowed to the right hand and to the left in a very gracious and insinuating
+style, but as he crossed the threshold, unlike the early Puritan governors, he
+seemed to wring his hands with sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. Byles,&rdquo; said Sir
+William Howe. &ldquo;What worthies are these?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it please Your Excellency, they lived somewhat before my day,&rdquo;
+answered the doctor; &ldquo;but doubtless our friend the colonel has been hand
+and glove with them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their living faces I never looked upon,&rdquo; said Colonel Joliffe,
+gravely; &ldquo;although I have spoken face to face with many rulers of this
+land, and shall greet yet another with an old man&rsquo;s blessing ere I die.
+But we talk of these figures. I take the venerable patriarch to be Bradstreet,
+the last of the Puritans, who was governor at ninety or thereabouts. The next
+is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, as any New England schoolboy will tell you, and
+therefore the people cast him down from his high seat into a dungeon. Then
+comes Sir William Phipps, shepherd, cooper, sea-captain and governor. May many
+of his countrymen rise as high from as low an origin! Lastly, you saw the
+gracious earl of Bellamont, who ruled us under King William.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what is the meaning of it all?&rdquo; asked Lord Percy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, were I a rebel,&rdquo; said Miss Joliffe, half aloud, &ldquo;I
+might fancy that the ghosts of these ancient governors had been summoned to
+form the funeral procession of royal authority in New England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several other figures were now seen at the turn of the staircase. The one in
+advance had a thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty expression of face, and
+in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was evidently the result both of an
+ambitious spirit and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed not
+incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. A few steps behind came an
+officer in a scarlet and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion old enough to
+have been worn by the duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubicund tinge,
+which, together with the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover
+of the wine-cup and good-fellowship; notwithstanding which tokens, he appeared
+ill at ease, and often glanced around him as if apprehensive of some secret
+mischief. Next came a portly gentleman wearing a coat of shaggy cloth lined
+with silken velvet; he had sense, shrewdness and humor in his face and a folio
+volume under his arm, but his aspect was that of a man vexed and tormented
+beyond all patience and harassed almost to death. He went hastily down, and was
+followed by a dignified person dressed in a purple velvet suit with very rich
+embroidery; his demeanor would have possessed much stateliness, only that a
+grievous fit of the gout compelled him to hobble from stair to stair with
+contortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the
+staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him steadfastly
+until the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, made a gesture of anguish
+and despair and vanished into the outer gloom, whither the funeral music
+summoned him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Governor Belcher&mdash;my old patron&mdash;in his very shape and
+dress!&rdquo; gasped Dr. Byles. &ldquo;This is an awful mockery.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A tedious foolery, rather,&rdquo; said Sir William Howe, with an air of
+indifference. &ldquo;But who were the three that preceded him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Governor Dudley, a cunning politician; yet his craft once brought him to
+a prison,&rdquo; replied Colonel Joliffe. &ldquo;Governor Shute, formerly a
+colonel under Marlborough, and whom the people frightened out of the province,
+and learned Governor Burnett, whom the legislature tormented into a mortal
+fever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Methinks they were miserable men&mdash;these royal governors of
+Massachusetts,&rdquo; observed Miss Joliffe. &ldquo;Heavens! how dim the light
+grows!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which illuminated the staircase now
+burned dim and duskily; so that several figures which passed hastily down the
+stairs and went forth from the porch appeared rather like shadows than persons
+of fleshly substance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir William Howe and his guests stood at the doors of the contiguous apartments
+watching the progress of this singular pageant with various emotions of anger,
+contempt or half-acknowledged fear, but still with an anxious curiosity. The
+shapes which now seemed hastening to join the mysterious procession were
+recognized rather by striking peculiarities of dress or broad characteristics
+of manner than by any perceptible resemblance of features to their prototypes.
+Their faces, indeed, were invariably kept in deep shadow, but Dr. Byles and
+other gentlemen who had long been familiar with the successive rulers of the
+province were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, of Pownall, of Sir Francis
+Bernard and of the well-remembered Hutchinson, thereby confessing that the
+actors, whoever they might be, in this spectral march of governors had
+succeeded in putting on some distant portraiture of the real personages. As
+they vanished from the door, still did these shadows toss their arms into the
+gloom of night with a dread expression of woe. Following the mimic
+representative of Hutchinson came a military figure holding before his face the
+cocked hat which he had taken from his powdered head, but his epaulettes and
+other insignia of rank were those of a general officer, and something in his
+mien reminded the beholders of one who had recently been master of the
+province-house and chief of all the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking-glass!&rdquo; exclaimed Lord
+Percy, turning pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, surely,&rdquo; cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysterically; &ldquo;it
+could not be Gage, or Sir William would have greeted his old comrade in arms.
+Perhaps he will not suffer the next to pass unchallenged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of that be assured, young lady,&rdquo; answered Sir William Howe, fixing
+his eyes with a very marked expression upon the immovable visage of her
+grandfather. &ldquo;I have long enough delayed to pay the ceremonies of a host
+to these departing guests; the next that takes his leave shall receive due
+courtesy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wild and dreary burst of music came through the open door. It seemed as it
+the procession, which had been gradually filling up its ranks, were now about
+to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing trumpets and roll of the
+muffled drums were a call to some loiterer to make haste. Many eyes, by an
+irresistible impulse, were turned upon Sir William Howe, as if it were he whom
+the dreary music summoned to the funeral of departed power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See! here comes the last,&rdquo; whispered Miss Joliffe, pointing her
+tremulous finger to the staircase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A figure had come into view as if descending the stairs, although so dusky was
+the region whence it emerged some of the spectators fancied that they had seen
+this human shape suddenly moulding itself amid the gloom. Downward the figure
+came with a stately and martial tread, and, reaching the lowest stair, was
+observed to be a tall man booted and wrapped in a military cloak, which was
+drawn up around the face so as to meet the napped brim of a laced hat; the
+features, therefore, were completely hidden. But the British officers deemed
+that they had seen that military cloak before, and even recognized the frayed
+embroidery on the collar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which
+protruded from the folds of the cloak and glittered in a vivid gleam of light.
+Apart from these trifling particulars there were characteristics of gait and
+bearing which impelled the wondering guests to glance from the shrouded figure
+to Sir William Howe, as if to satisfy themselves that their host had not
+suddenly vanished from the midst of them. With a dark flush of wrath upon his
+brow, they saw the general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the
+cloak before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Villain, unmuffle yourself!&rdquo; cried he. &ldquo;You pass no
+farther.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The figure, without blenching a hair&rsquo;s-breadth from the sword which was
+pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the cloak
+from about his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators to catch a glimpse
+of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough. The sternness of his
+countenance gave place to a look of wild amazement, if not horror, while he
+recoiled several steps from the figure and let fall his sword upon the floor.
+The martial shape again drew the cloak about his features and passed on, but,
+reaching the threshold with his back toward the spectators, he was seen to
+stamp his foot and shake his clenched hands in the air. It was afterward
+affirmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that selfsame gesture of rage and
+sorrow when for the last time, and as the last royal governor, he passed
+through the portal of the province-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hark! The procession moves,&rdquo; said Miss Joliffe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The music was dying away along the street, and its dismal strains were mingled
+with the knell of midnight from the steeple of the Old South and with the roar
+of artillery which announced that the beleaguered army of Washington had
+intrenched itself upon a nearer height than before. As the deep boom of the
+cannon smote upon his ear Colonel Joliffe raised himself to the full height of
+his aged form and smiled sternly on the British general.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would Your Excellency inquire further into the mystery of the
+pageant?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take care of your gray head!&rdquo; cried Sir William Howe, fiercely,
+though with a quivering lip. &ldquo;It has stood too long on a traitor&rsquo;s
+shoulders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must make haste to chop it off, then,&rdquo; calmly replied the
+colonel, &ldquo;for a few hours longer, and not all the power of Sir William
+Howe, nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall. The
+empire of Britain in this ancient province is at its last gasp to-night; almost
+while I speak it is a dead corpse, and methinks the shadows of the old
+governors are fit mourners at its funeral.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak, and, drawing his
+granddaughter&rsquo;s arm within his own, retired from the last festival that a
+British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts Bay. It was
+supposed that the colonel and the young lady possessed some secret intelligence
+in regard to the mysterious pageant of that night. However this might be, such
+knowledge has never become general. The actors in the scene have vanished into
+deeper obscurity than even that wild Indian hand who scattered the cargoes of
+the tea-ships on the waves and gained a place in history, yet left no names.
+But superstition, among other legends of this mansion, repeats the wondrous
+tale that on the anniversary night of Britain&rsquo;s discomfiture the ghosts
+of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide through the portal of the
+Province House. And last of all comes a figure shrouded in a military cloak,
+tossing his clenched hands into the air and stamping his iron-shod boots upon
+the broad freestone steps with a semblance of feverish despair, but without the
+sound of a foot-tramp.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentleman were hushed, I drew a
+long breath and looked round the room, striving with the best energy of my
+imagination to throw a tinge of romance and historic grandeur over the
+realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar-smoke,
+clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way of visible emblem, I suppose,
+of the nebulous obscurity of his tale. Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were
+woefully disturbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch
+which Mr. Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer. Nor did it add to the
+picturesque appearance of the panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline
+stage was suspended against them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some
+far-descended governor. A stage-driver sat at one of the windows reading a
+penny paper of the day&mdash;the Boston <i>Times</i>&mdash;and presenting a
+figure which could nowise be brought into any picture of &ldquo;Times in
+Boston&rdquo; seventy or a hundred years ago. On the window-seat lay a bundle
+neatly done up in brown paper, the direction of which I had the idle curiosity
+to read: &ldquo;MISS SUSAN HUGGINS, at the PROVINCE HOUSE.&rdquo; A pretty
+chambermaid, no doubt. In truth, it is desperately hard work when we attempt to
+throw the spell of hoar antiquity over localities with which the living world
+and the day that is passing over us have aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the
+stately staircase down which the procession of the old governors had descended,
+and as I emerged through the venerable portal whence their figures had preceded
+me, it gladdened me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. Then, diving through
+the narrow archway, a few strides transported me into the densest throng of
+Washington street.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>
+II.<br/>
+EDWARD RANDOLPH&rsquo;S PORTRAIT</h2>
+
+<p>
+The old legendary guest of the Province House abode in my remembrance from
+midsummer till January. One idle evening last winter, confident that he would
+be found in the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I resolved to pay him another
+visit, hoping to deserve well of my country by snatching from oblivion some
+else unheard-of fact of history. The night was chill and raw, and rendered
+boisterous by almost a gale of wind which whistled along Washington street,
+causing the gaslights to flare and flicker within the lamps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I hurried onward my fancy was busy with a comparison between the present
+aspect of the street and that which it probably wore when the British governors
+inhabited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick edifices in those times
+were few till a succession of destructive fires had swept, and swept again, the
+wooden dwellings and warehouses from the most populous quarters of the town.
+The buildings stood insulated and independent, not, as now, merging their
+separate existences into connected ranges with a front of tiresome identity,
+but each possessing features of its own, as if the owner&rsquo;s individual
+taste had shaped it, and the whole presenting a picturesque irregularity the
+absence of which is hardly compensated by any beauties of our modern
+architecture. Such a scene, dimly vanishing from the eye by the ray of here and
+there a tallow candle glimmering through the small panes of scattered windows,
+would form a sombre contrast to the street as I beheld it with the gaslights
+blazing from corner to corner, flaming within the shops and throwing a noonday
+brightness through the huge plates of glass. But the black, lowering sky, as I
+turned my eyes upward, wore, doubtless, the same visage as when it frowned upon
+the ante-Revolutionary New Englanders. The wintry blast had the same shriek
+that was familiar to their ears. The Old South Church, too, still pointed its
+antique spire into the darkness and was lost between earth and heaven, and, as
+I passed, its clock, which had warned so many generations how transitory was
+their lifetime, spoke heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to myself.
+&ldquo;Only seven o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; thought I. &ldquo;My old friend&rsquo;s
+legends will scarcely kill the hours &rsquo;twixt this and bedtime.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the courtyard, the confined
+precincts of which were made visible by a lantern over the portal of the
+Province House. On entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected, the old
+tradition-monger seated by a special good fire of anthracite, compelling clouds
+of smoke from a corpulent cigar. He recognized me with evident pleasure, for my
+rare properties as a patient listener invariably make me a favorite with
+elderly gentlemen and ladies of narrative propensites. Drawing a chair to the
+fire, I desired mine host to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey-punch,
+which was speedily prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom,
+a dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of nutmeg
+strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together, my legendary friend made
+himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I rejoiced at the oddity of the
+name, because it gave his image and character a sort of individuality in my
+conception. The old gentleman&rsquo;s draught acted as a solvent upon his
+memory, so that it overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead
+people and traits of ancient manners, some of which were childish as a
+nurse&rsquo;s lullaby, while others might have been worth the notice of the
+grave historian. Nothing impressed me more than a story of a black mysterious
+picture which used to hang in one of the chambers of the Province House,
+directly above the room where we were now sitting. The following is as correct
+a version of the fact as the reader would be likely to obtain from any other
+source, although, assuredly, it has a tinge of romance approaching to the
+marvellous.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+In one of the apartments of the province-house there was long preserved an
+ancient picture the frame of which was as black as ebony, and the canvas itself
+so dark with age, damp and smoke that not a touch of the painter&rsquo;s art
+could be discerned. Time had thrown an impenetrable veil over it and left to
+tradition and fable and conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed.
+During the rule of many successive governors it had hung, by prescriptive and
+undisputed right, over the mantel piece of the same chamber, and it still kept
+its place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the administration of the
+province on the departure of Sir Francis Bernard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lieutenant-governor sat one afternoon resting his head against the carved
+back of his stately arm-chair and gazing up thoughtfully at the void blackness
+of the picture. It was scarcely a time for such inactive musing, when affairs
+of the deepest moment required the ruler&rsquo;s decision; for within that very
+hour Hutchinson had received intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet
+bringing three regiments from Halifax to overawe the insubordination of the
+people. These troops awaited his permission to occupy the fortress of Castle
+William and the town itself, yet, instead of affixing his signature to an
+official order, there sat the lieutenant-governor so carefully scrutinizing the
+black waste of canvas that his demeanor attracted the notice of two young
+persons who attended him. One, wearing a military dress of buff, was his
+kinsman, Francis Lincoln, the provincial captain of Castle William; the other,
+who sat on a low stool beside his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece.
+She was clad entirely in white&mdash;a pale, ethereal creature who, though a
+native of New England, had been educated abroad and seemed not merely a
+stranger from another clime, but almost a being from another world. For several
+years, until left an orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny Italy, and
+there had acquired a taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and painting which she
+found few opportunities of gratifying in the undecorated dwellings of the
+colonial gentry. It was said that the early productions of her own pencil
+exhibited no inferior genius, though perhaps the rude atmosphere of New England
+had cramped her hand and dimmed the glowing colors of her fancy. But, observing
+her uncle&rsquo;s steadfast gaze, which appeared to search through the mist of
+years to discover the subject of the picture, her curiosity was excited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it known, my dear uncle,&rdquo; inquired she, &ldquo;what this old
+picture once represented? Possibly, could it be made visible, it might prove a
+masterpiece of some great artist; else why has it so long held such a
+conspicuous place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom&mdash;for he was as attentive to all
+the humors and caprices of Alice as if she had been his own best-beloved
+child&mdash;did not immediately reply, the young captain of Castle William took
+that office upon himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;has been an heirloom in the province-house from time immemorial. As to
+the painter, I can tell you nothing; but if half the stories told of it be
+true, not one of the great Italian masters has ever produced so marvellous a
+piece of work as that before you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and fantasies
+which, as it was impossible to refute them by ocular demonstration, had grown
+to be articles of popular belief in reference to this old picture. One of the
+wildest, and at the same time the best-accredited, accounts stated it to be an
+original and authentic portrait of the evil one, taken at a witch-meeting near
+Salem, and that its strong and terrible resemblance had been confirmed by
+several of the confessing wizards and witches at their trial in open court. It
+was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the
+blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public calamity
+to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for instance, had beheld this
+ominous apparition on the eve of General Abercrombie&rsquo;s shameful and
+bloody defeat under the walls of Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the
+province-house had caught glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at
+morning or evening twilight, or in the depths of night while raking up the fire
+that glimmered on the hearth beneath, although, if any were, bold enough to
+hold a torch before the picture, it would appear as black and undistinguishable
+as ever. The oldest inhabitant of Boston recollected that his father&mdash;in
+whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out of sight&mdash;had once looked
+upon it, but would never suffer himself to be questioned as to the face which
+was there represented. In connection with such stories, it was remarkable that
+over the top of the frame there were some ragged remnants of black silk,
+indicating that a veil had formerly hung down before the picture until the
+duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it. But, after all, it was the
+most singular part of the affair that so many of the pompous governors of
+Massachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to remain in the
+state-chamber of the province-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some of these fables are really awful,&rdquo; observed Alice Vane, who
+had occasionally shuddered as well as smiled while her cousin spoke. &ldquo;It
+would be almost worth while to wipe away the black surface of the canvas, since
+the original picture can hardly be so formidable as those which fancy paints
+instead of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But would it be possible,&rdquo; inquired her cousin,&rdquo; to restore
+this dark picture to its pristine hues?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Such arts are known in Italy,&rdquo; said Alice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lieutenant-governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood, and
+listened with a smile to the conversation of his young relatives. Yet his voice
+had something peculiar in its tones when he undertook the explanation of the
+mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you are
+so fond,&rdquo; remarked he, &ldquo;but my antiquarian researches have long
+since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture&mdash;if picture it
+can be called&mdash;which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the face
+of the long-buried man whom it once represented. It was the portrait of Edward
+Randolph, the founder of this house, a person famous in the history of New
+England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of that Edward Randolph,&rdquo; exclaimed Captain Lincoln, &ldquo;who
+obtained the repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our
+forefathers had enjoyed almost democratic privileges&mdash;he that was styled
+the arch-enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation as
+the destroyer of our liberties?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the same Randolph,&rdquo; answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in
+his chair. &ldquo;It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular
+odium.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our annals tell us,&rdquo; continued the captain of Castle William,
+&ldquo;that the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went and
+wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its effect was
+seen, likewise, in the manner of his death. They say, too, that the inward
+misery of that curse worked itself outward and was visible on the wretched
+man&rsquo;s countenance, making it too horrible to be looked upon. If so, and
+if this picture truly represented his aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of
+blackness has gathered over it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how little
+of historic truth lies at the bottom,&rdquo; said the lieutenant-governor.
+&ldquo;As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too implicit
+credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who&mdash;I must say it, though
+some of his blood runs in my veins&mdash;has filled our early history with old
+women&rsquo;s tales as fanciful and extravagant as those of Greece or
+Rome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; whispered Alice Vane, &ldquo;may not such fables have a
+moral? And methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not
+without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the province-house.
+When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were well that they should be
+reminded of the awful weight of a people&rsquo;s curse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a moment at his niece, as if her
+girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own breast which all his
+policy or principles could not entirely subdue. He knew, indeed, that Alice, in
+spite of her foreign education, retained the native sympathies of a New England
+girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peace, silly child!&rdquo; cried he, at last, more harshly than he had
+ever before addressed the gentle Alice. &ldquo;The rebuke of a king; is more to
+be dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude.&mdash;Captain
+Lincoln, it is decided: the fortress of Castle William must be occupied by the
+royal troops. The two remaining regiments shall be billeted in the town or
+encamped upon the Common. It is time, after years of tumult, and almost
+rebellion, that His Majesty&rsquo;s government should have a wall of strength
+about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Trust, sir&mdash;trust yet a while to the loyalty of the people,&rdquo;
+said Captain Lincoln, &ldquo;nor teach them that they can ever be on other
+terms with British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as when they fought side
+by side through the French war. Do not convert the streets of your native town
+into a camp. Think twice before you give up old Castle William, the key of the
+province, into other keeping than that of true-born New Englanders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Young man, it is decided,&rdquo; repeated Hutchinson, rising from his
+chair. &ldquo;A British officer will be in attendance this evening to receive
+the necessary instructions for the disposal of the troops. Your presence also
+will be required. Till then, farewell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these words the lieutenant-governor hastily left the room, while Alice and
+her cousin more slowly followed, whispering together, and once pausing to
+glance back at the mysterious picture. The captain of Castle William fancied
+that the girl&rsquo;s air and mien were such as might have belonged to one of
+those spirits of fable&mdash;fairies or creatures of a more antique
+mythology&mdash;who sometimes mingled their agency with mortal affairs, half in
+caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal or woe. As he held the door for
+her to pass Alice beckoned to the picture and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come forth, dark and evil shape!&rdquo; cried she. &ldquo;It is thine
+hour.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson sat in the same chamber where the
+foregoing scene had occurred, surrounded by several persons whose various
+interests had summoned them together. There were the selectmen of
+Boston&mdash;plain patriarchal fathers of the people, excellent representatives
+of the old puritanical founders whose sombre strength had stamped so deep an
+impress upon the New England character. Contrasting with these were one or two
+members of council, richly dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered
+waistcoats and other magnificence of the time, and making a somewhat
+ostentatious display of courtier-like ceremonial. In attendance, likewise, was
+a major of the British army, awaiting the lieutenant-governor&rsquo;s orders
+for the landing of the troops, which still remained on board the transports.
+The captain of Castle William stood beside Hutchinson&rsquo;s chair, with
+folded arms, glancing rather haughtily at the British officer by whom he was
+soon to be superseded in his command. On a table in the centre of the chamber
+stood a branched silver candlestick, throwing down the glow of half a dozen
+waxlights upon a paper apparently ready for the lieutenant-governor&rsquo;s
+signature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one of the window-curtains, which
+fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen the white drapery of a
+lady&rsquo;s robe. It may appear strange that Alice Vane should have been there
+at such a time, but there was something so childlike, so wayward, in her
+singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, that her presence did not
+surprise the few who noticed it. Meantime, the chairman of the selectmen was
+addressing to the lieutenant-governor a long and solemn protest against the
+reception of the British troops into the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if Your Honor,&rdquo; concluded this excellent but somewhat prosy
+old gentleman, &ldquo;shall see fit to persist in bringing these mercenary
+sworders and musketeers into our quiet streets, not on our heads be the
+responsibility. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one drop of blood
+be shed, that blood shall be an eternal stain upon Your Honor&rsquo;s memory.
+You, sir, have written with an able pen the deeds of our forefathers; the more
+to be desired is it, therefore, that yourself should deserve honorable mention
+as a true patriot and upright ruler when your own doings shall be written down
+in history.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural desire to stand well in
+the annals of my country,&rdquo; replied Hutchinson, controlling his impatience
+into courtesy, &ldquo;nor know I any better method of attaining that end than
+by withstanding the merely temporary spirit of mischief which, with your
+pardon, seems to have infected older men than myself. Would you have me wait
+till the mob shall sack the province-house as they did my private mansion?
+Trust me, sir, the time may come when you will be glad to flee for protection
+to the king&rsquo;s banner, the raising of which is now so distasteful to
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the British major, who was impatiently expecting the
+lieutenant-governor&rsquo;s orders. &ldquo;The demagogues of this province have
+raised the devil, and cannot lay him again. We will exorcise him in God&rsquo;s
+name and the king&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you meddle with the devil, take care of his claws,&rdquo; answered
+the captain of Castle William, stirred by the taunt against his countrymen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Craving your pardon, young sir,&rdquo; said the venerable selectman,
+&ldquo;let not an evil spirit enter into your words. We will strive against the
+oppressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers would have done. Like
+them, moreover, we will submit to whatever lot a wise Providence may send
+us&mdash;always after our own best exertions to amend it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there peep forth the devil&rsquo;s claws!&rdquo; muttered
+Hutchinson, who well understood the nature of Puritan submission. &ldquo;This
+matter shall be expedited forthwith. When there shall be a sentinel at every
+corner and a court of guard before the town-house, a loyal gentleman may
+venture to walk abroad. What to me is the outcry of a mob in this remote
+province of the realm? The king is my master, and England is my country; upheld
+by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the rabble and defy them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He snatched a pen and was about to affix his signature to the paper that lay on
+the table, when the captain of Castle William placed his hand upon his
+shoulder. The freedom of the action, so contrary to the ceremonious respect
+which was then considered due to rank and dignity, awakened general surprise,
+and in none more than in the lieutenant-governor himself. Looking angrily up,
+he perceived that his young relative was pointing his finger to the opposite
+wall. Hutchinson&rsquo;s eye followed the signal, and he saw what had hitherto
+been unobserved&mdash;that a black silk curtain was suspended before the
+mysterious picture, so as completely to conceal it. His thoughts immediately
+recurred to the scene of the preceding afternoon, and in his surprise, confused
+by indistinct emotions, yet sensible that his niece must have had an agency in
+this phenomenon, he called loudly upon her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alice! Come hither, Alice!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner had he spoken than Alice Vane glided from her station, and, pressing
+one hand across her eyes, with the other snatched away the sable curtain that
+concealed the portrait. An exclamation of surprise burst from every beholder,
+but the lieutenant-governor&rsquo;s voice had a tone of horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Heaven!&rdquo; said he, in a low inward murmur, speaking rather to
+himself than to those around him; &ldquo;if the spirit of Edward Randolph were
+to appear among us from the place of torment, he could not wear more of the
+terrors of hell upon his face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For some wise end,&rdquo; said the aged selectman, solemnly, &ldquo;hath
+Providence scattered away the mist of years that had so long hid this dreadful
+effigy. Until this hour no living man hath seen what we behold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste of canvas
+now appeared a visible picture-still dark, indeed, in its hues and shadings,
+but thrown forward in strong relief. It was a half-length figure of a gentleman
+in a rich but very old-fashioned dress of embroidered velvet, with a broad ruff
+and a beard, and wearing a hat the brim of which overshadowed his forehead.
+Beneath this cloud the eyes had a peculiar glare which was almost lifelike. The
+whole portrait started so distinctly out of the background that it had the
+effect of a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and
+awe-stricken spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an
+idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt and exposed to
+the bitter hatred and laughter and withering scorn of a vast surrounding
+multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by
+the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had come forth upon
+the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of
+immemorial years, had been all the time acquiring an intenser depth and
+darkness of expression, till now it gloomed forth again and threw its evil omen
+over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the
+portrait of Edward Randolph as he appeared when a people&rsquo;s curse had
+wrought its influence upon his nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Twould drive me mad, that awful face,&rdquo; said Hutchinson, who
+seemed fascinated by the contemplation of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be warned, then,&rdquo; whispered Alice. &ldquo;He trampled on a
+people&rsquo;s rights. Behold his punishment, and avoid a crime like
+his.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lieutenant-governor actually trembled for an instant, but, exerting his
+energy&mdash;which was not, however, his most characteristic feature&mdash;he
+strove to shake off the spell of Randolph&rsquo;s countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Girl,&rdquo; cried he, laughing bitterly, as he turned to Alice,
+&ldquo;have you brought hither your painter&rsquo;s art, your Italian spirit of
+intrigue, your tricks of stage-effect, and think to influence the councils of
+rulers and the affairs of nations by such shallow contrivances? See
+here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stay yet a while,&rdquo; said the selectman as Hutchinson again snatched
+the pen; &ldquo;for if ever mortal man received a warning from a tormented
+soul, Your Honor is that man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Away!&rdquo; answered Hutchinson, fiercely. &ldquo;Though yonder
+senseless picture cried &lsquo;Forbear!rsquo; it should not move me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face&mdash;which seemed at that
+moment to intensify the horror of its miserable and wicked look&mdash;he
+scrawled on the paper, in characters that betokened it a deed of desperation,
+the name of Thomas Hutchinson. Then, it is said, he shuddered, as if that
+signature had granted away his salvation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is done,&rdquo; said he, and placed his hand upon his brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May Heaven forgive the deed!&rdquo; said the soft, sad accents of Alice
+Vane, like the voice of a good spirit flitting away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When morning came, there was a stifled whisper through the household, and
+spreading thence about the town, that the dark mysterious picture had started
+from the wall and spoken face to face with Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson. If
+such a miracle had been wrought, however, no traces of it remained behind; for
+within the antique frame nothing could be discerned save the impenetrable cloud
+which had covered the canvas since the memory of man. If the figure had,
+indeed, stepped forth, it had fled back, spirit-like, at the day-dawn, and
+hidden itself behind a century&rsquo;s obscurity. The truth probably was that
+Alice Vane&rsquo;s secret for restoring the hues of the picture had merely
+effected a temporary renovation. But those who in that brief interval had
+beheld the awful visage of Edward Randolph desired no second glance, and ever
+afterward trembled at the recollection of the scene, as if an evil spirit had
+appeared visibly among them. And, as for Hutchinson, when, far over the ocean,
+his dying-hour drew on, he gasped for breath and complained that he was choking
+with the blood of the Boston Massacre, and Francis Lincoln, the former captain
+of Castle William, who was standing at his bedside, perceived a likeness in his
+frenzied look to that of Edward Randolph. Did his broken spirit feel at that
+dread hour the tremendous burden of a people&rsquo;s curse?
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+At the conclusion of this miraculous legend I inquired of mine host whether the
+picture still remained in the chamber over our heads, but Mr. Tiffany informed
+me that it had long since been removed, and was supposed to be hidden in some
+out-of-the-way corner of the New England Museum. Perchance some curious
+antiquary may light upon it there, and, with the assistance of Mr. Howorth, the
+picture-cleaner, may supply a not unnecessary proof of the authenticity of the
+facts here set down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the progress of the story a storm had been gathering abroad and raging
+and rattling so loudly in the upper regions of the Province House that it
+seemed as if all the old governors and great men were running riot above stairs
+while Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them below. In the course of generations,
+when many people have lived and died in an ancient house, the whistling of the
+wind through its crannies and the creaking of its beams and rafters become
+strangely like the tones of the human voice, or thundering laughter, or heavy
+footsteps treading the deserted chambers. It is as if the echoes of half a
+century were revived. Such were the ghostly sounds that roared and murmured in
+our ears when I took leave of the circle round the fireside of the Province
+House and, plunging down the doorsteps, fought my way homeward against a
+drifting snow-storm.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>
+III.<br/>
+LADY ELEANORE&rsquo;S MANTLE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Mine excellent friend the landlord of the Province House was pleased the other
+evening to invite Mr. Tiffany and myself to an oyster-supper. This slight mark
+of respect and gratitude, as he handsomely observed, was far less than the
+ingenious tale-teller, and I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had
+fairly earned by the public notice which our joint lucubrations had attracted
+to his establishment. Many a cigar had been smoked within his premises, many a
+glass of wine or more potent <i>aqua vit&aelig;</i> had been quaffed, many a
+dinner had been eaten, by curious strangers who, save for the fortunate
+conjunction of Mr. Tiffany and me, would never have ventured through that
+darksome avenue which gives access to the historic precincts of the Province
+House. In short, if any credit be due to the courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas
+Waite, we had brought his forgotten mansion almost as effectually into public
+view as if we had thrown down the vulgar range of shoe-shops and dry-good
+stores which hides its aristocratic front from Washington street. It may be
+unadvisable, however, to speak too loudly of the increased custom of the house,
+lest Mr. Waite should find it difficult to renew the lease on so favorable
+terms as heretofore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. Tiffany nor myself felt any
+scruple in doing full justice to the good things that were set before us. If
+the feast were less magnificent than those same panelled walls had witnessed in
+a bygone century; if mine host presided with somewhat less of state than might
+have befitted a successor of the royal governors; if the guests made a less
+imposing show than the bewigged and powdered and embroidered dignitaries who
+erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table and now sleep within their armorial
+tombs on Copp&rsquo;s Hill or round King&rsquo;s Chapel,&mdash;yet never, I may
+boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the province-house
+from Queen Anne&rsquo;s days to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered more
+interesting by the presence of a venerable personage whose own actual
+reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe, and even supplied him
+with a doubtful anecdote or two of Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and
+now all but extinguished, class whose attachment to royalty, and to the
+colonial institutions and customs that were connected with it, had never
+yielded to the democratic heresies of after-times. The young queen of Britain
+has not a more loyal subject in her realm&mdash;perhaps not one who would kneel
+before her throne with such reverential love&mdash;as this old grandsire whose
+head has whitened beneath the mild sway of the republic which still in his
+mellower moments he terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices so obstinate have not
+made him an ungentle or impracticable companion. If the truth must be told, the
+life of the aged loyalist has been of such a scrambling and unsettled
+character&mdash;he has had so little choice of friends and been so often
+destitute of any&mdash;that I doubt whether he would refuse a cup of kindness
+with either Oliver Cromwell or John Hancock, to say nothing of any democrat now
+upon the stage. In another paper of this series I may perhaps give the reader a
+closer glimpse of his portrait.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our host in due season uncorked a bottle of Madeira of such exquisite perfume
+and admirable flavor that he surely must have discovered it in an ancient bin
+down deep beneath the deepest cellar where some jolly old butler stored away
+the governor&rsquo;s choicest wine and forgot to reveal the secret on his
+death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost and a libation to his memory! This
+precious liquor was imbibed by Mr. Tiffany with peculiar zest, and after
+sipping the third glass it was his pleasure to give us one of the oddest
+legends which he had yet raked from the storehouse where he keeps such matters.
+With some suitable adornments from my own fancy, it ran pretty much as follows.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government of Massachusetts
+Bay&mdash;now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago&mdash;a young lady of rank
+and fortune arrived from England to claim his protection as her guardian. He
+was her distant relative, but the nearest who had survived the gradual
+extinction of her family; so that no more eligible shelter could be found for
+the rich and high-born Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe than within the province-house
+of a Transatlantic colony. The consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as
+a mother to her childhood, and was now anxious to receive her in the hope that
+a beautiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril from the
+primitive society of New England than amid the artifices and corruptions of a
+court. If either the governor or his lady had especially consulted their own
+comfort, they would probably have sought to devolve the responsibility on other
+hands, since with some noble and splendid traits of character Lady Eleanore was
+remarkable for a harsh, unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her
+hereditary and personal advantages, which made her almost incapable of control.
+Judging from many traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar temper was hardly less
+than a monomania; or if the acts which it inspired were those of a sane person,
+it seemed due from Providence that pride so sinful should be followed by as
+severe a retribution. That tinge of the marvellous which is thrown over so many
+of these half-forgotten legends has probably imparted an additional wildness to
+the strange story of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at Newport, whence Lady
+Eleanore was conveyed to Boston in the governor&rsquo;s coach, attended by a
+small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage, with its four
+black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled through Cornhill surrounded
+by the prancing steeds of half a dozen cavaliers with swords dangling to their
+stirrups and pistols at their holsters. Through the large glass windows of the
+coach, as it rolled along, the people could discern the figure of Lady
+Eleanore, strangely combining an almost queenly stateliness with the grace and
+beauty of a maiden in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the
+ladies of the province that their fair rival was indebted for much of the
+irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress&mdash;an
+embroidered mantle&mdash;which had been wrought by the most skilful artist in
+London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the present
+occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress, being clad in a
+riding-habit of velvet which would have appeared stiff and ungraceful on any
+other form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade came to a
+pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced the province-house
+from the public street. It was an awkward coincidence that the bell of the Old
+South was just then tolling for a funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome peal
+with which it was customary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers,
+Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if calamity had
+come embodied in her beautiful person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A very great disrespect!&rdquo; exclaimed Captain Langford, an English
+officer who had recently brought despatches to Governor Shute. &ldquo;The
+funeral should have been deferred lest Lady Eleanore&rsquo;s spirits be
+affected by such a dismal welcome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With your pardon, sir,&rdquo; replied Dr. Clarke, a physician and a
+famous champion of the popular party, &ldquo;whatever the heralds may pretend,
+a dead beggar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers high
+privileges.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These remarks-were interchanged while the speakers waited a passage through the
+crowd which had gathered on each side of the gateway, leaving an open avenue to
+the portal of the province-house. A black slave in livery now leaped from
+behind the coach and threw open the door, while at the same moment Governor
+Shute descended the flight of steps from his mansion to assist Lady Eleanore in
+alighting. But the governor&rsquo;s stately approach was anticipated in a
+manner that excited general astonishment. A pale young man with his black hair
+all in disorder rushed from the throng and prostrated himself beside the coach,
+thus offering his person as a footstool for Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe to tread
+upon. She held back an instant, yet with an expression as if doubting whether
+the young man were worthy to bear the weight of her footstep rather than
+dissatisfied to receive such awful reverence from a fellow-mortal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Up, sir!&rdquo; said the governor, sternly, at the same time lifting his
+cane over the intruder. &ldquo;What means the Bedlamite by this freak?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; answered Lady Eleanore, playfully, but with more scorn than
+pity in her tone; &ldquo;Your Excellency shall not strike him. When men seek
+only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily
+granted&mdash;and so well deserved!&rdquo; Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam
+on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form and extended her hand to
+meet that of the governor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a brief interval during which Lady Eleanore retained this attitude,
+and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of aristocracy and hereditary
+pride trampling on human sympathies and the kindred of nature than these two
+figures presented at that moment. Yet the spectators were so smitten with her
+beauty, and so essential did pride seem to the existence of such a creature,
+that they gave a simultaneous acclamation of applause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is this insolent young fellow?&rdquo; inquired Captain Langford, who
+still remained beside Dr. Clarke. &ldquo;If he be in his senses, his
+impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be secured
+from further inconvenience by his confinement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His name is Jervase Helwyse,&rdquo; answered the doctor&mdash;&ldquo;a
+youth of no birth or fortune, or other advantages save the mind and soul that
+nature gave him; and, being secretary to our colonial agent in London, it was
+his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved her, and her
+scorn has driven him mad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was mad so to aspire,&rdquo; observed the English officer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It may be so,&rdquo; said Dr. Clarke, frowning as he spoke; &ldquo;but I
+tell you, sir, I could wellnigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if no
+signal humiliation overtake this lady who now treads so haughtily into yonder
+mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our common nature,
+which envelops all human souls; see if that nature do not assert its claim over
+her in some mode that shall bring her level with the lowest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried Captain Langford, indignantly&mdash;&ldquo;neither
+in life nor when they lay her with her ancestors.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not many days afterward the governor gave a ball in honor of Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony received invitations, which were
+distributed to their residences far and near by messengers on horseback bearing
+missives sealed with all the formality of official despatches. In obedience to
+the summons, there was a general gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the
+wide door of the province-house had seldom given admittance to more numerous
+and honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore&rsquo;s ball. Without
+much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed splendid, for,
+according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone in rich silks and
+satins outspread over wide-projecting hoops, and the gentlemen glittered in
+gold embroidery laid unsparingly upon the purple or scarlet or sky-blue velvet
+which was the material of their coats and waistcoats. The latter article of
+dress was of great importance, since it enveloped the wearer&rsquo;s body
+nearly to the knees and was perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole
+year&rsquo;s income in golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste of the
+present day&mdash;a taste symbolic of a deep change in the whole system of
+society&mdash;would look upon almost any of those gorgeous figures as
+ridiculous, although that evening the guests sought their reflections in the
+pier-glasses and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd.
+What a pity that one of the stately mirrors has not preserved a picture of the
+scene which by the very traits that were so transitory might have taught us
+much that would be worth knowing and remembering!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us some faint
+idea of a garment already noticed in this legend&mdash;the Lady
+Eleanore&rsquo;s embroidered mantle, which the gossips whispered was invested
+with magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace to her figure each
+time that she put it on! Idle fancy as it is, this mysterious mantle has thrown
+an awe around my image of her, partly from its fabled virtues and partly
+because it was the handiwork of a dying woman, and perchance owed the fantastic
+grace of its conception to the delirium of approaching death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe stood
+apart from the mob of guests, insulating herself within a small and
+distinguished circle to whom she accorded a more cordial favor than to the
+general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance vividly over the scene,
+bringing out its brilliant points in strong relief, but she gazed carelessly,
+and with now and then an expression of weariness or scorn tempered with such
+feminine grace that her auditors scarcely perceived the moral deformity of
+which it was the utterance. She beheld the spectacle not with vulgar ridicule,
+as disdaining to be pleased with the provincial mockery of a court-festival,
+but with the deeper scorn of one whose spirit held itself too high to
+participate in the enjoyment of other human souls. Whether or no the
+recollections of those who saw her that evening were influenced by the strange
+events with which she was subsequently connected, so it was that her figure
+ever after recurred to them as marked by something wild and unnatural, although
+at the time the general whisper was of her exceeding beauty and of the
+indescribable charm which her mantle threw around her. Some close observers,
+indeed, detected a feverish flush and alternate paleness of countenance, with a
+corresponding flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or twice a painful and
+helpless betrayal of lassitude, as if she were on the point of sinking to the
+ground. Then, with a nervous shudder, she seemed to arouse her energies, and
+threw some bright and playful yet half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation.
+There was so strange a characteristic in her manners and sentiments that it
+astonished every right-minded listener, till, looking in her face, a lurking
+and incomprehensible glance and smile perplexed them with doubts both as to her
+seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe&rsquo;s circle grew
+smaller, till only four gentlemen remained in it. These were Captain Langford,
+the English officer before mentioned; a Virginian planter who had come to
+Massachusetts on some political errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, the
+grandson of a British earl; and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor
+Shute, whose obsequiousness had won a sort of tolerance from Lady Eleanore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At different periods of the evening the liveried servants of the province-house
+passed among the guests bearing huge trays of refreshments and French and
+Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, who refused to wet her beautiful lips
+even with a bubble of champagne, had sunk back into a large damask chair,
+apparently overwearied either with the excitement of the scene or its tedium;
+and while, for an instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter and music, a
+young man stole forward and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his
+hand on which was a chased silver goblet filled to the brim with wine, which he
+offered as reverentially as to a crowned queen&mdash;or, rather, with the awful
+devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol. Conscious that some one
+touched her robe, Lady Eleanore started, and unclosed her eyes upon the pale,
+wild features and dishevelled hair of Jervase Helwyse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you haunt me thus?&rdquo; said she, in a languid tone, but with a
+kindlier feeling than she ordinarily permitted herself to express. &ldquo;They
+tell me that I have done you harm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven knows if that be so,&rdquo; replied the young man, solemnly.
+&ldquo;But, Lady Eleanore, in requital of that harm, if such there be, and for
+your own earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of this holy
+wine and then to pass the goblet round among the guests. And this shall be a
+symbol that you have not sought to withdraw yourself from the chain of human
+sympathies, which whoso would shake off must keep company with fallen
+angels.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental vessel?&rdquo;
+exclaimed the Episcopal clergyman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This question drew the notice of the guests to the silver cup, which was
+recognized as appertaining to the communion-plate of the Old South Church, and,
+for aught that could be known, it was brimming over with the consecrated wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps it is poisoned,&rdquo; half whispered the governor&rsquo;s
+secretary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pour it down the villain&rsquo;s throat!&rdquo; cried the Virginian,
+fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Turn him out of the house!&rdquo; cried Captain Langford, seizing
+Jervase Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder that the sacramental cup was
+overturned and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore&rsquo;s mantle.
+&ldquo;Whether knave, fool or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the fellow
+should go at large.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm,&rdquo; said Lady Eleanore,
+with a faint and weary smile. &ldquo;Take him out of my sight, if such be your
+pleasure, for I can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at him, whereas,
+in all decency and conscience, it would become me to weep for the mischief I
+have wrought.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But while the bystanders were attempting to lead away the unfortunate young man
+he broke from them and with a wild, impassioned earnestness offered a new and
+equally strange petition to Lady Eleanore. It was no other than that she should
+throw off the mantle, which while he pressed the silver cup of wine upon her
+she had drawn more closely around her form, so as almost to shroud herself
+within it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cast it from you,&rdquo; exclaimed Jervase Helwyse, clasping his hands
+in an agony of entreaty. &ldquo;It may not yet be too late. Give the accursed
+garment to the flames.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the rich folds of the
+embroidered mantle over her head in such a fashion as to give a completely new
+aspect to her beautiful face, which, half hidden, half revealed, seemed to
+belong to some being of mysterious character and purposes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Farewell, Jervase Helwyse!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Keep my image in your
+remembrance as you behold it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas, lady!&rdquo; he replied, in a tone no longer wild, but sad as a
+funeral-bell; &ldquo;we must meet shortly when your face may wear another
+aspect, and that shall be the image that must abide within me.&rdquo; He made
+no more resistance to the violent efforts of the gentlemen and servants who
+almost dragged him out of the apartment and dismissed him roughly from the iron
+gate of the province-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Langford, who had been very active in this affair, was returning to the
+presence of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he encountered the physician, Dr.
+Clarke, with whom he had held some casual talk on the day of her arrival. The
+doctor stood apart, separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the room, but
+eying her with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him
+credit for the discovery of some deep secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly
+maiden,&rdquo; said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician&rsquo;s hidden
+knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God forbid!&rdquo; answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave smile; &ldquo;and
+if you be wise, you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who
+shall be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder stands the
+governor, and I have a word or two for his private ear. Good-night!&rdquo; He
+accordingly advanced to Governor Shute and addressed him in so low a tone that
+none of the bystanders could catch a word of what he said, although the sudden
+change of His Excellency&rsquo;s hitherto cheerful visage betokened that the
+communication could be of no agreeable import. A very few moments afterward it
+was announced to the guests that an unforeseen circumstance rendered it
+necessary to put a premature close to the festival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ball at the province-house supplied a topic of conversation for the
+colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might still longer
+have been the general theme, only that a subject of all-engrossing interest
+thrust it for a time from the public recollection. This was the appearance of a
+dreadful epidemic which in that age, and long before and afterward, was wont to
+slay its hundreds and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion
+of which we speak it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that
+it has left its traces&mdash;its pitmarks, to use an appropriate
+figure&mdash;on the history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown
+into confusion by its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the
+disease seemed to confine itself to the higher circles of society, selecting
+its victims from among the proud, the well-born and the wealthy, entering
+unabashed into stately chambers and lying down with the slumberers in silken
+beds. Some of the most distinguished guests of the province-house&mdash;even
+those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her
+favor&mdash;were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was noticed with an
+ungenerous bitterness of feeling that the four gentlemen&mdash;the Virginian,
+the British officer, the young clergyman and the governor&rsquo;s
+secretary&mdash;who had been her most devoted attendants on the evening of the
+ball were the foremost on whom the plague-stroke fell. But the disease,
+pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be exclusively a prerogative of
+aristocracy. Its red brand was no longer conferred like a noble&rsquo;s star or
+an order of knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow and crooked
+streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome dwellings and laid its hand of
+death upon the artisans and laboring classes of the town. It compelled rich and
+poor to feel themselves brethren then, and stalking to and fro across the Three
+Hills with a fierceness which made it almost a new pestilence, there was that
+mighty conqueror&mdash;that scourge and horror of our forefathers&mdash;the
+small-pox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore by
+contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must remember,
+rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of the Asiatic cholera
+striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic and marching like Destiny upon
+cities far remote which flight had already half depopulated. There is no other
+fear so horrible and unhumanizing as that which makes man dread to breathe
+heaven&rsquo;s vital air lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother
+or friend lest the grip of the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the
+dismay that now followed in the track of the disease or ran before it
+throughout the town. Graves were hastily dug and the pestilential relics as
+hastily covered, because the dead were enemies of the living and strove to draw
+them headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public councils were
+suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices now that an
+unearthly usurper had found his way into the ruler&rsquo;s mansion. Had an
+enemy&rsquo;s fleet been hovering on the coast or his armies trampling on our
+soil, the people would probably have committed their defence to that same
+direful conqueror who had wrought their own calamity and would permit no
+interference with his sway. This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs: it was
+a blood-red flag that fluttered in the tainted air over the door of every
+dwelling into which the small-pox had entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the province-house, for
+thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps back, had all this dreadful
+mischief issued. It had been traced back to a lady&rsquo;s luxurious chamber,
+to the proudest of the proud, to her that was so delicate and hardly owned
+herself of earthly mould, to the haughty one who took her stand above human
+sympathies&mdash;to Lady Eleanore. There remained no room for doubt that the
+contagion had lurked in that gorgeous mantle which threw so strange a grace
+around her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the
+delirious brain of a woman on her death-bed and was the last toil of her
+stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its golden
+threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far and wide. The
+people raved against the Lady Eleanore and cried out that her pride and scorn
+had evoked a fiend, and that between them both this monstrous evil had been
+born. At times their rage and despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and
+whenever the red flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another and yet
+another door, they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets in
+bitter mockery: &ldquo;Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day in the midst of these dismal times a wild figure approached the portal
+of the province-house, and, folding his arms, stood contemplating the scarlet
+banner, which a passing breeze shook fitfully, as if to fling abroad the
+contagion that it typified. At length, climbing one of the pillars by means of
+the iron balustrade, he took down the flag, and entered the mansion waving it
+above his head. At the foot of the staircase he met the governor, booted and
+spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of setting
+forth upon a journey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?&rdquo; exclaimed Shute,
+extending his cane to guard himself from contact. &ldquo;There is nothing here
+but Death; back, or you will meet him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence,&rdquo;
+cried Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. &ldquo;Death and the
+pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through the
+streets to-night, and I must march before them with this banner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do I waste words on the fellow?&rdquo; muttered the governor,
+drawing his cloak across his mouth. &ldquo;What matters his miserable life,
+when none of us are sure of twelve hours&rsquo; breath?&mdash;On, fool, to your
+own destruction!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the staircase, but on
+the first landing-place was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand upon his
+shoulder. Looking fiercely up with a madman&rsquo;s impulse to struggle with
+and rend asunder his opponent, he found himself powerless beneath a calm, stern
+eye which possessed the mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height.
+The person whom he had now encountered was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the
+duties of whose sad profession had led him to the province-house, where he was
+an infrequent guest in more prosperous times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Young man, what is your purpose?&rdquo; demanded he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I seek the Lady Eleanore,&rdquo; answered Jervase Helwyse, submissively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All have fled from her,&rdquo; said the physician. &ldquo;Why do you
+seek her now? I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold
+of that fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such a curse to our shores
+as this lovely Lady Eleanore, that her breath has filled the air with poison,
+that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land from the folds of her
+accursed mantle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me look upon her,&rdquo; rejoined the mad youth, more wildly.
+&ldquo;Let me behold her in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the
+pestilence. She and Death sit on a throne together; let me kneel down before
+them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor youth!&rdquo; said Dr. Clarke, and, moved by a deep sense of human
+weakness, a smile of caustic humor curled his lip even then. &ldquo;Wilt thou
+still worship the destroyer and surround her image with fantasies the more
+magnificent the more evil she has wrought? Thus man doth ever to his tyrants.
+Approach, then. Madness, as I have noted, has that good efficacy that it will
+guard you from contagion, and perhaps its own cure may be found in yonder
+chamber.&rdquo; Ascending another flight of stairs, he threw open a door and
+signed to Jervase Helwyse that he should enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cherished a delusion that his haughty
+mistress sat in state, unharmed herself by the pestilential influence which as
+by enchantment she scattered round about her. He dreamed, no doubt, that her
+beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into superhuman splendor. With such
+anticipations he stole reverentially to the door at which the physician stood,
+but paused upon the threshold, gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened
+chamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is the Lady Eleanore?&rdquo; whispered he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call her,&rdquo; replied the physician.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady Eleanore! princess! queen of Death!&rdquo; cried Jervase Helwyse,
+advancing three steps into the chamber. &ldquo;She is not here. There, on
+yonder table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore upon her
+bosom. There&rdquo;&mdash;and he shuddered&mdash;&ldquo;there hangs her mantle,
+on which a dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where is the
+Lady Eleanore?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed and a low moan
+was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began to distinguish as
+a woman&rsquo;s voice complaining dolefully of thirst. He fancied, even, that
+he recognized its tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My throat! My throat is scorched,&rdquo; murmured the voice. &ldquo;A
+drop of water!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What thing art thou?&rdquo; said the brain-stricken youth, drawing near
+the bed and tearing asunder its curtains. &ldquo;Whose voice hast thou stolen
+for thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore could be conscious
+of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap of diseased mortality, why lurkest thou in my
+lady&rsquo;s chamber?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Jervase Helwyse,&rdquo; said the voice&mdash;and as it spoke the
+figure contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face&mdash;&ldquo;look
+not now on the woman you once loved. The curse of Heaven hath stricken me
+because I would not call man my brother nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in
+pride as in a mantle and scorned the sympathies of nature, and therefore has
+Nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful sympathy. You are
+avenged, they are all avenged, Nature is avenged; for I am Eleanore
+Rochcliffe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom of his
+heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined life and love that had been
+paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jervase Helwyse. He shook his
+finger at the wretched girl, and the chamber echoed, the curtains of the bed
+were shaken, with his outburst of insane merriment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;All have
+been her victims; who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?&rdquo;
+Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched the fatal
+mantle and rushed from the chamber and the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night a procession passed by torchlight through the streets, bearing in
+the midst the figure of a woman enveloped with a richly-embroidered mantle,
+while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse waving the red flag of the pestilence.
+Arriving opposite the province-house, the mob burned the effigy, and a strong
+wind came and swept away the ashes. It was said that from that very hour the
+pestilence abated, as if its sway had some mysterious connection, from the
+first plague-stroke to the last, with Lady Elcanore&rsquo;s mantle. A
+remarkable uncertainty broods over that unhappy lady&rsquo;s fate. There is a
+belief, however, that in a certain chamber of this mansion a female form may
+sometimes be duskily discerned shrinking into the darkest corner and muffling
+her face within an embroidered mantle. Supposing the legend true, can this be
+other than the once proud Lady Eleanore?
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no little Warmth of applause upon
+this narrative, in which we had all been deeply interested; for the reader can
+scarcely conceive how unspeakably the effect of such a tale is heightened when,
+as in the present case, we may repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him
+who tells it. For my own part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle
+the foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the more
+faithfully had he professed himself an eyewitness of the doings and sufferings
+of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might demand documentary
+evidence, or even require him to produce the embroidered mantle, forgetting
+that&mdash;Heaven be praised!&mdash;it was consumed to ashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer, began to
+talk, in his turn, about the traditions of the Province House, and hinted that
+he, if it were agreeable, might add a few reminiscences to our legendary stock.
+Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to dread a rival, immediately besought him to
+favor us with a specimen; my own entreaties, of course, were urged to the same
+effect; and our venerable guest, well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited
+only the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth to provide
+accommodations for several new arrivals. Perchance the public&mdash;but be this
+as its own caprice and ours shall settle the matter&mdash;may read the result
+in another tale of the Province House.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>
+IV.<br/>
+OLD ESTHER DUDLEY</h2>
+
+<p>
+Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as Mr. Tiffany and myself
+expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story to which the
+loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw lit to moisten his
+throat with another glass of wine, and then, turning his face toward our
+coal-fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into the depths of its cheerful
+glow. Finally he poured forth a great fluency of speech. The generous liquid
+that he had imbibed, while it warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off
+the chill from his heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel
+which we could hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore
+winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than those of a
+younger man&mdash;or, at least, the same degree of feeling manifested itself by
+more visible effects than if his judgment and will had possessed the potency of
+meridian life. At the pathetic passages of his narrative he readily melted into
+tears. When a breath of indignation swept across his spirit, the blood flushed
+his withered visage even to the roots of his white hair, and he shook his
+clinched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors, seeming to fancy enemies in
+those who felt very kindly toward the desolate old soul. But ever and anon,
+sometimes in the midst of his most earnest talk, this ancient person&rsquo;s
+intellect would wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in hand and
+groping for it amid misty shadows. Then would he cackle forth a feeble laugh
+and express a doubt whether his wits&mdash;for by that phrase it pleased our
+ancient friend to signify his mental powers&mdash;were not getting a little the
+worse for wear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist&rsquo;s story required more
+revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series which
+have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment and tone of the
+affair may have undergone some slight&mdash;or perchance more than
+slight&mdash;metamorphosis in its transmission to the reader through the medium
+of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch with no
+involution of plot nor any great interest of events, yet possessing, if I have
+rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over the mind which the shadow of
+the old Province House flings upon the loiterer in its court-yard.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>
+The hour had come&mdash;the hour of defeat and humiliation&mdash;when Sir
+William Howe was to pass over the threshold of the province-house and embark,
+with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board the
+British fleet. He bade his servants and military attendants go before him, and
+lingered a moment in the loneliness of the mansion to quell the fierce emotions
+that struggled in his bosom as with a death-throb. Preferable then would he
+have deemed his fate had a warrior&rsquo;s death left him a claim to the narrow
+territory of a grave within the soil which the king had given him to defend.
+With an ominous perception that as his departing footsteps echoed adown the
+staircase the sway of Britain was passing for ever from New England, he smote
+his clenched hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had flung the shame
+of a dismembered empire upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would to God,&rdquo; cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage,
+&ldquo;that the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the
+floor should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
+his trust.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven&rsquo;s cause and the king&rsquo;s are one,&rdquo; it said.
+&ldquo;Go forth, Sir William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal
+governor in triumph.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith that it
+was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged woman leaning
+on a gold-headed staff was standing betwixt him and the door. It was old Esther
+Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years in this mansion, until her
+presence seemed as inseparable from it as the recollections of its history. She
+was the daughter of an ancient and once eminent family which had fallen into
+poverty and decay and left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of
+the king, nor any shelter except within the walls of the province-house. An
+office in the household with merely nominal duties had been assigned to her as
+a pretext for the payment of a small pension, the greater part of which she
+expended in adorning herself with an antique magnificence of attire. The claims
+of Esther Dudley&rsquo;s gentle blood were acknowledged by all the successive
+governors, and they treated her with the punctilious courtesy which it was her
+foible to demand, not always with success, from a neglectful world. The only
+actual share which she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide
+through its passages and public chambers late at night to see that the servants
+had dropped no fire from their flaring torches nor left embers crackling and
+blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of walking her
+rounds in the hush of midnight that caused the superstition of the times to
+invest the old woman with attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that she had
+entered the portal of the province-house&mdash;none knew whence&mdash;in the
+train of the first royal governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till
+the last should have departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?&rdquo; asked he, with some
+severity of tone. &ldquo;It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of
+the king.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not so, if it please Your Excellency,&rdquo; answered the time-stricken
+woman. &ldquo;This roof has sheltered me long; I will not pass from it until
+they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there for old
+Esther Dudley save the province-house or the grave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, Heaven forgive me!&rdquo; said Sir William Howe to himself.
+&ldquo;I was about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or
+beg.&mdash;Take this, good Mistress Dudley,&rdquo; he added, putting a purse
+into her hands. &ldquo;King George&rsquo;s head on these golden guineas is
+sterling yet, and will continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown
+John Hancock their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the
+province-house can now afford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;While the burden of life remains upon me I will have no other shelter
+than this roof,&rdquo; persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the
+floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve; &ldquo;and when Your
+Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My poor old friend!&rdquo; answered the British general, and all his
+manly and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears.
+&ldquo;This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king
+entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune&mdash;perchance in
+disgrace&mdash;to return no more. And you, whose present being is incorporated
+with the past, who have seen governor after governor in stately pageantry
+ascend these steps, whose whole life has been an observance of majestic
+ceremonies and a worship of the king,&mdash;how will you endure the change?
+Come with us; bid farewell to a land that has shaken off its allegiance, and
+live still under a royal government at Halifax.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never! never!&rdquo; said the pertinacious old dame. &ldquo;Here will I
+abide, and King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal
+province.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beshrew the old fool!&rdquo; muttered Sir William Howe, growing
+impatient of her obstinacy and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been
+betrayed. &ldquo;She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could
+exist nowhere but in this musty edifice.&mdash;Well, then, Mistress Dudley,
+since you will needs tarry, I give the province-house in charge to you. Take
+this key, and keep it safe until myself or some other royal governor shall
+demand it of you.&rdquo; Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the heavy
+key of the province-house, and, delivering it into the old lady&rsquo;s hands,
+drew his cloak around him for departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the general glanced back at Esther Dudley&rsquo;s antique figure he deemed
+her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative of the
+decayed past&mdash;of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith and
+feelings all fallen into oblivion or scorn, of what had once been a reality,
+but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode
+forth, smiting his clenched hands together in the fierce anguish of his spirit,
+and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely province-house,
+dwelling there with Memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still
+it was Memory in disguise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the British troops
+did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold. There was not for many
+years afterward a governor of Massachusetts, and the magistrates who had charge
+of such matters saw no objection to Esther Dudley&rsquo;s residence in the
+province-house, especially as they must otherwise have paid a hireling for
+taking care of the premises, which with her was a labor of love; and so they
+left her the undisturbed mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange
+were the fables which the gossips whispered about her in all the
+chimney-corners of the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left in the mansion,
+there was a tall antique mirror which was well worthy of a tale by itself, and
+perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one. The gold of its heavily-wrought
+frame was tarnished, and its surface so blurred that the old woman&rsquo;s
+figure, whenever she paused before it, looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it
+was the general belief that Esther could cause the governors of the overthrown
+dynasty, with the beautiful ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the
+Indian chiefs who had come up to the province-house to hold council or swear
+allegiance, the grim provincial warriors, the severe clergymen&mdash;in short,
+all the pageantry of gone days, all the figures that ever swept across the
+broad-plate of glass in former times,&mdash;she could cause the whole to
+reappear and people the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life.
+Such legends as these, together with the singularity of her isolated existence,
+her age and the infirmity that each added winter flung upon her, made Mistress
+Dudley the object both of fear and pity, and it was partly the result of either
+sentiment that, amid all the angry license of the times, neither wrong nor
+insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much
+haughtiness in her demeanor toward intruders&mdash;among whom she reckoned all
+persons acting under the new authorities&mdash;that it was really an affair of
+no small nerve to look her in the face. And, to do the people justice, stern
+republicans as they had now become, they were well content that the old
+gentlewoman, in her hoop-petticoat and faded embroidery, should still haunt the
+palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system,
+embodying a history in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt year after year in
+the province-house, still reverencing all that others had flung aside, still
+faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her post,
+might be said to retain one true subject in New England and one spot of the
+empire that had been wrested from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, &ldquo;Not so.&rdquo;
+Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to summon a
+black slave of Governor Shirley&rsquo;s from the blurred mirror and send him in
+search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those deserted chambers.
+Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight or the moonshine gleaming
+through him, and did his errand in the burial-grounds, knocking at the iron
+doors of tombs or upon the marble slabs that covered them, and whispering to
+those within, &ldquo;My mistress, old Esther Dudley, bids you to the
+province-house at midnight;&rdquo; and punctually as the clock of the Old South
+told twelve came the shadows of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the
+Dudleys&mdash;all the grandees of a bygone generation&mdash;gliding beneath the
+portal into the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she
+likewise were a shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is
+certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch though
+crestfallen old Tories who had lingered in the rebel town during those days of
+wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle containing liquor that a royal
+governor might have smacked his lips over they quaffed healths to the king and
+babbled treason to the republic, feeling as if the protecting shadow of the
+throne were still flung around them. But, draining the last drops of their
+liquor, they stole timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob
+reviled them in the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet Esther Dudley&rsquo;s most frequent and favored guests were the children of
+the town. Toward them she was never stern. A kindly and loving nature hindered
+elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky prejudices lavished itself
+upon these little ones. By bribes of gingerbread of her own making, stamped
+with a royal crown, she tempted their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy
+portal of the province-house, and would often beguile them to spend a whole
+play-day there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop-petticoat,
+greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these little boys
+and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious mansion, they went
+bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people had long ago forgotten,
+rubbing their eyes at the world around them as if they had gone astray into
+ancient times and become children of the past. At home, when their parents
+asked where they had loitered such a weary while and with whom they had been at
+play, the children would talk of all the departed worthies of the province as
+far back as Governor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It
+would seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous
+personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had toyed with
+the embroidery of their rich waistcoats or roguishly pulled the long curls of
+their flowing wigs. &ldquo;But Governor Belcher has been dead this many a
+year,&rdquo; would the mother say to her little boy. &ldquo;And did you really
+see him at the province-house?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Oh yes, dear
+mother&mdash;yes!&rdquo; the half-dreaming child would answer. &ldquo;But when
+old Esther had done speaking about him, he faded away out of his chair.&rdquo;
+Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand into the
+chambers of her own desolate heart and made childhood&rsquo;s fancy discern the
+ghosts that haunted there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating her mind
+by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley appears to have grown
+partially crazed. It was found that she had no right sense of the progress and
+true state of the Revolutionary war, but held a constant faith that the armies
+of Britain were victorious on every field and destined to be ultimately
+triumphant. Whenever the town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington or Gates
+or Morgan or Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the
+province-house as through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a
+strange tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton or Cornwallis. Sooner or later, it
+was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the footstool of
+the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that such was already the
+case. On one occasion she startled the townspeople by a brilliant illumination
+of the province-house with candles at every pane of glass and a transparency of
+the king&rsquo;s initials and a crown of light in the great balcony-window. The
+figure of the aged woman in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and
+brocades was seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused before
+the balcony and flourished a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage
+actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal lamp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther&rsquo;s joy
+portend?&rdquo; whispered a spectator. &ldquo;It is frightful to see her
+gliding about the chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her
+company.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,&rdquo; said another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pshaw! It is no such mystery,&rdquo; observed an old man, after some
+brief exercise of memory. &ldquo;Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the
+king of England&rsquo;s birthday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the people laughed aloud, and would have thrown mud against the blazing
+transparency of the king&rsquo;s crown and initials, only that they pitied the
+poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck and ruin of the
+system to which she appertained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound upward to
+the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward and countryward,
+watching for a British fleet or for the march of a grand procession with the
+king&rsquo;s banner floating over it. The passengers in the street below would
+discern her anxious visage and send up a shout: &ldquo;When the golden Indian
+on the province-house shall shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South
+spire shall crow, then look for a royal governor again!&rdquo; for this had
+grown a by-word through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old
+Esther Dudley knew&mdash;or perchance she only dreamed&mdash;that a royal
+governor was on the eve of returning to the province-house to receive the heavy
+key which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now, it was the fact
+that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther&rsquo;s version of it
+was current among the townspeople. She set the mansion in the best order that
+her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks and tarnished gold, stood
+long before the blurred mirror to admire her own magnificence. As she gazed the
+gray and withered lady moved her ashen lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to
+shapes that she saw within the mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the
+household friends of memory, and bidding them rejoice with her and come forth
+to meet the governor. And while absorbed in this communion Mistress Dudley
+heard the tramp of many footsteps in the street, and, looking out at the
+window, beheld what she construed as the royal governor&rsquo;s arrival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, happy day! Oh, blessed, blessed hour!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+&ldquo;Let me but bid him welcome within the portal, and my task in the
+province-house and on earth is done.&rdquo; Then, with tottering feet which age
+and tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand staircase,
+her silks sweeping and rustling as she went; so that the sound was as if a
+train of special courtiers were thronging from the dim mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the wide door should be flung open
+all the pomp and splendor of bygone times would pace majestically into the
+province-house and the gilded tapestry of the past would be brightened by the
+sunshine of the present. She turned the key, withdrew it from the lock,
+unclosed the door and stepped across the threshold. Advancing up the court-yard
+appeared a person of most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther interpreted
+them, of gentle blood, high rank and long-accustomed authority even in his walk
+and every gesture. He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe, which,
+however, did not lessen the stateliness of his gait. Around and behind him were
+people in plain civic dresses and two or three war-worn
+veterans&mdash;evidently officers of rank&mdash;arrayed in a uniform of blue
+and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened its roots
+about her heart, beheld only the principal personage, and never doubted that
+this was the long-looked-for governor to whom she was to surrender up her
+charge. As he approached she involuntarily sank down on her knees and
+tremblingly held forth the heavy key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Receive my trust! Take it quickly,&rdquo; cried she, &ldquo;for methinks
+Death is striving to snatch away my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank
+Heaven for this blessed hour! God save King George!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a
+moment,&rdquo; replied the unknown guest of the province-house, and,
+courteously removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman.
+&ldquo;Yet, in reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid
+that any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge his
+sceptre, God save King George!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the key, gazed
+with fearful earnestness at the stranger, and dimly and doubtfully, as if
+suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes half recognized his face.
+Years ago she had known him among the gentry of the province, but the ban of
+the king had fallen upon him. How, then, came the doomed victim here?
+Proscribed, excluded from mercy, the monarch&rsquo;s most dreaded and hated
+foe, this New England merchant had stood triumphantly against a kingdom&rsquo;s
+strength, and his foot now trod upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps
+of the province-house, the people&rsquo;s chosen governor of Massachusetts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wretch, wretch that I am!&rdquo; muttered the old woman, with such a
+heartbroken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger&rsquo;s eyes.
+&ldquo;Have I bidden a traitor welcome?&mdash;Come, Death! come quickly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas, venerable lady!&rdquo; said Governor Hancock, lending her his
+support with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen,
+&ldquo;your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you. You
+have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless&mdash;the principles,
+feelings, manners, modes of being and acting which another generation has flung
+aside&mdash;and you are a symbol of the past. And I and these around
+me&mdash;we represent a new race of men, living no longer in the past, scarcely
+in the present, but projecting our lives forward into the future. Ceasing to
+model ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and principle to
+press onward&mdash;onward.&mdash;Yet,&rdquo; continued he, turning to his
+attendants, &ldquo;let us reverence for the last time the stately and gorgeous
+prejudices of the tottering past.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the helpless
+form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his arm, but at last,
+with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient woman sank down beside one of
+the pillars of the portal. The key of the province-house fell from her grasp
+and clanked against the stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been faithful unto death,&rdquo; murmured she. &ldquo;God save
+the king!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She hath done her office,&rdquo; said Hancock, solemnly. &ldquo;We will
+follow her reverently to the tomb of her ancestors, and then, my
+fellow-citizens, onward&mdash;onward. We are no longer children of the
+past.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the old loyalist concluded his narrative the enthusiasm which had been
+fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his wrinkled
+visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished.
+Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw out a dying gleam, which
+vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one
+another&rsquo;s features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering
+fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system
+vanished from the province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its
+flight. And now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on
+the breeze, knolling the hourly knell of the past, crying out far and wide
+through the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as we sat in the dusky
+chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In that same mansion&mdash;in
+that very chamber&mdash;what a volume of history had been told off into hours
+by the same voice that was now trembling in the air! Many a governor had heard
+those midnight accents and longed to exchange his stately cares for slumber.
+And, as for mine host and Mr. Bela Tiffany and the old loyalist and me, we had
+babbled about dreams of the past until we almost fancied that the clock was
+still striking in a bygone century. Neither of us would have wondered had a
+hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber, walking
+her rounds in the hush of midnight as of yore, and motioned us to quench the
+fading embers of the fire and leave the historic precincts to herself and her
+kindred shades. But, as no such vision was vouchsafed, I retired unbidden, and
+would advise Mr. Tiffany to lay hold of another auditor, being resolved not to
+show my face in the Province House for a good while hence&mdash;if ever.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>
+THE HAUNTED MIND</h2>
+
+<p>
+What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
+recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing your
+eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of your dream in
+full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at them before they
+can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you find yourself for a
+single instant wide awake in that realm of illusions whither sleep has been the
+passport, and behold its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a
+perception of their strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is
+undisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind.
+You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your
+waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream.
+While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang over the slumbering
+town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmur in the
+neighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed from the steeple at the
+nearest corner; You count the strokes&mdash;one, two; and there they cease with
+a booming sound like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it would be
+this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest enough to take off
+the pressure of yesterday&rsquo;s fatigue, while before you, till the sun comes
+from &ldquo;Far Cathay&rdquo; to brighten your window, there is almost the
+space of a summer night&mdash;one hour to be spent in thought with the
+mind&rsquo;s eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in that
+strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and woe. The moment of
+rising belongs to another period of time, and appears so distant that the
+plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty air cannot yet be anticipated with
+dismay. Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow
+has not yet emerged from the future. You have found an intermediate space where
+the business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers and
+becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he thinks nobody is
+watching him, sits down by the wayside to take breath. Oh that he would fall
+asleep and let mortals live on without growing older!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion would
+dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably awake, you peep
+through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe that the glass is ornamented
+with fanciful devices in frost-work, and that each pane presents something like
+a frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace out the analogy while
+waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass
+where the silvery mountain-peaks of the frost-scenery do not ascend, the most
+conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the
+wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the
+clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty sky and the snow-covered roofs
+and the long vista of the frozen street, all white, and the distant water
+hardened into rock, might make you shiver even under four blankets and a
+woollen comforter. Yet look at that one glorious star! Its beams are
+distinguishable from all the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement
+on the bed with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate
+an outline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the while, but
+less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold
+even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing
+out a whole existence in bed like an oyster in its shell, content with the
+sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious
+warmth such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in
+its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow
+coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy
+that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drifting over their little
+hillocks and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb. That gloomy
+thought will collect a gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your
+wakeful hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights,
+the music and revelry, above may cause us to forget their existence and the
+buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at
+midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this,
+when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength&mdash;when the
+imagination is a mirror imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of
+selecting or controlling them&mdash;then pray that your griefs may slumber and
+the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late. A funeral
+train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling assume bodily
+shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is your
+earliest sorrow, a pale young mourner wearing a sister&rsquo;s likeness to
+first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy
+features and grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next appears a shade of
+ruined loveliness with dust among her golden hair and her bright garments all
+faded and defaced, stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of
+reproach: she was your fondest hope, but a delusive one; so call her
+Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look
+and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unless it be
+Fatality&mdash;an emblem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes, a
+demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and
+were bound his slave for ever by once obeying him. See those fiendish
+lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of
+that living eye, the pointed finger touching the sore place in your heart! Do
+you remember any act of enormous folly at which you would blush even in the
+remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable, a
+fiercer tribe do not surround him&mdash;the devils of a guilty heart that holds
+its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the features of an
+injured friend? What if the fiend should come in woman&rsquo;s garments with a
+pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side? What if he
+should stand at your bed&rsquo;s foot in the likeness of a corpse with a bloody
+stain upon the shroud? Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the
+soul, this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits, this wintry gloom about the
+heart, this indistinct horror of the mind blending itself with the darkness of
+the chamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By a desperate effort you start upright, breaking from a sort of conscious
+sleep and gazing wildly round the bed, as if the fiends were anywhere but in
+your haunted mind. At the same moment the slumbering embers on the hearth send
+forth a gleam which palely illuminates the whole outer room and flickers
+through the door of the bedchamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your
+eye searches for whatever may remind you of the living world. With eager
+minuteness you take note of the table near the fireplace, the book with an
+ivory knife between its leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat and the fallen
+glove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though its
+image remains an instant in your mind&rsquo;s eye when darkness has swallowed
+the reality. Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before, but
+not the same gloom within your breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As your head falls back upon the pillow you think&mdash;in a whisper be it
+spoken&mdash;how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and fall
+of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a tenderer bosom,
+the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its peacefulness to your troubled
+one, as if the fond sleeper were involving you in her dream. Her influence is
+over you, though she have no existence but in that momentary image. You sink
+down in a flowery spot on the borders of sleep and wakefulness, while your
+thoughts rise before you in pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by
+a pervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons that
+glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children round the door of
+a schoolhouse beneath the glimmering shadow of old trees at the corner of a
+rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a summer shower, and wander among
+the sunny trees of an autumnal wood, and look upward at the brightest of all
+rainbows overarching the unbroken sheet of snow on the American side of
+Niagara. Your mind struggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the
+hearth of a young man and his recent bride and the twittering flight of birds
+in spring about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bounding of a ship
+before the breeze, and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls as they twine their
+last and merriest dance in a splendid ball-room, and find yourself in the
+brilliant circle of a crowded theatre as the curtain falls over a light and
+airy scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With an involuntary start you seize hold on consciousness, and prove yourself
+but half awake by running a doubtful parallel between human life and the hour
+which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from mystery, pass through a
+vicissitude that you can but imperfectly control, and are borne onward to
+another mystery. Now comes the peal of the distant clock with fainter and
+fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the
+knell of a temporary death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free
+citizen among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet
+without wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change&mdash;so
+undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to its
+eternal home.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>
+THE VILLAGE UNCLE</h2>
+
+<h4>AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT</h4>
+
+<p>
+Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is comfortable,
+especially here where the old man sits in his old arm-chair; but on
+Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up the chimney and send a
+shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss on an armful of those dry oak
+chips, the last relicts of the Mermaid&rsquo;s knee-timbers&mdash;the bones of
+your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and clearer, be the blaze, till our cottage
+windows glow the ruddiest in the village and the light of our household mirth
+flash far across the bay to Nahant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now come, Susan; come, my children. Draw your chairs round me, all of you.
+There is a dimness over your figures. You sit quivering indistinctly with each
+motion of the blaze, which eddies about you like a flood; so that you all have
+the look of visions or people that dwell only in the firelight, and will vanish
+from existence as completely as your own shadows when the flame shall sink
+among the embers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hark! let me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile
+inland on a night like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but only an
+uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach, though by the almanac
+it is high tide at eight o&rsquo;clock, and the billows must now be dashing
+within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man&rsquo;s ears are failing him,
+and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind, else you would not all be so
+shadowy in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present! To judge
+by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in another room.
+Yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old chest of drawers, nor
+Susan&rsquo;s profile and mine in that gilt frame&mdash;nothing, in short,
+except this same fire, which glimmered on books, papers and a picture, and half
+discovered my solitary figure in a looking-glass. But it was paler than my
+rugged old self, and younger, too, by almost half a century.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Speak to me, Susan; speak, my beloved ones; for the scene is glimmering on my
+sight again, and as it brightens you fade away. Oh, I should be loth to lose my
+treasure of past happiness and become once more what I was then&mdash;a hermit
+in the depths of my own mind, sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes and anon a
+scribbler of wearier trash than what I read; a man who had wandered out of the
+real world and got into its shadow, where his troubles, joys and vicissitudes
+were of such slight stuff that he hardly knew whether he lived or only dreamed
+of living. Thank Heaven I am an old man now and have done with all such
+vanities!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still this dimness of mine eyes!&mdash;Come nearer, Susan, and stand before the
+fullest blaze of the hearth. Now I behold you illuminated from head to foot, in
+your clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of gray hair across your
+forehead and a quiet smile about your mouth, while the eyes alone are concealed
+by the red gleam of the fire upon your spectacles. There! you made me tremble
+again. When the flame quivered, my sweet Susan, you quivered with it and grew
+indistinct, as if melting into the warm light, that my last glimpse of you
+might be as visionary as the first was, full many a year since. Do you remember
+it? You stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs across King&rsquo;s
+Beach into the sea. It was twilight, the waves rolling in, the wind sweeping
+by, the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver moon brightening above
+the hill; and on the bridge were you, fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird
+that might skim away at your pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless
+wind, a creature of the ocean-foam and the crimson light, whose merry life was
+spent in dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to
+support your footsteps. As I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the race of
+mermaids, and thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with you among the
+quiet coves in the shadow of the cliffs, and to roam along secluded beaches of
+the purest sand, and, when our Northern shores grew bleak, to haunt the
+islands, green and lonely, far amid summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, after
+all this nonsense, to find you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly perplexed
+with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats. Thus I did with Susan
+as with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind
+and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see her as she
+really was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Susan, for a sober picture of our village. It was a small collection of
+dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea with the rock-weed and
+marine plants that it vomits after a storm, or to have come ashore among the
+pipe-staves and other lumber which had been washed from the deck of an Eastern
+schooner. There was just space for the narrow and sandy street between the
+beach in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the
+rear among a waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture.
+The village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all were
+rude. Here stood a little old hovel, built, perhaps, of driftwood, there a row
+of boat-houses, and beyond them a two-story dwelling of dark and weatherbeaten
+aspect, the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages painted white, a
+sufficiency of pig-styes and a shoemaker&rsquo;s shop. Two grocery stores stood
+opposite each other in the centre of the village. These were the places of
+resort at their idle hours of a hardy throng of fishermen in red baize shirts,
+oilcloth trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg&mdash;true
+seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth. The
+wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun
+themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered
+with clusters of little shellfish such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber
+over which the tide ebbs and flows. When their fleet of boats was
+weather-bound, the butchers raised their price, and the spit was busier than
+the frying-pan; for this was a place of fish, and known as such to all the
+country round about. The very air was fishy, being perfumed with dead sculpins,
+hard-heads and dogfish strewn plentifully on the beach.&mdash;You see,
+children, the village is but little changed since your mother and I were young.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How like a dream it was when I bent over a pool of water one pleasant morning
+and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisherman!
+There was the tarpaulin, the baize shirt, the oilcloth trousers and
+seven-league boots, and there my own features, but so reddened with sunburn and
+sea-breezes that methought I had another face, and on other shoulders too. The
+seagulls and the loons and I had now all one trade: we skimmed the crested
+waves and sought our prey beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the
+birds. Always when the east grew purple I launched my dory, my little
+flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge,
+or perhaps beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge&mdash;a
+spot of peril to ships unpiloted&mdash;and sometimes spread an adventurous sail
+and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of
+Scituate. Ere nightfall I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach, laden with
+red rock-cod or the white-bellied ones of deep water, haddock bearing the black
+marks of St. Peter&rsquo;s fingers near the gills, the long-bearded hake whose
+liver holds oil enough for a midnight lamp, and now and then a mighty halibut
+with a back broad as my boat. In the autumn I toled and caught those lovely
+fish the mackerel. When the wind was high, when the whale-boats anchored off
+the Point nodded their slender masts at each other and the dories pitched and
+tossed in the surf, when Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off and the
+spray broke a hundred feet in the air round the distant base of Egg Rock, when
+the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our
+village,&mdash;then I made a holiday on shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett&rsquo;s store, attentive to
+the yarns of Uncle Parker&mdash;uncle to the whole village by right of
+seniority, but of Southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His figure is
+before me now enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel&mdash;a lean old man of great
+height, but bent with years and twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken
+limbs; furrowed, also, and weatherworn, as if every gale for the better part of
+a century had caught him somewhere on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of
+tempest&mdash;a shipmate of the Flying Dutchman. After innumerable voyages
+aboard men-of-war and merchantmen, fishing-schooners and chebacco-boats, the
+old salt had become master of a hand-cart, which he daily trundled about the
+vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the streets of Salem. One of
+Uncle Parker&rsquo;s eyes had been blown out with gunpowder, and the other did
+but glimmer in its socket. Turning it upward as he spoke, it was his delight to
+tell of cruises against the French and battles with his own shipmates, when he
+and an antagonist used to be seated astride of a sailor&rsquo;s chest, each
+fastened down by a spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out.
+Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and
+goose-like fowl which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand Banks.
+He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he
+had gladdened himself amid polar snows with the rum and sugar saved from the
+wreck of a West India schooner. And wrathfully did he shake his fist as he
+related how a party of Cape Cod men had robbed him and his companions of their
+lawful spoils and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a
+drop to drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood
+who are said to tie lanterns to horses&rsquo; tails to mislead the mariner
+along the dangerous shores of the Cape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen with that old salt in the midst.
+One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an oil-barrel, a third lolls
+at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines, and another has planted the tarry
+seat of his trousers on a heap of salt which will shortly be sprinkled over a
+lot of fish. They are a likely set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies
+or the Pacific, and most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to
+Newfoundland; a few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and one or two
+have always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker used to say, they have
+all been christened in salt water and know more than men ever learn in the
+bushes. A curious figure, by way of contrast, is a fish-dealer from far
+up-country listening with eyes wide open to narratives that might startle
+Sinbad the Sailor.&mdash;Be it well with you, my brethren! Ye are all
+gone&mdash;some to your graves ashore and others to the depths of
+ocean&mdash;but my faith is strong that ye are happy; for whenever I behold
+your forms, whether in dream or vision, each departed friend is puffing his
+long nine, and a mug of the right blackstrap goes round from lip to lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where was the mermaid in those delightful times? At a certain window near
+the centre of the village appeared a pretty display of gingerbread men and
+horses, picture-books and ballads, small fish-hooks, pins, needles, sugarplums
+and brass thimbles&mdash;articles on which the young fishermen used to expend
+their money from pure gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the counter! A
+slender maiden, though the child of rugged parents, she had the slimmest of all
+waists, brown hair curling on her neck, and a complexion rather pale except
+when the sea-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became beauty-spots beneath her
+eyelids.&mdash;How was it, Susan, that you talked and acted so carelessly, yet
+always for the best, doing whatever was right in your own eyes, and never once
+doing wrong in mine, nor shocked a taste that had been morbidly sensitive till
+now? And whence had you that happiest gift of brightening every topic with an
+unsought gayety, quiet but irresistible, so that even gloomy spirits felt your
+sunshine and did not shrink from it? Nature wrought the charm. She made you a
+frank, simple, kind-hearted, sensible and mirthful girl. Obeying Nature, you
+did free things without indelicacy, displayed a maiden&rsquo;s thoughts to
+every eye, and proved yourself as innocent as naked Eve.&mdash;It was beautiful
+to observe how her simple and happy nature mingled itself with mine. She
+kindled a domestic fire within my heart and took up her dwelling there, even in
+that chill and lonesome cavern hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She
+gave me warmth of feeling, while the influence of my mind made her
+contemplative. I taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the
+encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow,
+while beyond Nahant the wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness
+which grew faint afar off without becoming gloomier. I held her hand and
+pointed to the long surf-wave as it rolled calmly on the beach in an unbroken
+line of silver; we were silent together till its deep and peaceful murmur had
+swept by us. When the Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs, I
+led the mermaid thither and told her that those huge gray, shattered rocks, and
+her native sea that raged for ever like a storm against them, and her own
+slender beauty in so stern a scene, were all combined into a strain of poetry.
+But on the Sabbath-eve, when her mother had gone early to bed and her gentle
+sister had smiled and left us, as we sat alone by the quiet hearth with
+household things around, it was her turn to make me feel that here was a deeper
+poetry, and that this was the dearest hour of all. Thus went on our wooing,
+till I had shot wild-fowl enough to feather our bridal-bed, and the daughter of
+the sea was mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I built a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a gateway in the form of a
+Gothic arch by setting up a whale&rsquo;s jaw-bones. We bought a heifer with
+her first calf, and had a little garden on the hillside to supply us with
+potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor, small and neat, was
+ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame, and with shells and pretty
+pebbles on the mantelpiece, selected from the sea&rsquo;s treasury of such
+things on Nahant Beach. On the desk, beneath the looking-glass, lay the Bible,
+which I had begun to read aloud at the book of Genesis, and the singing-book
+that Susan used for her evening psalm. Except the almanac, we had no other
+literature. All that I heard of books was when an Indian history or tale of
+shipwreck was sold by a pedler or wandering subscription-man to some one in the
+village, and read through its owner&rsquo;s nose to a slumbrous auditory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like my brother-fishermen, I grew into the belief that all human erudition was
+collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and solemn phiz as he passed
+to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of sand might have gained him a diploma
+from any college in New England. In truth, I dreaded him.&mdash;When our
+children were old enough to claim his care, you remember, Susan, how I frowned,
+though you were pleased at this learned man&rsquo;s encomiums on their
+proficiency. I feared to trust them even with the alphabet: it was the key to a
+fatal treasure. But I loved to lead them by their little hands along the beach
+and point to nature in the vast and the minute&mdash;the sky, the sea, the
+green earth, the pebbles and the shells. Then did I discourse of the mighty
+works and coextensive goodness of the Deity with the simple wisdom of a man
+whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep and his heart by the
+strong and pure affections of his evening home. Sometimes my voice lost itself
+in a tremulous depth, for I felt his eye upon me as I spoke. Once, while my
+wife and all of us were gazing at ourselves in the mirror left by the tide in a
+hollow of the sand, I pointed to the pictured heaven below and bade her observe
+how religion was strewn everywhere in our path, since even a casual pool of
+water recalled the idea of that home whither we were travelling to rest for
+ever with our children. Suddenly your image, Susan, and all the little faces
+made up of yours and mine, seemed to fade away and vanish around me, leaving a
+pale visage like my own of former days within the frame of a large
+looking-glass. Strange illusion!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with the present and absorb the
+future, till the whole lies before me at a glance. My manhood has long been
+waning with a stanch decay; my earlier contemporaries, after lives of unbroken
+health, are all at rest without having known the weariness of later age; and
+now with a wrinkled forehead and thin white hair as badges of my dignity I have
+become the patriarch&mdash;the uncle&mdash;of the village. I love that name: it
+widens the circle of my sympathies; it joins all the youthful to my household
+in the kindred of affection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like Uncle Parker, whose rheumatic bones were dashed against Egg Rock full
+forty years ago, I am a spinner of long yarns. Seated on the gunnel of a dory
+or on the sunny side of a boat-house, where the warmth is grateful to my limbs,
+or by my own hearth when a friend or two are there, I overflow with talk, and
+yet am never tedious. With a broken voice I give utterance to much wisdom.
+Such, Heaven be praised! is the vigor of my faculties that many a forgotten
+usage, and traditions ancient in my youth, and early adventures of myself or
+others hitherto effaced by things more recent, acquire new distinctness in my
+memory. I remember the happy days when the haddock were more numerous on all
+the fishing-grounds than sculpins in the surf&mdash;when the deep-water cod
+swam close in-shore, and the dogfish, with his poisonous horn, had not learnt
+to take the hook. I can number every equinoctial storm in which the sea has
+overwhelmed the street, flooded the cellars of the village and hissed upon our
+kitchen hearth. I give the history of the great whale that was landed on Whale
+Beach, and whose jaws, being now my gateway, will last for ages after my coffin
+shall have passed beneath them. Thence it is an easy digression to the
+halibut&mdash;scarcely smaller than the whale&mdash;which ran out six codlines
+and hauled my dory to the mouth of Boston harbor before I could touch him with
+the gaff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation, I tell how a friend of
+mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark, and the sad, true tale of
+a young man on the eve of marriage who had been nine days missing, when his
+drowned body floated into the very pathway on Marble-head Neck that had often
+led him to the dwelling of his bride, as if the dripping corpse would have come
+where the mourner was. With such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil
+his vows! Another favorite story is of a crazy maiden who conversed with angels
+and had the gift of prophecy, and whom all the village loved and pitied, though
+she went from door to door accusing us of sin, exhorting to repentance and
+foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake. If the young men boast
+their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of pilots who knew the
+wind by its scent and the wave by its taste, and could have steered blindfold
+to any port between Boston and Mount Desert guided only by the rote of the
+shore&mdash;the peculiar sound of the surf on each island, beach and line of
+rocks along the coast. Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise while they
+deem it pastime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I recollect no happier portion of my life than this my calm old age. It is like
+the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley where late in the autumn the grass is
+greener than in August, and intermixed with golden dandelions that had not been
+seen till now since the first warmth of the year. But with me the verdure and
+the flowers are not frost-bitten in the midst of winter. A playfulness has
+revisited my mind&mdash;a sympathy with the young and gay, an unpainful
+interest in the business of others, a light and wandering
+curiosity&mdash;arising, perhaps, from the sense that my toil on earth is ended
+and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied
+that there is a depth of feeling and reflection under this superficial levity
+peculiar to one who has lived long and is soon to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Show me anything that would make an infant smile, and you shall behold a gleam
+of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a pleasant hour in the
+sun watching the sports of the village children on the edge of the surf. Now
+they chase the retreating wave far down over the wet sand; now it steals softly
+up to kiss their naked feet; now it comes onward with threatening front, and
+roars after the laughing crew as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not
+an old man be merry too, when the great sea is at play with those little
+children? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party of young
+men and girls strolling along the beach after an early supper at the Point.
+Here, with handkerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap of eel-grass entangled
+in which is a dead skate so oddly accoutred with two legs and a long tail that
+they mistake him for a drowned animal. A few steps farther the ladies scream,
+and the gentlemen make ready to protect them against a young shark of the
+dogfish kind rolling with a lifelike motion in the tide that has thrown him up.
+Next they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of live
+lobsters packed in rock-weed for the country-market. And when they reach the
+fleet of dories just hauled ashore after the day&rsquo;s fishing, how do I
+laugh in my sleeve, and sometimes roar outright, at the simplicity of these
+young folks and the sly humor of the fishermen! In winter, when our village is
+thrown into a bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers
+bargaining for frozen fish to be transported hundreds of miles and eaten fresh
+in Vermont or Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng. For I
+launch my boat no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the shore was solitary, I have found a pleasure that seemed even to exalt
+my mind in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls as they wheeled and
+hovered about each other with hoarse screams, one moment flapping on the foam
+of the wave, and then soaring aloft till their white bosoms melted into the
+upper sunshine. In the calm of the summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a
+little ostentation of activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of
+the hill. There I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or
+homeward from afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern
+steamboat; there, too, is the sun, going down, but not in gloom, and there the
+illimitable ocean mingling with the sky, to remind me of eternity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk that comes
+between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing fireside. And never, even
+on the first Thanksgiving-night, when Susan and I sat alone with our hopes, nor
+the second, when a stranger had been sent to gladden us and be the visible
+image of our affection, did I feel such joy as now. All that belongs to me are
+here: Death has taken none, nor Disease kept them away, nor Strife divided them
+from their parents or each other; with neither poverty nor riches to disturb
+them, nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have kept New
+England&rsquo;s festival round the patriarch&rsquo;s board. For I am a
+patriarch. Here I sit among my descendants, in my old arm-chair and immemorial
+corner, while the firelight throws an appropriate glory round my venerable
+frame.&mdash;Susan! My children! Something whispers me that this happiest hour
+must be the final one, and that nothing remains but to bless you all and depart
+with a treasure of recollected joys to heaven. Will you meet me there? Alas!
+your figures grow indistinct, fading into pictures on the air, and now to
+fainter outlines, while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar room,
+and shows the book that I flung down and the sheet that I left half written
+some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the looking-glass, and perceive myself
+alone, unless those be the mermaid&rsquo;s features retiring into the depths of
+the mirror with a tender and melancholy smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! One feels a chilliness&mdash;not bodily, but about the heart&mdash;and,
+moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes. I can
+imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and terror after
+dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or distant people and stripping
+his cavern of the unreal splendor which had changed it to a palace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can create so
+bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from youth to age than
+to awake and strive doubtfully for something real? Oh, the slight tissue of a
+dream can no more preserve us from the stern reality of misfortune than a robe
+of cobweb could repel the wintry blast. Be this the moral, then: In chaste and
+warm affections, humble wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is
+health for the mind and quiet for the heart, the prospect of a happy life and
+the fairest hope of heaven.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST</h2>
+
+<p>
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled it high
+with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the
+splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the precipice. Up
+the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The
+faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed. The
+eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged
+grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness
+grown old. They had found the &ldquo;herb heart&rsquo;s-ease&rdquo; in the
+bleakest spot of all New England. This family were situated in the Notch of the
+White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold
+in the winter, giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it
+descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous
+one, for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that the stones would
+often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with mirth,
+when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage,
+rattling the door with a sound of wailing and lamentation before it passed into
+the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in
+the tones. But the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch
+was lifted by some traveller whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary
+blast which heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went
+moaning away from the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the
+world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery through which the
+life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine on one
+side and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence on the other.
+The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer
+with no companion but his staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense
+of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the
+cleft of the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
+teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night, and, if a
+bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a kiss from the
+mountain-maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the
+traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kindness
+beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer
+door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children and
+all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was
+linked with theirs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy
+expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road at
+nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of
+his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old
+woman who wiped a chair with her apron to the little child that held out its
+arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent
+familiarity with the eldest daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! this fire is the right thing,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;especially
+when there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed, for the
+Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
+blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you are going toward Vermont?&rdquo; said the master of the house
+as he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man&rsquo;s shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, to Burlington, and far enough beyond,&rdquo; replied he. &ldquo;I
+meant to have been at Ethan Crawford&rsquo;s to-night, but a pedestrian lingers
+along such a road as this. It is no matter; for when I saw this good fire and
+all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me and
+were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you and make myself at
+home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when something
+like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep side of the
+mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in passing the
+cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The family held their breath,
+because they knew the sound, and their guest held his by instinct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget
+him,&rdquo; said the landlord, recovering himself. &ldquo;He sometimes nods his
+head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree together
+pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of refuge hard by if
+he should be coming in good earnest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear&rsquo;s
+meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on a footing
+of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as freely together as if
+he belonged to their mountain-brood. He was of a proud yet gentle spirit,
+haughty and reserved among the rich and great, but ever ready to stoop his head
+to the lowly cottage door and be like a brother or a son at the poor
+man&rsquo;s fireside. In the household of the Notch he found warmth and
+simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry
+of native growth which they had gathered when they little thought of it from
+the mountain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and
+dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had
+been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept
+himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions. The
+family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity
+among themselves and separation from the world at large which in every domestic
+circle should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this
+evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour
+out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer
+him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the
+kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The secret of the young man&rsquo;s character was a high and abstracted
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to be
+forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope, and hope,
+long cherished, had become like certainty that, obscurely as he journeyed now,
+a glory was to beam on all his pathway, though not, perhaps, while he was
+treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now
+the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as
+meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle
+to his tomb with none to recognize him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As yet,&rdquo; cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye
+flashing with enthusiasm&mdash;&ldquo;as yet I have done nothing. Were I to
+vanish from the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as
+you&mdash;that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the
+Saco, and opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch
+by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, &lsquo;Who was he?
+Whither did the wanderer go?&rsquo; But I cannot die till I have achieved my
+destiny. Then let Death come: I shall have built my monument.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid abstracted
+reverie which enabled the family to understand this young man&rsquo;s
+sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the
+ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You laugh at me,&rdquo; said he, taking the eldest daughter&rsquo;s hand
+and laughing himself. &ldquo;You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were
+to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might
+spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be a noble pedestal
+for a man&rsquo;s statue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is better to sit here by this fire,&rdquo; answered the girl,
+blushing, &ldquo;and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said her father, after a fit of musing, &ldquo;there
+is something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned
+that way, I might have felt just the same.&mdash;It is strange, wife, how his
+talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to
+pass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps they may,&rdquo; observed the wife. &ldquo;Is the man thinking
+what he will do when he is a widower?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness.
+&ldquo;When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine too. But I was
+wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton, or some other
+township round the White Mountains, but not where they could tumble on our
+heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called squire and
+sent to General Court for a term or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much
+good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an
+old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and
+leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a
+marble one, with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to
+let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, now!&rdquo; exclaimed the stranger; &ldquo;it is our nature to
+desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+memory in the universal heart of man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in a strange way to-night,&rdquo; said the wife, with tears
+in her eyes. &ldquo;They say it&rsquo;s a sign of something when folks&rsquo;
+minds go a-wandering so. Hark to the children!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in another
+room, but with an open door between; so that they could be heard talking busily
+among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the
+fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild wishes and childish
+projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women. At length a
+little boy, instead of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what I wish, mother,&rdquo; cried he: &ldquo;I want
+you and father and grandma&rsquo;m, and all of us, and the stranger too, to
+start right away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody could help laughing at the child&rsquo;s notion of leaving a warm bed
+and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the Flume&mdash;a
+brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along the road and stopped a
+moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three men who were
+cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song which resounded in broken
+notes between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to continue their
+journey or put up here for the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said the girl, &ldquo;they are calling you by
+name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was unwilling
+to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to patronize his
+house. He therefore did not hurry to the door, and, the lash being soon
+applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still singing and laughing,
+though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the mountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, mother!&rdquo; cried the boy, again; &ldquo;they&rsquo;d have
+given us a ride to the Flume.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again they laughed at the child&rsquo;s pertinacious fancy for a night-ramble.
+But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter&rsquo;s spirit; she
+looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It
+forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then, starting and
+blushing, she looked quickly around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse
+into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; answered she, with a downcast smile; &ldquo;only I felt
+lonesome just then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people&rsquo;s
+hearts,&rdquo; said he, half seriously. &ldquo;Shall I tell the secrets of
+yours? For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and
+complains of lonesomeness at her mother&rsquo;s side. Shall I put these
+feelings into words?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They would not be a girl&rsquo;s feelings any longer if they could be
+put into words,&rdquo; replied the mountain-nymph, laughing, but avoiding his
+eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts
+so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on
+earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his, and the proud,
+contemplative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by simplicity like hers.
+But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the
+lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings, of a maiden&rsquo;s nature, the wind
+through the Notch took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful
+stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast who in old
+Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains and made their heights
+and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral
+were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on their
+fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a
+scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly and
+caressed them all. There were the little faces of the children peeping from
+their bed apart, and here the father&rsquo;s frame of strength, the
+mother&rsquo;s subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth, the budding
+girl and the good old grandam, still knitting in the warmest place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy was the next
+to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old folks have their notions,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;as well as young
+ones. You&rsquo;ve been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one
+thing and another till you&rsquo;ve set my mind a-wandering too. Now, what
+should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she
+comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it, mother?&rdquo; cried the husband and wife at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer round
+the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years
+before&mdash;a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a
+finer sort than she had worn since her wedding-day. But this evening an old
+superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said in her younger
+days that if anything were amiss with a corpse&mdash;if only the ruff were not
+smooth or the cap did not set right&mdash;the corpse, in the coffin and beneath
+the clods, would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare
+thought made her nervous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk so, grandmother,&rdquo; said the girl, shuddering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet
+smiling strangely at her own folly, &ldquo;I want one of you, my children, when
+your mother is dressed and in the coffin,&mdash;I want one of you to hold a
+looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself and
+see whether all&rsquo;s right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,&rdquo; murmured the
+stranger-youth. &ldquo;I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking and
+they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean, that
+wide and nameless sepulchre?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment the old woman&rsquo;s ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of
+her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast,
+had grown broad, deep and terrible before the fated group were conscious of it.
+The house and all within it trembled; the foundations of the earth seemed to be
+shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old
+exchanged one wild glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without
+utterance or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all
+their lips:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The slide! The slide!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror of
+the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and sought refuge in
+what they deemed a safer spot, where, in contemplation of such an emergency, a
+sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security and fled
+right into the pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain
+in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke into
+two branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity,
+blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere
+the thunder of that great slide had ceased to roar among the mountains the
+mortal agony had been endured and the victims were at peace. Their bodies were
+never found.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage chimney up
+the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the
+chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view
+the devastation of the slide and would shortly return to thank Heaven for their
+miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens by which those who had known
+the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The
+story has been told far and wide, and will for ever be a legend of these
+mountains. Poets have sung their fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had been
+received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the catastrophe
+of all its inmates; others denied that there were sufficient grounds for such a
+conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth with his dream of earthly
+immortality! His name and person utterly unknown, his history, his way of life,
+his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a
+doubt,&mdash;whose was the agony of that death-moment?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>
+THE SISTER-YEARS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Last night, between eleven and twelve o&rsquo;clock, when the Old Year was
+leaving her final footprints on the borders of Time&rsquo;s empire, she found
+herself in possession of a few spare moments, and sat down&mdash;of all places
+in the world&mdash;on the steps of our new city-hall. The wintry moonlight
+showed that she looked weary of body and sad of heart, like many another
+wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been exposed to much foul weather and
+rough usage, were in very ill condition, and, as the hurry of her journey had
+never before allowed her to take an instant&rsquo;s rest, her shoes were so
+worn as to be scarcely worth the mending. But after trudging only a little
+distance farther this poor Old Year was destined to enjoy a long, long sleep. I
+forgot to mention that when she seated herself on the steps she deposited by
+her side a very capacious bandbox in which, as is the custom among travellers
+of her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this
+luggage, there was a folio book under her arm very much resembling the annual
+volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees and resting her
+elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary, bedraggled,
+world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh and appeared to be taking no very
+pleasant retrospect of her past existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to summon her to the
+innumerable sisterhood of departed years, there came a young maiden treading
+lightsomely on tip-toe along the street from the direction of the railroad
+d&eacute;p&ocirc;t. She was evidently a stranger, and perhaps had come to town
+by the evening train of cars. There was a smiling cheerfulness in this fair
+maiden&rsquo;s face which bespoke her fully confident of a kind reception from
+the multitude of people with whom she was soon to form acquaintance. Her dress
+was rather too airy for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons
+and other vanities which were likely soon to be rent away by the fierce storms
+or to fade in the hot sunshine amid which she was to pursue her changeful
+course. But still she was a wonderfully pleasant-looking figure, and had so
+much promise and such an indescribable hopefulness in her aspect that hardly
+anybody could meet her without anticipating some very desirable thing&mdash;the
+consummation of some long-sought good&mdash;from her kind offices. A few dismal
+characters there may be here and there about the world who have so often been
+trifled with by young maidens as promising as she that they have now ceased to
+pin any faith upon the skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have
+great faith in her, and, should I live to see fifty more such, still from each
+of those successive sisters I shall reckon upon receiving something that will
+be worth living for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The New Year&mdash;for this young maiden was no less a personage&mdash;carried
+all her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight, which hung
+upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with great affection, and
+sat down beside her on the steps of the city-hall, waiting for the signal to
+begin her rambles through the world. The two were own sisters, being both
+granddaughters of Time, and, though one looked so much older than the other, it
+was rather owing to hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but a
+twelvemonth&rsquo;s difference between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my dear sister,&rdquo; said the New Year, after the first
+salutations, &ldquo;you look almost tired to death. What have you been about
+during your sojourn in this part of infinite space?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I have it all recorded here in my book of chronicles,&rdquo;
+answered the Old Year, in a heavy tone. &ldquo;There is nothing that would
+amuse you, and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your
+own personal experience. It is but tiresome reading.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio and glanced at them by
+the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of interest in her own
+biography, although its incidents were remembered without pleasure. The volume,
+though she termed it her book of chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less
+than the Salem <i>Gazette</i> for 1838; in the accuracy of which journal this
+sagacious Old Year had so much confidence that she deemed it needless to record
+her history with her own pen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What have you been doing in the political way?&rdquo; asked the New
+Year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, my course here in the United States,&rdquo; said the Old
+Year&mdash;&ldquo;though perhaps I ought to blush at the confession&mdash;my
+political course, I must acknowledge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes
+inclining toward the Whigs, then causing the administration party to shout for
+triumph, and now again uplifting what seemed the almost prostrate banner of the
+opposition; so that historians will hardly know what to make of me in this
+respect. But the Loco-Focos&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not like these party nicknames,&rdquo; interrupted her sister, who
+seemed remarkably touchy about some points. &ldquo;Perhaps we shall part in
+better humor if we avoid any political discussion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; replied the Old Year, who had already been
+tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind. &ldquo;I care not if the
+name of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about banks and the
+sub-treasury, abolition, Texas, the Florida war, and a million of other topics
+which you will learn soon enough for your own comfort,&mdash;I care not, I say,
+if no whisper of these matters ever reaches my ears again. Yet they have
+occupied so large a share of my attention that I scarcely know what else to
+tell you. There has, indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border,
+where blood has streamed in the names of liberty and patriotism; but it must
+remain for some future, perhaps far-distant, year to tell whether or no those
+holy names have been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much depresses me in my
+view of mortal affairs as to see high energies wasted and human life and
+happiness thrown away for ends that appear oftentimes unwise, and still oftener
+remain unaccomplished. But the wisest people and the best keep a steadfast
+faith that the progress of mankind is onward and upward, and that the toil and
+anguish of the path serve to wear away the imperfections of the immortal
+pilgrim, and will be felt no more when they have done their office.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; cried the hopeful New Year&mdash;&ldquo;perhaps I shall
+see that happy day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt whether it be so close at hand,&rdquo; answered the Old Year,
+gravely smiling. &ldquo;You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed
+consummation, and will turn for amusement&mdash;as has frequently been my own
+practice&mdash;to the affairs of some sober little city like this of Salem.
+Here we sit on the steps of the new city-hall which has been completed under my
+administration, and it would make you laugh to see how the game of politics of
+which the Capitol at Washington is the great chess-board is here played in
+miniature. Burning Ambition finds its fuel here; here patriotism speaks boldly
+in the people&rsquo;s behalf and virtuous economy demands retrenchment in the
+emoluments of a lamplighter; here the aldermen range their senatorial dignity
+around the mayor&rsquo;s chair of state and the common council feel that they
+have liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and
+policy, man&rsquo;s tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his
+individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied almost as
+well here as on the theatre of nations, and with this great
+advantage&mdash;that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian scope
+still makes the beholder smile.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you done much for the improvement of the city?&rdquo; asked the New
+Year. &ldquo;Judging from what little I have seen, it appears to be ancient and
+time-worn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have opened the railroad,&rdquo; said the elder Year, &ldquo;and half
+a dozen times a day you will hear the bell which once summoned the monks of a
+Spanish convent to their devotions announcing the arrival or departure of the
+cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I first beheld
+her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a time. New faces throng
+in Essex street. Railroad-hacks and omnibuses rattle over the pavements. There
+is a perceptible increase of oyster-shops and other establishments for the
+accommodation of a transitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change
+awaits the venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be
+carried off by the free circulation of society. A peculiarity of character of
+which the inhabitants themselves are hardly sensible will be rubbed down and
+worn away by the attrition of foreign substances. Much of the result will be
+good; there will likewise be a few things not so good. Whether for better or
+worse, there will be a probable diminution of the moral influence of wealth,
+and the sway of an aristocratic class which from an era far beyond my memory
+has held firmer dominion here than in any other New England town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Old Year, having talked away nearly all of her little remaining breath, now
+closed her book of chronicles, and was about to take her departure, but her
+sister detained her a while longer by inquiring the contents of the huge
+bandbox which she was so painfully lugging along with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These are merely a few trifles,&rdquo; replied the Old Year,
+&ldquo;which I have picked up in my rambles and am going to deposit in the
+receptacle of things past and forgotten. We sisterhood of years never carry
+anything really valuable out of the world with us. Here are patterns of most of
+the fashions which I brought into vogue, and which have already lived out their
+allotted term; you will supply their place with others equally ephemeral. Here,
+put up in little china pots, like rouge, is a considerable lot of beautiful
+women&rsquo;s bloom which the disconsolate fair ones owe me a bitter grudge for
+stealing. I have likewise a quantity of men&rsquo;s dark hair, instead of which
+I have left gray locks or none at all. The tears of widows and other afflicted
+mortals who have received comfort during the last twelve months are preserved
+in some dozens of essence-bottles well corked and sealed. I have several
+bundles of love-letters eloquently breathing an eternity of burning passion
+which grew cold and perished almost before the ink was dry. Moreover, here is
+an assortment of many thousand broken promises and other broken ware, all very
+light and packed into little space. The heaviest articles in my possession are
+a large parcel of disappointed hopes which a little while ago were buoyant
+enough to have inflated Mr. Lauriat&rsquo;s balloon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket,&rdquo; remarked the New
+Year. &ldquo;They are a sweet-smelling flower&mdash;a species of rose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They soon lose their perfume,&rdquo; replied the sombre Old Year.
+&ldquo;What else have you brought to insure a welcome from the discontented
+race of mortals?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, to say the truth, little or nothing else,&rdquo; said her sister,
+with a smile, &ldquo;save a few new <i>Annuals</i> and almanacs, and some New
+Year&rsquo;s gifts for the children. But I heartily wish well to poor mortals,
+and mean to do all I can for their improvement and happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a good resolution,&rdquo; rejoined the Old Year. &ldquo;And, by
+the way, I have a plentiful assortment of good resolutions which have now grown
+so stale and musty that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only for fear
+that the city authorities would send Constable Mansfield with a warrant after
+me, I should toss them into the street at once. Many other matters go to make
+up the contents of my bandbox, but the whole lot would not fetch a single bid
+even at an auction of worn-out furniture; and as they are worth nothing either
+to you or anybody else, I need not trouble you with a longer catalogue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And must I also pick up such worthless luggage in my travels?&rdquo;
+asked the New Year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Most certainly, and well if you have no heavier load to bear,&rdquo;
+replied the other. &ldquo;And now, my dear sister, I must bid you farewell,
+earnestly advising and exhorting you to expect no gratitude nor good-will from
+this peevish, unreasonable, inconsiderate, ill-intending and worse-behaving
+world. However warmly its inhabitants may seem to welcome you, yet, do what you
+may and lavish on them what means of happiness you please, they will still be
+complaining, still craving what it is not in your power to give, still looking
+forward to some other year for the accomplishment of projects which ought never
+to have been formed, and which, if successful, would only provide new occasions
+of discontent. If these ridiculous people ever see anything tolerable in you,
+it will be after you are gone for ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I,&rdquo; cried the fresh-hearted New Year&mdash;&ldquo;I shall try
+to leave men wiser than I find them. I will offer them freely whatever good
+gifts Providence permits me to distribute, and will tell them to be thankful
+for what they have and humbly hopeful for more; and surely, if they are not
+absolute fools, they will condescend to be happy, and will allow me to be a
+happy year. For my happiness must depend on them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas for you, then, my poor sister!&rdquo; said the Old Year, sighing,
+as she uplifted her burden. &ldquo;We grandchildren of Time are born to
+trouble. Happiness, they say, dwells in the mansions of eternity, but we can
+only lead mortals thither step by step with reluctant murmurings, and ourselves
+must perish on the threshold. But hark! my task is done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson&rsquo;s church struck twelve;
+there was a response from Dr. Flint&rsquo;s, in the opposite quarter of the
+city; and while the strokes were yet dropping into the air the Old Year either
+flitted or faded away, and not the wisdom and might of angels, to say nothing
+of the remorseful yearnings of the millions who had used her ill, could have
+prevailed with that departed year to return one step. But she, in the company
+of Time and all her kindred, must hereafter hold a reckoning with mankind. So
+shall it be, likewise, with the maidenly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to
+strike, arose from the steps of the city-hall and set out rather timorously on
+her earthly course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A happy New Year!&rdquo; cried a watchman, eying her figure very
+questionably, but without the least suspicion that he was addressing the New
+Year in person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you kindly,&rdquo; said the New Year; and she gave the watchman
+one of the roses of hope from her basket. &ldquo;May this flower keep a sweet
+smell long after I have bidden you good-bye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets, and such as were
+awake at the moment heard her footfall and said, &ldquo;The New Year is
+come!&rdquo; Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they quaffed her
+health. She sighed, however, to perceive that the air was tainted&mdash;as the
+atmosphere of this world must continually be&mdash;with the dying breaths of
+mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to bury them. But there were
+millions left alive to rejoice at her coming, and so she pursued her way with
+confidence, strewing emblematic flowers on the doorstep of almost every
+dwelling, which some persons will gather up and wear in their bosoms, and
+others will trample under foot. The carrier-boy can only say further that early
+this morning she filled his basket with New Year&rsquo;s addresses, assuring
+him that the whole city, with our new mayor and the aldermen and common council
+at its head, would make a general rush to secure copies. Kind patrons, will not
+you redeem the pledge of the New Year?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>
+SNOWFLAKES</h2>
+
+<p>
+There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through the
+partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning of the
+storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air and hover
+downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled
+again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere. These are not the big flakes
+heavy with moisture which melt as they touch the ground and are portentous of a
+soaking rain. It is to be in good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three
+people visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed,
+frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless
+and blustering day. By nightfall&mdash;or, at least, before the sun sheds
+another glimmering smile upon us&mdash;the street and our little garden will be
+heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, already frozen for weeks past, is
+prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid upon it, and to a Northern eye
+the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its
+own when Mother Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of
+her winter&rsquo;s wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.
+As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar-frost over the brown surface
+of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still discernible, and
+the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look gray instead of black. All
+the snow that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it
+heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually
+by silent and stealthy influences are great changes wrought. These little
+snow-particles which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air will
+bury the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her
+sister Sky again for dreary months. We likewise shall lose sight of our
+mother&rsquo;s familiar visage, and must content ourselves with looking
+heavenward the oftener.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down, pen in
+hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an influence productive
+of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative thought in the atmosphere of a
+snowy day. The native of a Southern clime may woo the Muse beneath the heavy
+shade of summer foliage reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of
+singing-birds and warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In
+our brief summer I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a
+dream. My hour of inspiration&mdash;if that hour ever comes&mdash;is when the
+green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for the gloom
+of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down
+among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in the gust and the
+snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelt hard against the window-panes, then I
+spread out my sheet of paper with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will
+gleam forth upon it like stars at twilight or like violets in May, perhaps to
+fade as soon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the
+darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the room.
+Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-born son, be New
+England&rsquo;s winter, which makes us one and all the nurslings of the storm
+and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek of the December blast.
+Now look we forth again and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slow and sure! He has the day&mdash;perchance the week&mdash;before him, and
+may take his own time to accomplish Nature&rsquo;s burial in snow. A smooth
+mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry stalks
+of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in all parts of
+the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand shivering in a shallow snowdrift,
+looking, poor things! as disconsolate as if they possessed a human
+consciousness of the dreary scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do
+not perish with the summer. They neither live nor die; what they retain of life
+seems but the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in
+midwinter. The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the eddying
+wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity of
+the storm, we must fix upon some distant object&mdash;as yonder spire&mdash;and
+observe how the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the
+intervening space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured; then, again, we
+have a distinct but transient glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant&rsquo;s
+ghost; and now the dense wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging
+snowdrifts at each other in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have
+an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions.
+It is a snow-battle of schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war and military
+glory might be written in the form of a child&rsquo;s story by describing the
+snow-ball fights of two rival schools, the alternate defeats and victories of
+each, and the final triumph of one party, or perhaps of neither! What pitched
+battles worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses
+built all of massive snow-blocks! What feats of individual prowess and embodied
+onsets of martial enthusiasm! And when some well-contested and decisive victory
+had put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a lofty monument
+of snow upon the battlefield and crown it with the victor&rsquo;s statue hewn
+of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter the passer-by
+would observe a shapeless mound upon the level common, and, unmindful of the
+famous victory, would ask, &ldquo;How came it there? Who reared it? And what
+means it?&rdquo; The shattered pedestal of many a battle-monument has provoked
+these questions when none could answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there, lending our ears to the
+wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice and dictate wild and
+airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to sketch out the
+personification of a New England winter! And that idea, if I can seize the
+snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy, shall be the theme of the next
+page.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter autumn
+which is Nature&rsquo;s cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushes among the
+shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters the sear leaves upon the
+tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap themselves in cloaks and shake
+their heads disconsolately, saying, &ldquo;Winter is at hand.&rdquo; Then the
+axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and diligently in the forest; then the
+coal-merchants rejoice because each shriek of Nature in her agony adds
+something to the price of coal per ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its
+aromatic fragrance through the atmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the
+children look out of the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy
+mantle in the air. It is stern Winter&rsquo;s vesture. They crowd around the
+hearth and cling to their mother&rsquo;s gown or press between their
+father&rsquo;s knees, affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown
+the wide flue of the chimney.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, they shudder
+and exclaim, &ldquo;Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reign
+already.&rdquo; Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar sending
+up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity who tyrannizes
+over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his white mantle, his staff a
+huge icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed snowdrift, he travels over the
+land in the midst of the northern blast, and woe to the homeless wanderer whom
+he finds upon his path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on
+the spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing
+rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary
+empire is established; all around stretches the desolation of the pole. Yet not
+ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter is our sire, though a stern
+and rough one)&mdash;not ungrateful even for the severities which have
+nourished our unyielding strength of character. And let us thank him, too, for
+the sleigh-rides cheered by the music of merry bells; for the crackling and
+rustling hearth when the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the
+blooming cheek of woman: for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues
+which flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven
+months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned
+virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the
+handful and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often ere he will give
+up his empire old Winter rushes fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the
+shrinking form of Spring, yet step by step he is compelled to retreat
+northward, and spends the summer month within the Arctic circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the
+winter&rsquo;s day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without
+abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser volumes
+to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a layer of snow
+reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The garden is one unbroken bed.
+Along the street are two or three spots of uncovered earth where the gust has
+whirled away the snow, heaping it elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge
+banks against the doors of houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding
+mid-leg deep across a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak
+is swollen with the wind. And now the jingling of bells&mdash;a sluggish sound
+responsive to the horse&rsquo;s toilsome progress through the unbroken
+drifts&mdash;announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behind and
+ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes a sledge laden
+with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper whom winter has surprised at a cold
+hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles along the uneven street? A sable
+hearse bestrewn with snow is bearing a dead man through the storm to his frozen
+bed. Oh how dreary is a burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no
+warmth for her poor child!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evening&mdash;the early eve of December&mdash;begins to spread its deepening
+veil over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens and throws
+my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber, but still the
+storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas! I shiver and think it time
+to be disconsolate, but, taking a farewell glance at dead Nature in her shroud,
+I perceive a flock of snowbirds skimming lightsomely through the tempest and
+flitting from drift to drift as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime
+of summer. Whence come they? Where do they build their nests and seek their
+food? Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth,
+instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm and fluttering on the
+dreary verge of the winter&rsquo;s eve? I know not whence they come, nor why;
+yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock of snow-birds.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>
+THE SEVEN VAGABONDS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year, I came
+one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight
+before me the main road extended its dusty length to Boston; on the left a
+branch went toward the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle of
+twenty or thirty miles, while by the right-hand path I might have gone over
+hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford.
+On a level spot of grass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object
+which, though locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of
+Gulliver&rsquo;s portable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered
+wagon&mdash;or, more properly, a small house on wheels&mdash;with a door on one
+side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses munching
+provender out of the baskets which muzzled them were fastened near the vehicle.
+A delectable sound of music proceeded from the interior, and I immediately
+conjectured that this was some itinerant show halting at the confluence of the
+roads to intercept such idle travellers as myself. A shower had long been
+climbing up the western sky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that
+it was a point of wisdom to seek shelter here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?&rdquo; cried I,
+approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the wagon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not the sort of
+figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering showman, but a most
+respectable old personage whom I was sorry to have addressed in so free a
+style. He wore a snuff-colored coat and small-clothes, with white top-boots,
+and exhibited the mild dignity of aspect and manner which may often be noticed
+in aged schoolmasters, and sometimes in deacons, selectmen or other potentates
+of that kind. A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises,
+where I found only one other person, hereafter to be described.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a dull day for business,&rdquo; said the old gentleman as he
+ushered me in; &ldquo;but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being
+bound for the camp-meeting at Stamford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New England,
+and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my description. The
+spectacle&mdash;for I will not use the unworthy term of
+&ldquo;puppet-show&rdquo;&mdash;consisted of a multitude of little people
+assembled on a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind in the
+attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen standing
+ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a line across the stage,
+looking stern, grim and terrible enough to make it a pleasant consideration
+that they were but three inches high; and conspicuous above the whole was seen
+a Merry Andrew in the pointed cap and motley coat of his profession. All the
+inhabitants of this mimic world were motionless, like the figures in a picture,
+or like that people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business
+and delights and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an eternal
+semblance of labor that was ended and pleasure that could be felt no more.
+Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a barrel-organ, the first
+note of which produced a most enlivening effect upon the figures and awoke them
+all to their proper occupations and amusements. By the selfsame impulse the
+tailor plied his needle, the blacksmith&rsquo;s hammer descended upon the anvil
+and the dancers whirled away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke
+into platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of
+horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and trampling of
+hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while an old toper of
+inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle and took off a hearty swig.
+Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper and turn somersets, shaking his
+sides, nodding his head and winking his eyes in as lifelike a manner as if he
+were ridiculing the nonsense of all human affairs and making fun of the whole
+multitude beneath him. At length the old magician (for I compared the showman
+to Prospero entertaining his guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I
+might give utterance to my wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What an admirable piece of work is this!&rdquo; exclaimed I, lifting up
+my hands in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man&rsquo;s gravity
+as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom which reproves
+every occupation that is not useful in this world of vanities. If there be a
+faculty which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing
+myself mentally into situations foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful
+eye the desirable circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this
+gray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable
+adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of Cape Cod
+and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the north and east, and halting
+now on the green before a village meeting-house and now in a paved square of
+the metropolis. How often must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of
+children as they viewed these animated figures, or his pride indulged by
+haranguing learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such
+wonderful effects, or his gallantry brought into play&mdash;for this is an
+attribute which such grave men do not lack&mdash;by the visits of pretty
+maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return at intervals to his
+own peculiar home! &ldquo;I would I were assured of as happy a life as
+his,&rdquo; thought I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the showman&rsquo;s wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
+spectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person, at whom I
+threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man of two or three
+and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat with velvet collar were smart,
+though no longer new, while a pair of green spectacles that seemed needless to
+his brisk little eyes gave him something of a scholar-like and literary air.
+After allowing me a sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a
+bow and drew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he
+forthwith began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-sounding words and
+an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myself one of the most
+merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required some considerable powers of
+commendation in the salesman. There were several ancient friends of
+mine&mdash;the novels of those happy days when my affections wavered between
+the <i>Scottish Chiefs</i> and <i>Thomas Thumb</i>&mdash;besides a few of later
+date whose merits had not been acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find
+that dear little venerable volume the <i>New England Primer</i>, looking as
+antique as ever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of
+superannuated gilt picture-books made such a child of me that, partly for the
+glittering covers and partly for the fairy-tales within, I bought the whole,
+and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew largely on my
+purse. To balance these expenditures, I meddled neither with sermons nor
+science nor morality, though volumes of each were there, nor with a <i>Life of
+Franklin</i> in the coarsest of paper, but so showily bound that it was
+emblematical of the doctor himself in the court-dress which he refused to wear
+at Paris, nor with Webster&rsquo;s spelling-book, nor some of Byron&rsquo;s
+minor poems, nor half a dozen little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus
+far the collection might have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up
+at an evening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered pamphlet which
+the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I purchased it immediately at
+his own price; and then for the first time the thought struck me that I had
+spoken face to face with the veritable author of a printed book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to inquire
+which way he was travelling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I keep company with this old gentlemen here,
+and we are moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented a corner of
+the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed, was a true
+circulating library, since there were few parts of the country where it had not
+gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within
+my mind the many uncommon felicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially
+when his character resembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate
+was to be reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the
+present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger and made
+him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was
+travelling the country in a showman&rsquo;s wagon. A more valuable yet not
+infrequent triumph might be won in his conversations with some elderly
+clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back-settlement of New
+England, who as he recruited his library from the pedler&rsquo;s stock of
+sermons would exhort him to seek a college education and become the first
+scholar in his class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his sensations when,
+talking poetry while he sold spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and
+haply touch the heart, of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored
+poetess, a wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look
+at. But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted
+for the night and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar-room.
+Then would he recommend to the multifarious company, whether traveller from the
+city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring squire, or the landlord
+himself, or his loutish hostler, works suited to each particular taste and
+capacity, proving, all the while, by acute criticism and profound remark, that
+the lore in his books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily
+would he traverse the land, sometimes a herald before the march of Mind,
+sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reaping everywhere a
+harvest of real and sensible popularity which the secluded bookworms by whose
+toil he lived could never hope for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If ever I meddle with literature,&rdquo; thought I, fixing myself in
+adamantine resolution, &ldquo;it shall be as a travelling bookseller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about us, and a
+few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle, pattering like the
+feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A sound of pleasant voices made
+us listen, and there soon appeared halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a
+young damsel whose rosy face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it
+seemed as if the sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark
+and handsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than might have
+been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into the wagon. It
+became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers stood within the door,
+that they were of a profession kindred to those of my companions, and I was
+delighted with the more than hospitable&mdash;the even paternal&mdash;kindness
+of the old showman&rsquo;s manner as he welcomed them, while the man of
+literature hastened to lead the merry-eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are housed but just in time, my young friends,&rdquo; said the
+master of the wagon; &ldquo;the sky would have been down upon you within five
+minutes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man&rsquo;s reply marked him as a foreigner&mdash;not by any
+variation from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
+more caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with the language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We knew that a shower was hanging over us,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and
+consulted whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill,
+but, seeing your wagon in the road&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We agreed to come hither,&rdquo; interrupted the girl, with a smile,
+&ldquo;because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy was narrowly inspecting
+these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man, tall, agile and
+athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls clustering round a dark and
+vivacious countenance which, if it had not greater expression, was at least
+more active and attracted readier notice, than the quiet faces of our
+countrymen. At his first appearance he had been laden with a neat mahogany box
+of about two feet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he
+had immediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor of the
+wagon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a brighter
+one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which seemed calculated to
+traverse the whole world without weariness, suited well with the glowing
+cheerfulness of her face, and her gay attire, combining the rainbow hues of
+crimson, green and a deep orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if
+she had been born in it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that
+mirth-inspiring instrument the fiddle, which her companion took from her hands,
+and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us the previous company of
+the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for this could be no mystery to
+frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations, cattle-shows, commencements, and
+other festal meetings in our sober land; and there is a dear friend of mine who
+will smile when this page recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by
+us in rescuing the show-box of such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted
+countrymen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said I to the damsel of gay attire; &ldquo;shall we visit
+all the wonders of the world together?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not much have
+troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of my words. The
+mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped in through its small
+round magnifying-window while the girl sat by my side and gave short
+descriptive sketches as one after another the pictures were unfolded to my
+view. We visited together&mdash;at least, our imaginations did&mdash;full many
+a famous city in the streets of which I had long yearned to tread. Once, I
+remember, we were in the harbor of Barcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore
+me through the air to Sicily and bade me look up at blazing &AElig;tna; then we
+took wing to Venice and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and
+anon she set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of
+Napoleon. But there was one scene&mdash;its locality she could not
+tell&mdash;which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces
+and churches, because the fancy haunted me that I myself the preceding summer
+had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in just such a pine-surrounded
+nook, among our own green mountains. All these pictures were tolerably
+executed, though far inferior to the girl&rsquo;s touches of description; nor
+was it easy to comprehend how in so few sentences, and these, as I supposed, in
+a language foreign to her, she contrived to present an airy copy of each varied
+scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I looked
+into my guide&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Where are you going, my pretty maid?&rsquo;&rdquo; inquired I, in
+the words of an old song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the gay damsel; &ldquo;you might as well ask where the
+summer wind is going. We are wanderers here and there and everywhere. Wherever
+there is mirth our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day, indeed, the people
+have told us of a great frolic and festival in these parts; so perhaps we may
+be needed at what you call the camp-meeting at Stamford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in my ears, I
+sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been her companion in a
+life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies cherished all through
+visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two strangers the world was in its
+Golden Age&mdash;not that, indeed, it was less dark and sad than ever, but
+because its weariness and sorrow had no community with their ethereal nature.
+Wherever they might appear in their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back
+their gladness, care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and
+Age, tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their sakes.
+The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade, would catch a
+passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves as these bright spirits
+wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was throughout all the earth! I
+looked at my shoulders, and thought them broad enough to sustain those pictured
+towns and mountains; mine, too, was an elastic foot as tireless as the wing of
+the bird of Paradise; mine was then an untroubled heart that would have gone
+singing on its delightful way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, maiden,&rdquo; said I aloud, &ldquo;why did you not come hither
+alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box the unceasing rain
+had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed pretty nearly of the old
+showman&rsquo;s age, but much smaller, leaner and more withered than he, and
+less respectably clad in a patched suit of gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd
+countenance and a pair of diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly
+out of their puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman
+in a manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving that the
+damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded document and
+presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be a circular, written
+in a very fair and legible hand and signed by several distinguished gentlemen
+whom I had never heard of, stating that the bearer had encountered every
+variety of misfortune and recommending him to the notice of all charitable
+people. Previous disbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out
+of which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation provided he would
+give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my face,
+and discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit, characteristic though
+it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which takes pleasure in detecting every little
+harmless piece of knavery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, perhaps,&rdquo; said the ragged old mendicant, &ldquo;if the bank
+is in good standing, I can&rsquo;t say but I may have enough about me to change
+your bill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and better than
+the specie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff leather bag
+tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was opened, there appeared a
+very comfortable treasure of silver coins of all sorts and sizes, and I even
+fancied that I saw gleaming among them the golden plumage of that rare bird in
+our currency the American eagle. In this precious heap was my bank-note
+deposited, the rate of exchange being considerably against me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his pocket an
+old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed to fill the buff
+leather bag in more ways than one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for
+twenty-five cents more I&rsquo;ll tell you what it is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling the cards
+and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to the prophetic
+beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting the shadowy events
+that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of his preternatural science by
+describing scenes through which I had already passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a page in
+his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine and proceeded to relate in
+all its minute particulars what was then the most singular event of my life. It
+was one which I had no purpose to disclose till the general unfolding of all
+secrets, nor would it be a much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or
+fortunate conjecture if the beggar were to meet me in the street today and
+repeat word for word the page which I have here written.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loth to make
+good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began to converse with
+the other occupants of the wagon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, old friend,&rdquo; said the showman, &ldquo;you have not yet told
+us which way your face is turned this afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am taking a trip northward this warm weather,&rdquo; replied the
+conjurer, &ldquo;across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and
+maybe into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of
+the camp-meeting at Stamford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging to the
+camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should pursue the
+road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of these people to
+form a sort of league and confederacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the young lady too,&rdquo; observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing
+to her profoundly, &ldquo;and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
+jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my own
+enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend, if they could
+be prevailed upon to join our party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of those
+concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had no title to be
+included in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the four
+others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover what
+enjoyments were peculiar to the old &ldquo;straggler,&rdquo; as the people of
+the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As he
+pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was fitted to
+pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing some of the mental and
+moral characteristics&mdash;the lighter and more comic ones&mdash;of the devil
+in popular stories. Among them might be reckoned a love of deception for its
+own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and ridiculous
+infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be
+pleasure even in the consciousness&mdash;so insupportable to some
+minds&mdash;that his whole life was a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as
+he was concerned with the public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its
+united wisdom. Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and
+pungent triumphs&mdash;as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance
+out of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a part of
+my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some ostentatious gentleman
+should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than himself, or
+when&mdash;though he would not always be so decidedly diabolical&mdash;his
+pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty living of real
+indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field of enjoyment, both as enabling
+him to discern so much folly and achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was
+opened to his sneering spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I had little
+sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to admit it, I might have
+found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his
+companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor man, has delighted, ever
+since the time of Job, in &ldquo;wandering up and down upon the earth,&rdquo;
+and, indeed, a crafty disposition which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in
+disconnected tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally
+impelled to a continual change of scene and society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My reflections were here interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another visitor!&rdquo; exclaimed the old showman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was roaring
+and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beating violently against
+our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless people for its lawful prey,
+while we, caring little for the displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably
+talking. There was now an attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice
+uttering some strange, unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for
+Greek and I suspected to be thieves&rsquo; Latin. However, the showman stepped
+forward and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our
+wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the forest and
+its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment. It was a red Indian
+armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort of cap adorned with a single
+feather of some wild bird, and a frock of blue cotton girded tight about him;
+on his breast, like orders of knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and
+other ornaments of silver, while a small crucifix betokened that our father the
+pope had interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had
+worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrim of the
+storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When the first surprise was
+over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the Penobscot tribe, parties of
+which I had often seen in their summer excursions down our Eastern rivers.
+There they paddle their birch canoes among the coasting-schooners, and build
+their wigwam beside some roaring mill-dam, and drive a little trade in
+basket-work where their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably
+wandering through the country toward Boston, subsisting on the careless charity
+of the people while he turned his archery to profitable account by shooting at
+cents which were to be the prize of his successful aim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Indian had not long been seated ere our merry damsel sought to draw him
+into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up of sunshine in the month of
+May, for there was nothing so dark and dismal that her pleasant mind could not
+cast a glow over it; and the wild man, like a fir tree in his native forest,
+soon began to brighten into a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length she
+inquired whether his journey had any particular end or purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford,&rdquo; replied the Indian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And here are five more,&rdquo; said the girl, &ldquo;all aiming at the
+camp-meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we travel with light hearts; and,
+as for me, I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and am full of merry
+thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that there is never any
+sadness among them that keep me company. But oh, you would find it very dull
+indeed to go all the way to Stamford alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian would
+prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offered him; on the
+contrary, the girl&rsquo;s proposal met with immediate acceptance and seemed to
+animate him with a misty expectation of enjoyment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether it flowed naturally
+from this combination of events or was drawn forth by a wayward fancy, caused
+my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep music. I saw mankind in this
+weary old age of the world either enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke
+and dust of cities, or, if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night
+with no hope but to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up
+life, among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that had
+darkened the sunshine of today. But there were some full of the primeval
+instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years by the
+continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits and new associates, and cared
+little, though their birthplace might have been here in New England, if the
+grave should close over them in Central Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament
+of these free spirits; unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a
+common centre, they had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared
+the representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer during
+thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land. Wandering down
+through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished around his path; his arm had
+lost somewhat of its strength, his foot of its fleetness, his mien of its wild
+regality, his heart and mind of their savage virtue and uncultured force, but
+here, untamable to the routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty
+road as of old over the forest-leaves,&mdash;here was the Indian still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations,
+&ldquo;here is an honest company of us&mdash;one, two, three, four, five,
+six&mdash;all going to the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I
+should like to know where this young gentleman may be going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind that preferred its
+own folly to another&rsquo;s wisdom, the open spirit that found companions
+everywhere&mdash;above all, the restless impulse that had so often made me
+wretched in the midst of enjoyments,&mdash;these were my claims to be of their
+society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My friends,&rdquo; cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon,
+&ldquo;I am going with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But in what capacity?&rdquo; asked the old showman, after a
+moment&rsquo;s silence. &ldquo;All of us here can get our bread in some
+creditable way. Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I
+take it, are a mere strolling gentleman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me a propensity to
+their way of life she had not left me altogether destitute of qualifications
+for it, though I could not deny that my talent was less respectable, and might
+be less profitable, than the meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to
+imitate the story-tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and become
+an itinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such
+audiences as I could collect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Either this,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;is my vocation, or I have been born
+in vain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take me as an
+apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of which undoubtedly
+would have given full scope to whatever inventive talent I might possess. The
+bibliopolist spoke a few words in opposition to my plan&mdash;influenced
+partly, I suspect, by the jealousy of authorship, and partly by an apprehension
+that the <i>viv&acirc;-voce</i> practice would become general among novelists,
+to the infinite detriment of the book trade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Mirth,&rsquo;&rdquo; cried I, most aptly appropriating the words
+of L&rsquo;Allegro, &ldquo;&lsquo;to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of thy
+crew!rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us indulge the poor youth,&rdquo; said Mirth, with a kindness which
+made me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to misinterpret her
+motives. &ldquo;I have espied much promise in him. True, a shadow sometimes
+flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to follow in a moment. He is
+never guilty of a sad thought but a merry one is twin-born with it. We will
+take him with us, and you shall see that he will set us all a-laughing before
+we reach the camp-meeting at Stamford.&rdquo; Her voice silenced the scruples
+of the rest and gained me admittance into the league; according to the terms of
+which, without a community of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all
+the aid and avert all the harm that might be in our power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe of us,
+manifesting itself characteristically in each individual. The old showman,
+sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of the pigmy people with
+one of the quickest tunes in the music-book; tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen
+and ladies all seemed to share in the spirit of the occasion, and the Merry
+Andrew played his part more facetiously than ever, nodding and winking
+particularly at me. The young foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a
+master&rsquo;s hand, and gave an inspiring echo to the showman&rsquo;s melody.
+The bookish man and the merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance, the
+former enacting the double shuffle in a style which everybody must have
+witnessed ere election week was blotted out of time, while the girl, setting
+her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed such light
+rapidity of foot and harmony of varying attitude and motion that I could not
+conceive how she ever was to stop, imagining at the moment that Nature had made
+her, as the old showman had made his puppets, for no earthly purpose but to
+dance jigs. The Indian bellowed forth a succession of most hideous outcries,
+somewhat affrighting us till we interpreted them as the war-song with which, in
+imitation of his ancestors, he was prefacing the assault on Stamford. The
+conjurer, meanwhile, sat demurely in a corner extracting a sly enjoyment from
+the whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry Andrew, directing his queer
+glance particularly at me. As for myself, with great exhilaration of fancy, I
+began to arrange and color the incidents of a tale wherewith I proposed to
+amuse an audience that very evening; for I saw that my associates were a little
+ashamed of me, and that no time was to be lost in obtaining a public
+acknowledgment of my abilities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, fellow-laborers,&rdquo; at last said the old showman, whom we had
+elected president; &ldquo;the shower is over, and we must be doing our duty by
+these poor souls at Stamford.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll come among them in procession, with music and
+dancing,&rdquo; cried the merry damsel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly&mdash;for it must be understood that our pilgrimage was to be
+performed on foot&mdash;we sallied joyously out of the wagon, each of us, even
+the old gentleman in his white top-boots, giving a great skip as we came down
+the ladder. Above our heads there was such a glory of sunshine and splendor of
+clouds, and such brightness of verdure below, that, as I modestly remarked at
+the time, Nature seemed to have washed her face and put on the best of her
+jewelry and a fresh green gown in honor of our confederation. Casting our eyes
+northward, we beheld a horseman approaching leisurely and splashing through the
+little puddle on the Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his saddle
+with rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom the
+showman and the conjurer shortly recognized to be what his aspect sufficiently
+indicated&mdash;a travelling preacher of great fame among the Methodists. What
+puzzled us was the fact that his face appeared turned from, instead of to, the
+camp-meeting at Stamford. However, as this new votary of the wandering life
+drew near the little green space where the guide-post and our wagon were
+situated, my six fellow-vagabonds and myself rushed forward and surrounded him,
+crying out with united voices, &ldquo;What news? What news from the
+camp-meeting at Stamford?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The missionary looked down in surprise at as singular a knot of people as could
+have been selected from all his heterogeneous auditors. Indeed, considering
+that we might all be classified under the general head of Vagabond, there was
+great diversity of character among the grave old showman, the sly, prophetic
+beggar, the fiddling foreigner and his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist,
+the sombre Indian and myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of
+eighteen. I even fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron
+gravity of the preacher&rsquo;s mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good people,&rdquo; answered he, &ldquo;the camp-meeting is broke
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode westward. Our
+union being thus nullified by the removal of its object, we were sundered at
+once to the four winds of heaven. The fortune-teller, giving a nod to all and a
+peculiar wink to me, departed on his Northern tour, chuckling within himself as
+he took the Stamford road. The old showman and his literary coadjutor were
+already tackling their horses to the wagon with a design to peregrinate
+south-west along the sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel took their
+laughing leave and pursued the eastern road, which I had that day trodden; as
+they passed away the young man played a lively strain and the girl&rsquo;s
+happy spirit broke into a dance, and, thus dissolving, as it were, into
+sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant pair departed from my view. Finally, with
+a pensive shadow thrown across my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy of
+my late companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forth
+toward the distant city.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>
+THE WHITE OLD MAID</h2>
+
+<p>
+The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a spacious
+chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one lattice the shadow of
+the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the ghostly light through the
+other slept upon a bed, falling between the heavy silken curtains and
+illuminating the face of a young man. But how quietly the slumberer lay! how
+pale his features! And how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame!
+Yes, it was a corpse in its burial-clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange fantasy!
+It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt the dead face and
+the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and a girl stole softly to the
+bedside. Was there delusion in the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye
+betray a gleam of triumph as she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and
+pressed her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from
+that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its
+anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive
+to her own. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had waved a second time
+betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the
+door and glided ghostlike to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both
+beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between them. But she who had first
+entered was proud and stately, and the other a soft and fragile thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Away!&rdquo; cried the lofty one. &ldquo;Thou hadst him living; the dead
+is mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thine!&rdquo; returned the other, shuddering. &ldquo;Well hast thou
+spoken; the dead is thine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look, but a
+wild-and mournful expression passed across the features of the gentle one, and,
+weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head pillowed beside that of
+the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark locks. A creature of hope and
+joy, the first draught of sorrow had bewildered her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Edith!&rdquo; cried her rival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and, removing her
+cheek from the dead youth&rsquo;s pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
+encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wilt thou betray me?&rdquo; said the latter, calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent,&rdquo; answered Edith.
+&ldquo;Leave us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return and
+tell me of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest of sufferings
+more than death, we will both forgive thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what shall be the token?&rdquo; asked the proud girl, as if her
+heart acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This lock of hair,&rdquo; said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
+curls that lay heavily on the dead man&rsquo;s brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and appointed a
+day and hour far, far in time to come for their next meeting in that chamber.
+The statelier girl gave one deep look at the motionless countenance and
+departed, yet turned again and trembled ere she closed the door, almost
+believing that her dead lover frowned upon her. And Edith, too! Was not her
+white form fading into the moonlight? Scorning her own weakness, she went forth
+and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight,
+which he held between her face and his own and regarded her, as she thought,
+with an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave
+lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion. The young
+clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and, bowing to the lady,
+passed in without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Years&mdash;many years&mdash;rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much
+older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped their
+hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely woman had passed
+from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the town as the &ldquo;Old Maid
+in the Winding-Sheet.&rdquo; A taint of insanity had affected her whole life,
+but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free from violence, that she was
+suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies unmolested by the world with whose
+business or pleasures she had naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came
+into the daylight except to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along
+the street, in sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and
+proud thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them came
+the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called her shroud.
+She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to
+hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession as one whose
+earthly charge it was to haunt the house of mourning and be the shadow of
+affliction and see that the dead were duly buried. So long had this been her
+custom that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as
+much as the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself, and augured ill of the
+sinner&rsquo;s destiny unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding
+like a ghost behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal-party with her
+pale presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall just as the priest
+was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before her lover had been dead a
+year. Evil was the omen to that marriage. Sometimes she stole forth by
+moonlight and visited the graves of venerable integrity and wedded love and
+virgin innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a kind and faithful heart
+were mouldering. Over the hillocks of those favored dead would she stretch out
+her arms with a gesture as if she were scattering seeds, and many believed that
+she brought them from the garden of Paradise, for the graves which she had
+visited were green beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers from April
+to November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the tombstone. Thus
+wore away her long, sad, peaceful and fantastic life till few were so old as
+she, and the people of later generations wondered how the dead had ever been
+buried or mourners had endured their grief without the Old Maid in the
+Winding-Sheet. Still years went on, and still she followed funerals and was not
+yet summoned to her own festival of death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with business and
+bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of the church-spire,
+having left the housetops and loftiest trees in shadow. The scene was cheerful
+and animated in spite of the sombre shade between the high brick buildings.
+Here were pompous merchants in white wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces
+of sea-captains, the foreign garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the
+disdainful port of natives of Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect
+of one or two back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests where axe
+had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an
+embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes and courtesying
+with lofty grace to the punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of
+the town seemed to have its very centre not far from an old mansion that stood
+somewhat back from the pavement, surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange
+air of loneliness rather deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its
+site would have been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange or a brick
+block lettered all over with various signs, or the large house itself might
+have made a noble tavern with the &ldquo;King&rsquo;s Arms&rdquo; swinging
+before it and guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But,
+owing to some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had been long
+without a tenant, decaying from year to year and throwing the stately gloom of
+its shadow over the busiest part of the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that have been
+described was observed at a distance down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I espy a strange sail yonder,&rdquo; remarked a Liverpool
+captain&mdash;&ldquo;that woman in the long white garment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others who at the
+same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had attracted his notice.
+Almost immediately the various topics of conversation gave place to
+speculations in an undertone on this unwonted occurrence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?&rdquo; inquired some.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They looked for the signs of death at every door&mdash;the sexton, the hearse,
+the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the woeful pomp of
+funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt spire of the church,
+and wondered that no clang proceeded from its bell, which had always tolled
+till now when this figure appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that
+a corpse was to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of
+a funeral except the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What may this portend?&rdquo; asked each man of his neighbor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in their eyes,
+as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were prognosticated by the
+untimely intrusion among the living of one whose presence had always been
+associated with death and woe. What a comet is to the earth was that sad woman
+to the town. Still she moved on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her
+approach, and the proud and the humble stood aside that her white garment might
+not wave against them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity. Its wearer
+appeared very old, pale, emaciated and feeble, yet glided onward without the
+unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her course a little rosy boy
+burst forth from a door and ran with open arms toward the ghostly woman,
+seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips. She made a slight pause,
+fixing her eye upon him with an expression of no earthly sweetness, so that the
+child shivered and stood awestruck rather than affrighted while the Old Maid
+passed on. Perhaps her garment might have been polluted even by an
+infant&rsquo;s touch; perhaps her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy
+within the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is but a shadow,&rdquo; whispered the superstitious. &ldquo;The
+child put forth his arms and could not grasp her robe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of the
+deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron knocker and
+gave three raps. The people could only conjecture that some old remembrance,
+troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the poor woman hither to visit the
+friends of her youth&mdash;all gone from their home long since and for ever
+unless their ghosts still haunted it, fit company for the Old Maid in the
+Winding-Sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his gray locks,
+essayed to explain the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None, madam,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;have dwelt in this house these
+fifteen years agone&mdash;no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke,
+whose funeral you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed
+among themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand and a finger
+of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than ever in the
+obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer, and gave, this time, a
+single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now heard coming down the staircase
+of the old mansion which all conceived to have been so long untenanted? Slowly,
+feebly, yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step
+approached, more distinct on every downward stair, till it reached the portal.
+The bar fell on the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance toward the
+church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that the people
+saw of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who undid the door?&rdquo; asked many.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one could
+satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting against an
+inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person within was a negro and
+bore a singular resemblance to old C&aelig;sar, formerly a slave in the house,
+but freed by death some thirty years before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family,&rdquo; said one,
+half seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us wait here,&rdquo; replied another; &ldquo;more guests will knock
+at the door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate or the
+comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was wending his way
+homeward, when a coach&mdash;no common spectacle in those days&mdash;drove
+slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage, hanging close to the
+ground, with arms on the panels, a footman behind and a grave, corpulent
+coachman seated high in front, the whole giving an idea of solemn state and
+dignity. There was something awful in the heavy rumbling of the wheels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the deserted
+mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whose grand coach is this?&rdquo; asked a very inquisitive body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house, gave three
+taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach door. An old man
+possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day examined the shield of
+arms on the panel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Azure, a lion&rsquo;s head erased, between three flowers de luce,&rdquo;
+said he, then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.
+The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long residence amid
+the splendor of the British court, where his birth and wealth had given him no
+mean station. &ldquo;He left no child,&rdquo; continued the herald, &ldquo;and
+these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the coach appertains to his
+widow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the speaker been
+suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady who thrust forth her
+head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she emerged the people saw that
+her dress was magnificent, and her figure dignified in spite of age and
+infirmity&mdash;a stately ruin, but with a look at once of pride and
+wretchedness. Her strong and rigid features had an awe about them unlike that
+of the white Old Maid, but as of something evil. She passed up the steps,
+leaning on a gold-headed cane. The door swung open as she ascended, and the
+light of a torch glittered on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on the
+pillars of the porch. After a momentary pause, a glance backward and then a
+desperate effort, she went in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step, and,
+shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the torch was
+held by the very image of old C&aelig;sar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But such a hideous grin,&rdquo; added he, &ldquo;was never seen on the
+face of mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on the pavement
+and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight, while the ear still
+tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when the people began to question
+whether the coach and attendants, the ancient lady, the spectre of old
+C&aelig;sar and the Old Maid herself were not all a strangely-combined delusion
+with some dark purport in its mystery. The whole town was astir, so that,
+instead of dispersing, the crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at
+the windows of the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders,
+glad to indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded
+splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given and the guests, the
+greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from abroad, who had
+passed beneath that portal. These graphic reminiscences seemed to call up the
+ghosts of those to whom they referred. So strong was the impression on some of
+the more imaginative hearers that two or three were seized with trembling fits
+at one and the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard three
+other raps of the iron knocker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; exclaimed others. &ldquo;See! The moon shines beneath
+the porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
+pillar. There is no one there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did not the door open?&rdquo; whispered one of these fanciful persons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Didst thou see it too?&rdquo; said his companion, in a startled tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third visitant had
+made application at the door of the deserted house. A few, however, adhered to
+this new marvel, and even declared that a red gleam like that of a torch had
+shone through the great front window, as if the negro were lighting a guest up
+the staircase. This too was pronounced a mere fantasy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own terror
+painted in the faces of all the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What an awful thing is this!&rdquo; cried they.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shriek too fearfully distinct for doubt had been heard within the mansion,
+breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness, as if a heart had
+burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not whether to fly from the very
+sight of the house or to rush trembling in and search out the strange mystery.
+Amid their confusion and affright they were somewhat reassured by the
+appearance of their clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who
+had taught them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of
+an ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair upon his
+shoulders, a white beard upon his breast and a back so bent over his staff that
+he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to choose a proper grave
+for his weary frame. It was some time before the good old man, being deaf and
+of impaired intellect, could be made to comprehend such portions of the affair
+as were comprehensible at all. But when possessed of the facts, his energies
+assumed unexpected vigor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Verily,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, &ldquo;it will be fitting that I
+enter the mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should
+have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the &lsquo;Old Maid in the
+Winding-Sheet.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the mansion with a
+torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who had spoken to the Old Maid,
+and the same who had afterward explained the shield of arms and recognized the
+features of the negro. Like their predecessors, they gave three raps with the
+iron hammer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old C&aelig;sar cometh not,&rdquo; observed the priest. &ldquo;Well, I
+wot he no longer doth service in this mansion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Assuredly, then, it was something worse in old C&aelig;sar&rsquo;s
+likeness,&rdquo; said the other adventurer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be it as God wills,&rdquo; answered the clergyman. &ldquo;See! my
+strength, though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let
+us enter and pass up the staircase.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a very old
+man&rsquo;s mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the aged clergyman
+appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing aside, and oftener bending
+his head, as it were in salutation, thus practising all the gestures of one who
+makes his way through a throng. Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked
+around with sad and solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary
+locks, and was evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reverend sir,&rdquo; said his attendant, who conceived this a very
+suitable prelude to their further search, &ldquo;would it not be well that the
+people join with us in prayer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well-a-day!&rdquo; cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around
+him. &ldquo;Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
+present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as many a time
+heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I saw the shades of
+many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one after another, and
+the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet hath seen them to their graves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his staff and
+struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from each deserted
+chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They therefore walked along the
+passage, and again paused, opposite to the great front window, through which
+was seen the crowd in the shadow and partial moonlight of the street beneath.
+On their right hand was the open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their
+left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Within that chamber,&rdquo; observed he, &ldquo;a whole lifetime since,
+did I sit by the death-bed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
+gasp&mdash;&rdquo; Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
+which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his
+companion&rsquo;s hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence that
+the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the moonbeams
+which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It was sufficient to
+discover all that could be known. In a high-backed oaken arm-chair, upright,
+with her hands clasped across her breast and her head thrown back, sat the Old
+Maid in the Winding-Sheet. The stately dame had fallen on her knees with her
+forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor and the
+other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of
+hair&mdash;once sable, now discolored with a greenish mould.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid&rsquo;s
+features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they trusted to
+hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow
+of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Both dead!&rdquo; said the venerable man. &ldquo;Then who shall divulge
+the secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light and
+shadow across the Old Maid&rsquo;s face. And now &rsquo;tis gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap32"></a>
+PETER GOLDTHWAITE&rsquo;S TREASURE</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so, Peter, you won&rsquo;t even consider of the business?&rdquo;
+said Mr. John Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his
+person and drawing on his gloves. &ldquo;You positively refuse to let me have
+this crazy old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the price
+named?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Neither at that, nor treble the sum,&rdquo; responded the gaunt,
+grizzled and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. &ldquo;The fact is, Mr. Brown, you
+must find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my estate
+with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid new mansion over
+the cellar of the old house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pho, Peter!&rdquo; cried Mr. Brown as he opened the kitchen door;
+&ldquo;content yourself with building castles in the air, where house-lots are
+cheaper than on earth, to say nothing of the cost of bricks and mortar. Such
+foundations are solid enough for your edifices, while this underneath us is
+just the thing for mine; and so we may both be suited. What say you,
+again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown,&rdquo; answered Peter
+Goldthwaite. &ldquo;And, as for castles in the air, mine may not be as
+magnificent as that sort of architecture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr.
+Brown, as the very respectable brick block with dry-goods stores,
+tailors&rsquo; shops and banking-rooms on the lower floor, and lawyers&rsquo;
+offices in the second story, which you are so anxious to substitute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the cost, Peter? Eh?&rdquo; said Mr. Brown as he withdrew in
+something of a pet. &ldquo;That, I suppose, will be provided for off-hand by
+drawing a check on Bubble Bank?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly known to the commercial world
+between twenty and thirty years before under the firm of Goldthwaite &amp;
+Brown; which copartnership, however, was speedily dissolved by the natural
+incongruity of its constituent parts. Since that event, John Brown, with
+exactly the qualities of a thousand other John Browns, and by just such
+plodding methods as they used, had prospered wonderfully and become one of the
+wealthiest John Browns on earth. Peter Goldthwaite, on the contrary, after
+innumerable schemes which ought to have collected all the coin and paper
+currency of the country into his coffers, was as needy a gentleman as ever wore
+a patch upon his elbow. The contrast between him and his former partner may be
+briefly marked, for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always had it, while
+Peter made luck the main condition of his projects, and always missed it. While
+the means held out his speculations had been magnificent, but were chiefly
+confined of late years to such small business as adventures in the lottery.
+Once he had gone on a gold-gathering expedition somewhere to the South, and
+ingeniously contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than ever, while
+others, doubtless, were filling theirs with native bullion by the handful. More
+recently he had expended a legacy of a thousand or two of dollars in purchasing
+Mexican scrip, and thereby became the proprietor of a province; which, however,
+so far as Peter could find out, was situated where he might have had an empire
+for the same money&mdash;in the clouds. From a search after this valuable real
+estate Peter returned so gaunt and threadbare that on reaching New England the
+scarecrows in the corn-fields beckoned to him as he passed by. &ldquo;They did
+but flutter in the wind,&rdquo; quoth Peter Goldthwaite. No, Peter, they
+beckoned, for the scarecrows knew their brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the period of our story his whole visible income would not have paid the tax
+of the old mansion in which we find him. It was one of those rusty, moss-grown,
+many-peaked wooden houses which are scattered about the streets of our elder
+towns, with a beetle-browed second story projecting over the foundation, as if
+it frowned at the novelty around it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he
+was, and though, being centrally situated on the principal street of the town,
+it would have brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own
+reasons for never parting with, either by auction or private sale. There
+seemed, indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his birthplace; for,
+often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and standing there even now, he had
+not yet taken the step beyond it which would have compelled him to surrender
+the house to his creditors. So here he dwelt with bad luck till good should
+come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, then, in his kitchen&mdash;the only room where a spark of fire took off
+the chill of a November evening&mdash;poor Peter Goldthwaite had just been
+visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview, Peter, with
+rather a mortified look, glanced downward at his dress, parts of which appeared
+as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite &amp; Brown. His upper garment was a
+mixed surtout, woefully faded, and patched with newer stuff on each elbow;
+beneath this he wore a threadbare black coat, some of the silk buttons of which
+had been replaced with others of a different pattern; and, lastly, though he
+lacked not a pair of gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been
+partially turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter&rsquo;s shins before a
+scanty fire. Peter&rsquo;s person was in keeping with his goodly apparel.
+Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he was the perfect
+picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and empty hopes till he could
+neither live on such unwholesome trash nor stomach more substantial food. But,
+withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crack-brained simpleton as, perhaps, he was,
+might have cut a very brilliant figure in the world had he employed his
+imagination in the airy business of poetry instead of making it a demon of
+mischief in mercantile pursuits. After all, he was no bad fellow, but as
+harmless as a child, and as honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman
+which Nature meant him for, as an irregular life and depressed circumstances
+will permit any man to be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth looking round at the
+disconsolate old kitchen his eyes began to kindle with the illumination of an
+enthusiasm that never long deserted him. He raised his hand, clenched it and
+smote it energetically against the smoky panel over the fireplace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The time is come,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;with such a treasure at
+command, it were folly to be a poor man any longer. Tomorrow morning I will
+begin with the garret, nor desist till I have torn the house down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Deep in the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little old
+woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite
+kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were ragged past all
+darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel petticoat to make new
+soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five
+of which she had sat in that same chimney-corner, such being the length of time
+since Peter&rsquo;s grandfather had taken her from the almshouse. She had no
+friend but Peter, nor Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as Peter might have
+a shelter for his own head, Tabitha would know where to shelter hers, or, being
+homeless elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand and bring him to her
+native home, the almshouse. Should it ever be necessary, she loved him well
+enough to feed him with her last morsel and clothe him with her
+under-petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old woman, and, though never infected
+with Peter&rsquo;s flightiness, had become so accustomed to his freaks and
+follies that she viewed them all as matters of course. Hearing him threaten to
+tear the house down, she looked quietly up from her work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sooner we have it all down, the better,&rdquo; said Peter
+Goldthwaite. &ldquo;I am tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy,
+smoky, creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man
+when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we shall by this
+time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny side, old Tabby, finished
+and furnished as best may suit your own notions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like it pretty much such a room as this kitchen,&rdquo;
+answered Tabitha. &ldquo;It will never be like home to me till the
+chimney-corner gets as black with smoke as this, and that won&rsquo;t be these
+hundred years. How much do you mean to lay out on the house, Mr. Peter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is that to the purpose?&rdquo; exclaimed Peter, loftily. &ldquo;Did
+not my great-grand-uncle, Peter Goldthwaite, who died seventy years ago, and
+whose namesake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty such?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say but he did, Mr. Peter,&rdquo; said Tabitha, threading
+her needle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference to an immense hoard of the
+precious metals which was said to exist somewhere in the cellar or walls, or
+under the floors, or in some concealed closet or other out-of-the-way nook of
+the old house. This wealth, according to tradition, had been accumulated by a
+former Peter Goldthwaite whose character seems to have borne a remarkable
+similitude to that of the Peter of our story. Like him, he was a wild
+projector, seeking to heap up gold by the bushel and the cart-load instead of
+scraping it together coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had
+almost invariably failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the final
+one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches to his gaunt
+and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the nature of his fortunate
+speculation, one intimating that the ancient Peter had made the gold by
+alchemy; another, that he had conjured it out of people&rsquo;s pockets by the
+black art; and a third&mdash;still more unaccountable&mdash;that the devil had
+given him free access to the old provincial treasury. It was affirmed, however,
+that some secret impediment had debarred him from the enjoyment of his riches,
+and that he had a motive for concealing them from his heir, or, at any rate,
+had died without disclosing the place of deposit. The present Peter&rsquo;s
+father had faith enough in the story to cause the cellar to be dug over. Peter
+himself chose to consider the legend as an indisputable truth, and amid his
+many troubles had this one consolation&mdash;that, should all other resources
+fail, he might build up his fortunes by tearing his house down. Yet, unless he
+felt a lurking distrust of the golden tale, it is difficult to account for his
+permitting the paternal roof to stand so long, since he had never yet seen the
+moment when his predecessor&rsquo;s treasure would not have found plenty of
+room in his own strong-box. But now was the crisis. Should he delay the search
+a little longer, the house would pass from the lineal heir, and with it the
+vast heap of gold, to remain in its burial-place till the ruin of the aged
+walls should discover it to strangers of a future generation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Peter Goldthwaite, again; &ldquo;to-morrow I will set
+about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The deeper he looked at the matter, the more certain of success grew Peter. His
+spirits were naturally so elastic that even now, in the blasted autumn of his
+age, he could often compete with the springtime gayety of other people.
+Enlivened by his brightening prospects, he began to caper about the kitchen
+like a hobgoblin, with the queerest antics of his lean limbs and gesticulations
+of his starved features. Nay, in the exuberance of his feelings, he seized both
+of Tabitha&rsquo;s hands and danced the old lady across the floor till the
+oddity of her rheumatic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was
+echoed back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter Goldthwaite were laughing
+in every one. Finally, he bounded upward, almost out of sight, into the smoke
+that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and, alighting safely on the floor again,
+endeavored to resume his customary gravity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-morrow, at sunrise,&rdquo; he repeated, taking his lamp to retire to
+bed, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the
+garret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, as we&rsquo;re out of wood, Mr. Peter,&rdquo; said Tabitha, puffing
+and panting with her late gymnastics, &ldquo;as fast as you tear the house down
+I&rsquo;ll make a fire with the pieces.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldthwaite. At one time he was
+turning a ponderous key in an iron door not unlike the door of a sepulchre, but
+which, being opened, disclosed a vault heaped up with gold coin as plentifully
+as golden corn in a granary. There were chased goblets, also, and tureens,
+salvers, dinner-dishes and dish-covers of gold or silver-gilt, besides chains
+and other jewels, incalculably rich, though tarnished with the damps of the
+vault; for, of all the wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried
+in the earth or sunken in the sea, Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this one
+treasure-place. Anon he had returned to the old house as poor as ever, and was
+received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of a man whom he might
+have mistaken for himself, only that his garments were of a much elder fashion.
+But the house, without losing its former aspect, had been changed into a palace
+of the precious metals. The floors, walls and ceilings were of burnished
+silver; the doors, the window-frames, the cornices, the balustrades and the
+steps of the staircase, of pure gold; and silver, with gold bottoms, were the
+chairs, and gold, standing on silver legs, the high chests of drawers, and
+silver the bedsteads, with blankets of woven gold and sheets of silver tissue.
+The house had evidently been transmuted by a single touch, for it retained all
+the marks that Peter remembered, but in gold or silver instead of wood, and the
+initials of his name&mdash;which when a boy he had cut in the wooden
+door-post&mdash;remained as deep in the pillar of gold. A happy man would have
+been Peter Goldthwaite except for a certain ocular deception which, whenever he
+glanced backward, caused the house to darken from its glittering magnificence
+into the sordid gloom of yesterday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up betimes rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer and saw which he had placed by his
+bedside, and hied him to the garret. It was but scantily lighted up as yet by
+the frosty fragments of a sunbeam which began to glimmer through the almost
+opaque bull-eyes of the window. A moralizer might find abundant themes for his
+speculative and impracticable wisdom in a garret. There is the limbo of
+departed fashions, aged trifles of a day and whatever was valuable only to one
+generation of men, and which passed to the garret when that generation passed
+to the grave&mdash;not for safekeeping, but to be out of the way. Peter saw
+piles of yellow and musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein creditors
+long dead and buried had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink
+now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found old
+moth-eaten garments, all in rags and tatters, or Peter would have put them on.
+Here was a naked and rusty sword&mdash;not a sword of service, but a
+gentleman&rsquo;s small French rapier&mdash;which had never left its scabbard
+till it lost it. Here were canes of twenty different sorts, but no gold-headed
+ones, and shoebuckles of various pattern and material, but not silver nor set
+with precious stones. Here was a large box full of shoes with high heels and
+peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a multitude of phials half filled with old
+apothecary&rsquo;s stuff which, when the other half had done its business on
+Peter&rsquo;s ancestors, had been brought hither from the death-chamber.
+Here&mdash;not to give a longer inventory of articles that will never be put up
+at auction&mdash;was the fragment of a full-length looking-glass which by the
+dust and dimness of its surface made the picture of these old things look older
+than the reality. When Peter, not knowing that there was a mirror there, caught
+the faint traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the former Peter
+Goldthwaite had come back either to assist or impede his search for the hidden
+wealth. And at that moment a strange notion glimmered through his brain that he
+was the identical Peter who had concealed the gold, and ought to know
+whereabout it lay. This, however, he had unaccountably forgotten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Mr. Peter!&rdquo; cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. &ldquo;Have
+you torn the house down enough to heat the teakettle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet, old Tabby,&rdquo; answered Peter, &ldquo;but that&rsquo;s soon
+done, as you shall see.&rdquo; With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe,
+and laid about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and in
+a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall get our winter&rsquo;s wood cheap,&rdquo; quoth Tabitha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him, smiting and
+hewing at the joints and timbers, unclenching spike-nails, ripping and tearing
+away boards, with a tremendous racket from morning till night. He took care,
+however, to leave the outside shell of the house untouched, so that the
+neighbors might not suspect what was going on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it lasted,
+had Peter been happier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was something in
+Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s turn of mind which brought him an inward recompense
+for all the external evil that it caused. If he were poor, ill-clad, even
+hungry and exposed, as it were, to be utterly annihilated by a precipice of
+impending ruin, yet only his body remained in these miserable circumstances,
+while his aspiring soul enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity. It was his
+nature to be always young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so.
+Gray hairs were nothing&mdash;no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look
+old, indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old figure
+much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was a young man of
+high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling of each new fire his
+burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes. It rose exulting
+now. Having lived thus long&mdash;not too long, but just to the right
+age&mdash;a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams, he resolved, so
+soon as the hidden gold should flash to light, to go a-wooing and win the love
+of the fairest maid in town. What heart could resist him? Happy Peter
+Goldthwaite!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every evening&mdash;as Peter had long absented himself from his former
+lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and as the
+honor of his company was seldom requested in private circles&mdash;he and
+Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen hearth. This was always heaped
+plentifully with the rubbish of his day&rsquo;s labor. As the foundation of the
+fire there would be a goodly-sized back-log of red oak, which after being
+sheltered from rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and
+distilled streams of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down
+within a week or two. Next there were large sticks, sound, black and heavy,
+which had lost the principle of decay and were indestructible except by fire,
+wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron. On this solid basis Tabitha
+would rear a lighter structure, composed of the splinters of door-panels,
+ornamented mouldings, and such quick combustibles, which caught like straw and
+threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue, making its sooty sides
+visible almost to the chimney-top. Meantime, the gloom of the old kitchen would
+be chased out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the dusky cross-beams
+overhead, and driven nobody could tell whither, while Peter smiled like a
+gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age. All this, of
+course, was but an emblem of the bright fortune which the destruction of the
+house would shed upon its occupants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular discharge of
+fairy-musketry, Peter sat looking and listening in a pleasant state of
+excitement; but when the brief blaze and uproar were succeeded by the dark-red
+glow, the substantial heat and the deep singing sound which were to last
+throughout the evening, his humor became talkative. One night&mdash;the
+hundredth time&mdash;he teased Tabitha to tell him something new about his
+great-granduncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-five years, old
+Tabby, and must have heard many a tradition about him,&rdquo; said Peter.
+&ldquo;Did not you tell me that when you first came to the house there was an
+old woman sitting where you sit now who had been housekeeper to the famous
+Peter Goldthwaite?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So there was, Mr. Peter,&rdquo; answered Tabitha, &ldquo;and she was
+near about a hundred years old. She used to say that she and old Peter
+Goldthwaite had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire&mdash;pretty
+much as you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one,&rdquo;
+said Peter, complacently, &ldquo;or he never would have grown so rich. But
+methinks he might have invested the money better than he did. No interest!
+nothing but good security! and the house to be torn down to come at it! What
+made him hide it so snug, Tabby?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because he could not spend it,&rdquo; said Tabitha, &ldquo;for as often
+as he went to unlock the chest the Old Scratch came behind and caught his arm.
+The money, they say, was paid Peter out of his purse, and he wanted Peter to
+give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter swore he would not
+do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner,&rdquo; remarked Peter.
+&ldquo;But this is all nonsense, Tabby; I don&rsquo;t believe the story.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it may not be just the truth,&rdquo; said Tabitha, &ldquo;for some
+folks say that Peter did make over the house to the Old Scratch, and
+that&rsquo;s the reason it has always been so unlucky to them that lived in it.
+And as soon as Peter had given him the deed the chest flew open, and Peter
+caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and behold! there was nothing in his
+fist but a parcel of old rags.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby!&rdquo; cried Peter, in great
+wrath. &ldquo;They were as good golden guineas as ever bore the effigies of the
+king of England. It seems as if I could recollect the whole circumstance, and
+how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was, thrust in my hand, or his hand, and
+drew it out all of a blaze with gold. Old rags indeed!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was not an old woman&rsquo;s legend that would discourage Peter
+Goldthwaite. All night long he slept among pleasant dreams, and awoke at
+daylight with a joyous throb of the heart which few are fortunate enough to
+feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day he labored hard without wasting a
+moment except at meal-times, when Tabitha summoned him to the pork and cabbage,
+or such other sustenance as she had picked up or Providence had sent them.
+Being a truly pious man, Peter never failed to ask a blessing&mdash;if the food
+were none of the best, then so much the more earnestly, as it was more
+needed&mdash;nor to return thanks, if the dinner had been scanty, yet for the
+good appetite which was better than a sick stomach at a feast. Then did he
+hurry back to his toil, and in a moment was lost to sight in a cloud of dust
+from the old walls, though sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the clatter
+which he raised in the midst of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How enviable is the consciousness of being usefully employed! Nothing troubled
+Peter, or nothing but those phantoms of the mind which seem like vague
+recollections, yet have also the aspect of presentiments. He often paused with
+his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself, &ldquo;Peter Goldthwaite, did
+you never strike this blow before?&rdquo; or &ldquo;Peter, what need of tearing
+the whole house down? Think a little while, and you will remember where the
+gold is hidden.&rdquo; Days and weeks passed on, however, without any
+remarkable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean gray rat peeped forth at the
+lean gray man, wondering what devil had got into the old house, which had
+always been so peaceable till now. And occasionally Peter sympathized with the
+sorrows of a female mouse who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and
+delicate young ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its
+ruin. But as yet no treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time, Peter, being as determined as fate and as diligent as time, had
+made an end with the uppermost regions and got down to the second story, where
+he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had formerly been the
+state-bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as the sleeping-apartment of
+Governor Dudley and many other eminent guests. The furniture was gone. There
+were remnants of faded and tattered paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare
+wall ornamented with charcoal sketches, chiefly of people&rsquo;s heads in
+profile. These being specimens of Peter&rsquo;s youthful genius, it went more
+to his heart to obliterate them than if they had been pictures on a church wall
+by Michael Angelo. One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected him
+differently. It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself on a spade
+and bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with one hand extended to
+grasp something that he had found. But close behind him, with a fiendish laugh
+on his features, appeared a figure with horns, a tufted tail and a cloven hoof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Avaunt, Satan!&rdquo; cried Peter. &ldquo;The man shall have his
+gold.&rdquo; Uplifting his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the
+head as not only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the
+whole scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite through the
+plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?&rdquo;
+said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of the wall,
+and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the fireplace, about
+breast-high from the ground. It contained nothing but a brass lamp covered with
+verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment. While Peter inspected the latter,
+Tabitha seized the lamp and began to rub it with her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;It is
+not Aladdin&rsquo;s lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look
+here, Tabby!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was saddled
+with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she begun to puzzle
+over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding both her hands against
+her sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t make a fool of the old woman,&rdquo; cried she.
+&ldquo;This is your own handwriting, Mr. Peter, the same as in the letter you
+sent me from Mexico.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is certainly a considerable resemblance,&rdquo; said Peter, again
+examining the parchment. &ldquo;But you know yourself, Tabby, that this closet
+must have been plastered up before you came to the house or I came into the
+world. No; this is old Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s writing. These columns of
+pounds, shillings and pence are his figures, denoting the amount of the
+treasure, and this, at the bottom, is doubtless a reference to the place of
+concealment. But the ink has either faded or peeled off, so that it is
+absolutely illegible. What a pity!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, this lamp is as good as new. That&rsquo;s some comfort,&rdquo;
+said Tabitha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lamp!&rdquo; thought Peter. &ldquo;That indicates light on my
+researches.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the present Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery than to
+resume his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs he stood poring over the
+parchment at one of the front windows, which was so obscured with dust that the
+sun could barely throw an uncertain shadow of the casement across the floor.
+Peter forced it open and looked out upon the great street of the town, while
+the sun looked in at his old house. The air, though mild, and even warm,
+thrilled Peter as with a dash of water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the housetops,
+but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops, which sparkled
+downward through the sunshine with the noise of a summer shower beneath the
+eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was as hard and solid as a pavement of
+white marble, and had not yet grown moist in the spring-like temperature. But
+when Peter thrust forth his head, he saw that the inhabitants, if not the town,
+were already thawed out by this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter
+weather. It gladdened him&mdash;a gladness with a sigh breathing through
+it&mdash;to see the stream of ladies gliding along the slippery sidewalks with
+their red cheeks set off by quilted hoods, boas and sable capes like roses
+amidst a new kind of foliage. The sleigh bells jingled to and fro continually,
+sometimes announcing the arrival of a sleigh from Vermont laden with the frozen
+bodies of porkers or sheep, and perhaps a deer or two; sometimes, of a regular
+marketman with chickens, geese and turkeys, comprising the whole colony of a
+barn-yard; and sometimes, of a farmer and his dame who had come to town partly
+for the ride, partly to go a-shopping and partly for the sale of some eggs and
+butter. This couple rode in an old-fashioned square sleigh which had served
+them twenty winters and stood twenty summers in the sun beside their door. Now
+a gentleman and lady skimmed the snow in an elegant car shaped somewhat like a
+cockle-shell; now a stage-sleigh with its cloth curtains thrust aside to admit
+the sun dashed rapidly down the street, whirling in and out among the vehicles
+that obstructed its passage; now came round a corner the similitude of
+Noah&rsquo;s ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh with seats for fifty
+people and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious receptacle was populous with
+merry maids and merry bachelors, merry girls and boys and merry old folks, all
+alive with fun and grinning to the full width of their mouths. They kept up a
+buzz of babbling voices and low laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep,
+joyous shout which the spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of
+roguish boys let drive their snow-balls right among the pleasure-party. The
+sleigh passed on, and when concealed by a bend of the street was still audible
+by a distant cry of merriment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all these
+accessories&mdash;the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the gleaming snow,
+the cheerful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles and the jingle-jangle of
+merry bells which made the heart dance to their music. Nothing dismal was to be
+seen except that peaked piece of antiquity Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s house,
+which might well look sad externally, since such a terrible consumption was
+preying on its insides. And Peter&rsquo;s gaunt figure, half visible in the
+projecting second story, was worthy of his house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peter! How goes it, friend Peter?&rdquo; cried a voice across the street
+as Peter was drawing in his head. &ldquo;Look out here, Peter!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
+sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open, disclosing
+a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the attention of the whole
+town to Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s window, and to the dusty scarecrow which
+appeared at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, Peter!&rdquo; cried Mr. Brown, again; &ldquo;what the devil are
+you about there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are
+repairing the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown,&rdquo; replied Peter.
+&ldquo;If I make it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar
+upward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had not you better let me take the job?&rdquo; said Mr. Brown,
+significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever
+since he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the secret wealth
+within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter&rsquo;s visage with
+precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid chamber. He endeavored
+to assume such a mien as his ancestor had probably worn when he gloried in the
+building of a strong house for a home to many generations of his posterity. But
+the chamber was very dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in
+contrast with the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse
+into the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which the
+world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and an
+intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an object that
+might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people would call madness.
+It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of life that each person
+rectifies his mind by other minds and squares his conduct to that of his
+neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had
+exposed himself to this influence by merely looking out of the window. For a
+while he doubted whether there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case
+whether it was so exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced
+of its non-existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which Fate had
+assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In the course of his
+search he met with many things that are usually found in the ruins of an old
+house, and also with some that are not. What seemed most to the purpose was a
+rusty key which had been thrust into a chink of the wall, with a wooden label
+appended to the handle, bearing the initials &ldquo;P.G.&rdquo; Another
+singular discovery was that of a bottle of wine walled up in an old oven. A
+tradition ran in the family that Peter&rsquo;s grandfather, a jovial officer in
+the old French war, had set aside many dozens of the precious liquor for the
+benefit of topers then unborn. Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes,
+and therefore kept the wine to gladden his success. Many half-pence did he pick
+up that had been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some few Spanish
+coins, and the half of a broken sixpence which had doubtless been a love-token.
+There was likewise a silver coronation medal of George III. But old Peter
+Goldthwaite&rsquo;s strong-box fled from one dark corner to another, or
+otherwise eluded the second Peter&rsquo;s clutches till, should he seek much
+farther, he must burrow into the earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We will not follow him in his triumphant progress step by step. Suffice it that
+Peter worked like a steam-engine and finished in that one winter the job which
+all the former inhabitants of the house, with time and the elements to aid
+them, had only half done in a century. Except the kitchen, every room and
+chamber was now gutted. The house was nothing but a shell, the apparition of a
+house, as unreal as the painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect
+rind of a great cheese in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a
+cheese no more. And Peter was the mouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burnt up, for she wisely considered that
+without a house they should need no wood to warm it, and therefore economy was
+nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said to have dissolved in smoke and
+flown up among the clouds through the great black flue of the kitchen chimney.
+It was an admirable parallel to the feat of the man who jumped down his own
+throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the night between the last day of winter and the first of spring every chink
+and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts of the kitchen. This
+fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had set in some hours before, and
+was still driven and tossed about the atmosphere by a real hurricane which
+fought against the house as if the prince of the air in person were putting the
+final stroke to Peter&rsquo;s labors. The framework being so much weakened and
+the inward props removed, it would have been no marvel if in some stronger
+wrestle of the blast the rotten walls of the edifice and all the peaked roofs
+had come crashing down upon the owner&rsquo;s head. He, however, was careless
+of the peril, but as wild and restless as the night itself, or as the flame
+that quivered up the chimney at each roar of the tempestuous wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wine, Tabitha,&rdquo; he cried&mdash;&ldquo;my grandfather&rsquo;s
+rich old wine! We will drink it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner and placed
+the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp which had likewise
+been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before his eyes, and, looking
+through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen illuminated with a golden glory
+which also enveloped Tabitha and gilded her silver hair and converted her mean
+garments into robes of queenly splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Peter,&rdquo; remarked Tabitha, &ldquo;must the wine be drunk before
+the money is found?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The money <i>is</i> found!&rdquo; exclaimed Peter, with a sort of
+fierceness. &ldquo;The chest is within my reach; I will not sleep till I have
+turned this key in the rusty lock. But first of all let us drink.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle with old
+Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s rusty key, and decapitated the sealed cork at a
+single blow. He then filled two little china teacups which Tabitha had brought
+from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant was this aged wine that it shone
+within the cups and rendered the sprig of scarlet flowers at the bottom of each
+more distinctly visible than when there had been no wine there. Its rich and
+delicate perfume wasted itself round the kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drink, Tabitha!&rdquo; cried Peter. &ldquo;Blessings on the honest old
+fellow who set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here&rsquo;s to Peter
+Goldthwaite&rsquo;s memory!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And good cause have we to remember him,&rdquo; quoth Tabitha as she
+drank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various calamity, had
+that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be quaffed at last by two such
+boon-companions! A portion of the happiness of a former age had been kept for
+them, and was now set free in a crowd of rejoicing visions to sport amid the
+storm and desolation of the present time. Until they have finished the bottle
+we must turn our eyes elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It so chanced that on this stormy night Mr. John Brown found himself ill at
+ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair by the glowing grate of anthracite which
+heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good sort of a man, and kind and
+pitiful whenever the misfortunes of others happened to reach his heart through
+the padded vest of his own prosperity. This evening he had thought much about
+his old partner, Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries and continual
+ill-luck, the poverty of his dwelling at Mr. Brown&rsquo;s last visit, and
+Peter&rsquo;s crazed and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the
+window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor fellow!&rdquo; thought Mr. John Brown. &ldquo;Poor crack-brained
+Peter Goldthwaite! For old acquaintance&rsquo; sake I ought to have taken care
+that he was comfortable this rough winter.&rdquo; These feelings grew so
+powerful that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit Peter
+Goldthwaite immediately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strength of the impulse was really singular. Every shriek of the blast
+seemed a summons, or would have seemed so had Mr. Brown been accustomed to hear
+the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much amazed at such active
+benevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak, muffled his throat and ears in
+comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus fortified, bade defiance to the
+tempest. But the powers of the air had rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown
+was just weathering the corner by Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s house when the
+hurricane caught him off his feet, tossed him face downward into a snow-bank
+and proceeded to bury his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There seemed
+little hope of his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same moment
+his hat was snatched away and whirled aloft into some far-distant region whence
+no tidings have as yet returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a passage through the snow-drift,
+and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered onward to
+Peter&rsquo;s door. There was such a creaking and groaning and rattling, and
+such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice that the loudest rap
+would have been inaudible to those within. He therefore entered without
+ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen. His intrusion even there was
+unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with their backs to the door, stooping over
+a large chest which apparently they had just dragged from a cavity or concealed
+closet on the left side of the chimney. By the lamp in the old woman&rsquo;s
+hand Mr. Brown saw that the chest was barred and clamped with iron,
+strengthened with iron plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit
+receptacle in which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants
+of another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the lock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Tabitha,&rdquo; cried he, with tremulous rapture, &ldquo;how shall I
+endure the effulgence? The gold!&mdash;the bright, bright gold! Methinks I can
+remember my last glance at it just as the iron-plated lid fell down. And ever
+since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret and gathering its
+splendor against this glorious moment. It will flash upon us like the noonday
+sun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter!&rdquo; said Tabitha, with somewhat less
+patience than usual. &ldquo;But, for mercy&rsquo;s sake, do turn the
+key!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with a strong effort of both hands Peter did force the rusty key through
+the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean time, had drawn near
+and thrust his eager visage between those of the other two at the instant that
+Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze illuminated the kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s here?&rdquo; exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles
+and holding the lamp over the open chest. &ldquo;Old Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s
+hoard of old rags!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pretty much so, Tabby,&rdquo; said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the
+treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised to scare
+himself out of his scanty wits withal! Here was the semblance of an
+incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town and build every street
+anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane man would have given a solid sixpence
+for. What, then, in sober earnest, were the delusive treasures of the chest?
+Why, here were old provincial bills of credit and treasury notes and bills of
+land-banks, and all other bubbles of the sort, from the first issue&mdash;above
+a century and a half ago&mdash;down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a
+thousand pounds were intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than
+they.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s treasure!&rdquo; said
+John Brown. &ldquo;Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself; and when
+the provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per cent, he
+bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my grandfather say that old
+Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very house and land to raise cash for
+his silly project. But the currency kept sinking till nobody would take it as a
+gift, and there was old Peter Goldthwaite, like Peter the second, with
+thousands in his strong-box and hardly a coat to his back. He went mad upon the
+strength of it. But never mind, Peter; it is just the sort of capital for
+building castles in the air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The house will be down about our ears,&rdquo; cried Tabitha as the wind
+shook it with increasing violence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it fall,&rdquo; said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself
+upon the chest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, my old friend Peter!&rdquo; said John Brown. &ldquo;I have
+house-room for you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure.
+To-morrow we will try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house;
+real estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome price.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I,&rdquo; observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits,
+&ldquo;have a plan for laying out the cash to great advantage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, as to that,&rdquo; muttered John Brown to himself, &ldquo;we must
+apply to the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if
+Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it to his heart&rsquo;s content with
+old Peter Goldthwaite&rsquo;s treasure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap33"></a>
+CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL</h2>
+
+<p>
+Passing a summer several years since at Edgartown, on the island of
+Martha&rsquo;s Vineyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of
+tombstones who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of
+Massachusetts in search of professional employment. The speculation had turned
+out so successful that my friend expected to transmute slate and marble into
+silver and gold to the amount of at least a thousand dollars during the few
+months of his sojourn at Nantucket and the Vineyard. The secluded life and the
+simple and primitive spirit which still characterizes the inhabitants of those
+islands, especially of Martha&rsquo;s Vineyard, insure their dead friends a
+longer and dearer remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bustle of
+the world can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet, while every family
+is anxious to erect a memorial to its departed members, the untainted breath of
+Ocean bestows such health and length of days upon the people of the isles as
+would cause a melancholy dearth of business to a resident artist in that line.
+His own monument, recording his decease by starvation, would probably be an
+early specimen of his skill. Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an
+article of imported merchandise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown&mdash;where the dead have
+lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned to its
+original barrenness&mdash;in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much variety
+of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated a century back or more, have
+borders elaborately carved with flowers and are adorned with a multiplicity of
+death&rsquo;s-heads, crossbones, scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious
+emblems of mortality, with here and there a winged cherub to direct the
+mourner&rsquo;s spirit upward. These productions of Gothic taste must have been
+quite beyond the colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London
+and brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely
+isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the ordinary style,
+without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald inscriptions. But
+others&mdash;and those far the most impressive both to my taste and
+feelings&mdash;were roughly hewn from the gray rocks of the island, evidently
+by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives. On some there were
+merely the initials of a name; some were inscribed with misspelt prose or
+rhyme, in deep letters which the moss and wintry rain of many years had not
+been able to obliterate. These, these were graves where loved ones slept. It is
+an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental eulogies; but
+when affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor, then
+we may be sure that they copy from the record on their hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My acquaintance the sculptor&mdash;he may share that title with Greenough,
+since the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael&mdash;had found a
+ready market for all his blank slabs of marble and full occupation in lettering
+and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of the old Puritan
+family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and singleness both of heart
+and mind which, methinks, is more rarely found among us Yankees than in any
+other community of people. In spite of his gray head and wrinkled brow, he was
+quite like a child in all matters save what had some reference to his own
+business; he seemed, unless my fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other
+relation than as people in want of tombstones, and his literary attainments
+evidently comprehended very little either of prose or poetry which had not at
+one time or other been inscribed on slate or marble. His sole task and office
+among the immortal pilgrims of the tomb&mdash;the duty for which Providence had
+sent the old man into the world, as it were with a chisel in his hand&mdash;was
+to label the dead bodies, lest their names should be forgotten at the
+resurrection. Yet he had not failed, within a narrow scope, to gather a few
+sprigs of earthly, and more than earthly, wisdom&mdash;the harvest of many a
+grave. And, lugubrious as his calling might appear, he was as cheerful an old
+soul as health and integrity and lack of care could make him, and used to set
+to work upon one sorrowful inscription or another with that sort of spirit
+which impels a man to sing at his labor. On the whole, I found Mr. Wigglesworth
+an entertaining, and often instructive, if not an interesting, character; and,
+partly for the charm of his society, and still more because his work has an
+invariable attraction for &ldquo;man that is born of woman,&rdquo; I was
+accustomed to spend some hours a day at his workshop. The quaintness of his
+remarks and their not infrequent truth&mdash;a truth condensed and pointed by
+the limited sphere of his view&mdash;gave a raciness to his talk which mere
+worldliness and general cultivation would at once have destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits of the various qualities of
+marble, numerous slabs of which were resting against the walls of the shop, or
+sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly without a word on either side while
+I watched how neatly his chisel struck out letter after letter of the names of
+the Nortons, the Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial families
+of the Vineyard. Often with an artist&rsquo;s pride the good old sculptor would
+speak of favorite productions of his skill which were scattered throughout the
+village graveyards of New England. But my chief and most instructive amusement
+was to witness his interviews with his customers, who held interminable
+consultations about the form and fashion of the desired monuments, the buried
+excellence to be commemorated, the anguish to be expressed, and finally the
+lowest price in dollars and cents for which a marble transcript of their
+feelings might be obtained. Really, my mind received many fresh ideas which
+perhaps may remain in it even longer than Mr. Wigglesworth&rsquo;s hardest
+marble will retain the deepest strokes of his chisel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been
+killed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean no less than forty years before. It was
+singular that so strong an impression of early feeling should have survived
+through the changes of her subsequent life, in the course of which she had been
+a wife and a mother, and, so far as I could judge, a comfortable and happy
+woman. Reflecting within myself, it appeared to me that this lifelong
+sorrow&mdash;as, in all good faith, she deemed it&mdash;was one of the most
+fortunate circumstances of her history. It had given an ideality to her mind;
+it had kept her purer and less earthy than she would otherwise have been by
+drawing a portion of her sympathies apart from earth. Amid the throng of
+enjoyments and the pressure of worldly care and all the warm materialism of
+this life she had communed with a vision, and had been the better for such
+intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her maturity, and loving him with a far
+more real affection than she ever could have felt for this dream of her
+girlhood, there had still been an imaginative faith to the ocean-buried; so
+that an ordinary character had thus been elevated and refined. Her sighs had
+been the breath of Heaven to her soul. The good lady earnestly desired that the
+proposed monument should be ornamented with a carved border of marine plants
+interwined with twisted sea-shells, such as were probably waving over her
+lover&rsquo;s skeleton or strewn around it in the far depths of the Pacific.
+But, Mr. Wigglesworth&rsquo;s chisel being inadequate to the task, she was
+forced to content herself with a rose hanging its head from a broken stem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After her departure I remarked that the symbol was none of the most apt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said my friend the sculptor, embodying in this image the
+thoughts that had been passing through my own mind, &ldquo;that broken rose has
+shed its sweet smell through forty years of the good woman&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was seldom that I could find such pleasant food for contemplation as in the
+above instance. None of the applicants, I think, affected me more disagreeably
+than an old man who came, with his fourth wife hanging on his arm, to bespeak
+gravestones for the three former occupants of his marriage-bed. I watched with
+some anxiety to see whether his remembrance of either were more affectionate
+than of the other two, but could discover no symptom of the kind. The three
+monuments were all to be of the same material and form, and each decorated in
+bas-relief with two weeping willows, one of these sympathetic trees bending
+over its fellow, which was to be broken in the midst and rest upon a sepulchral
+urn. This, indeed, was Mr. Wigglesworth&rsquo;s standing emblem of conjugal
+bereavement. I shuddered at the gray polygamist who had so utterly lost the
+holy sense of individuality in wedlock that methought he was fain to reckon
+upon his fingers how many women who had once slept by his side were now
+sleeping in their graves. There was even&mdash;if I wrong him, it is no great
+matter&mdash;a glance sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were inclined to
+drive a thriftier bargain by bespeaking four gravestones in a lot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was better pleased with a rough old whaling-captain who gave directions for a
+broad marble slab divided into two compartments, one of which was to contain an
+epitaph on his deceased wife and the other to be left vacant till death should
+engrave his own name there. As is frequently the case among the whalers of
+Martha&rsquo;s Vineyard, so much of this storm-beaten widower&rsquo;s life had
+been tossed away on distant seas that out of twenty years of matrimony he had
+spent scarce three, and those at scattered intervals, beneath his own roof.
+Thus the wife of his youth, though she died in his and her declining age,
+retained the bridal dewdrops fresh around her memory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My observations gave me the idea, and Mr. Wigglesworth confirmed it, that
+husbands were more faithful in setting up memorials to their dead wives than
+widows to their dead husbands. I was not ill-natured enough to fancy that women
+less than men feel so sure of their own constancy as to be willing to give a
+pledge of it in marble. It is more probably the fact that, while men are able
+to reflect upon their lost companions as remembrances apart from themselves,
+women, on the other hand, are conscious that a portion of their being has gone
+with the departed whithersoever he has gone. Soul clings to soul, the living
+dust has a sympathy with the dust of the grave; and by the very strength of
+that sympathy the wife of the dead shrinks the more sensitively from reminding
+the world of its existence. The link is already strong enough; it needs no
+visible symbol. And, though a shadow walks ever by her side and the touch of a
+chill hand is on her bosom, yet life, and perchance its natural yearnings, may
+still be warm within her and inspire her with new hopes of happiness. Then
+would she mark out the grave the scent of which would be perceptible on the
+pillow of the second bridal? No, but rather level its green mound with the
+surrounding earth, as if, when she dug up again her buried heart, the spot had
+ceased to be a grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, in spite of these sentimentalities, I was prodigiously amused by an
+incident of which I had not the good-fortune to be a witness, but which Mr.
+Wigglesworth related with considerable humor. A gentlewoman of the town,
+receiving news of her husband&rsquo;s loss at sea, had bespoken a handsome slab
+of marble, and came daily to watch the progress of my friend&rsquo;s chisel.
+One afternoon, when the good lady and the sculptor were in the very midst of
+the epitaph&mdash;which the departed spirit might have been greatly comforted
+to read&mdash;who should walk into the workshop but the deceased himself, in
+substance as well as spirit! He had been picked up at sea, and stood in no
+present need of tombstone or epitaph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how,&rdquo; inquired I, &ldquo;did his wife bear the shock of joyful
+surprise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said the old man, deepening the grin of a death&rsquo;s-head
+on which his chisel was just then employed, &ldquo;I really felt for the poor
+woman; it was one of my best pieces of marble&mdash;and to be thrown away on a
+living man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A comely woman with a pretty rosebud of a daughter came to select a gravestone
+for a twin-daughter, who had died a month before. I was impressed with the
+different nature of their feelings for the dead. The mother was calm and
+woefully resigned, fully conscious of her loss, as of a treasure which she had
+not always possessed, and therefore had been aware that it might be taken from
+her; but the daughter evidently had no real knowledge of what Death&rsquo;s
+doings were. Her thoughts knew, but not her heart. It seemed to me that by the
+print and pressure which the dead sister had left upon the survivor&rsquo;s
+spirit her feelings were almost the same as if she still stood side by side and
+arm in arm with the departed, looking at the slabs of marble, and once or twice
+she glanced around with a sunny smile, which, as its sister-smile had faded for
+ever, soon grew confusedly overshadowed. Perchance her consciousness was truer
+than her reflection; perchance her dead sister was a closer companion than in
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth about a
+suitable epitaph, and finally chose an ordinary verse of ill-matched rhymes
+which had already been inscribed upon innumerable tombstones. But when we
+ridicule the triteness of monumental verses, we forget that Sorrow reads far
+deeper in them than we can, and finds a profound and individual purport in what
+seems so vague and inexpressive unless interpreted by her. She makes the
+epitaph anew, though the selfsame words may have served for a thousand graves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said I afterward to Mr. Wigglesworth, &ldquo;they might
+have made a better choice than this. While you were discussing the subject I
+was struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the lips of
+both mother and daughter. One of these would have formed an inscription equally
+original and appropriate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; replied the sculptor, shaking his head; &ldquo;there is a
+good deal of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry, and
+so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones. And somehow
+they seem to stretch to suit a great grief and shrink to fit a small
+one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took place between
+Mr. Wigglesworth and his customers. A shrewd gentlewoman who kept a tavern in
+the town was anxious to obtain two or three gravestones for the deceased
+members of her family, and to pay for these solemn commodities by taking the
+sculptor to board. Hereupon a fantasy arose in my mind of good Mr. Wigglesworth
+sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone carving one of his own plump
+little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of crossbones and drinking out of a
+hollow death&rsquo;s-head or perhaps a lachrymatory vase or sepulchral urn,
+while his hostess&rsquo;s dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet.
+On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man he laughed heartily
+and pronounced my humor to be of the right sort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have lived at such a table all my days,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and
+eaten no small quantity of slate and marble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hard fare,&rdquo; rejoined I, smiling, &ldquo;but you seemed to have
+found it excellent of digestion, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A man of fifty or thereabouts with a harsh, unpleasant countenance ordered a
+stone for the grave of his bitter enemy, with whom he had waged warfare half a
+lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The secret of this phenomenon was
+that hatred had become the sustenance and enjoyment of the poor wretch&rsquo;s
+soul; it had supplied the place of all kindly affections; it had been really a
+bond of sympathy between himself and the man who shared the passion; and when
+its object died, the unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead. He
+expressed a purpose of being buried side by side with his enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt whether their dust will mingle,&rdquo; remarked the old sculptor
+to me; for often there was an earthliness in his conceptions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; replied I, who had mused long upon the incident;
+&ldquo;and when they rise again, these bitter foes may find themselves dear
+friends. Methinks what they mistook for hatred was but love under a
+mask.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gentleman of antiquarian propensities provided a memorial for an Indian of
+Chabbiquidick&mdash;one of the few of untainted blood remaining in that region,
+and said to be a hereditary chieftain descended from the sachem who welcomed
+Governor Mayhew to the Vineyard. Mr. Wiggles-worth exerted his best skill to
+carve a broken bow and scattered sheaf of arrows in memory of the hunters and
+warriors whose race was ended here, but he likewise sculptured a cherub, to
+denote that the poor Indian had shared the Christian&rsquo;s hope of
+immortality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; observed I, taking a perverse view of the winged boy and the
+bow and arrows, &ldquo;it looks more like Cupid&rsquo;s tomb than an Indian
+chief&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You talk nonsense,&rdquo; said the sculptor, with the offended pride of
+art. He then added with his usual good-nature, &ldquo;How can Cupid die when
+there are such pretty maidens in the Vineyard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true,&rdquo; answered I; and for the rest of the day I thought of
+other matters than tombstones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At our next meeting I found him chiselling an open book upon a marble
+headstone, and concluded that it was meant to express the erudition of some
+black-letter clergyman of the Cotton Mather school. It turned out, however, to
+be emblematical of the scriptural knowledge of an old woman who had never read
+anything but her Bible, and the monument was a tribute to her piety and good
+works from the orthodox church of which she had been a member. In strange
+contrast with this Christian woman&rsquo;s memorial was that of an infidel
+whose gravestone, by his own direction, bore an avowal of his belief that the
+spirit within him would be extinguished like a flame, and that the nothingness
+whence he sprang would receive him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Wigglesworth consulted me as to the propriety of enabling a dead
+man&rsquo;s dust to utter this dreadful creed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I thought,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that a single mortal would read the
+inscription without a shudder, my chisel should never cut a letter of it. But
+when the grave speaks such falsehoods, the soul of man will know the truth by
+its own horror.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it will,&rdquo; said I, struck by the idea. &ldquo;The poor infidel
+may strive to preach blasphemies from his grave, but it will be only another
+method of impressing the soul with a consciousness of immortality.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an old man by the name of Norton, noted throughout the island for his
+great wealth, which he had accumulated by the exercise of strong and shrewd
+faculties combined with a most penurious disposition. This wretched miser,
+conscious that he had not a friend to be mindful of him in his grave, had
+himself taken the needful precautions for posthumous remembrance by bespeaking
+an immense slab of white marble with a long epitaph in raised letters, the
+whole to be as magnificent as Mr. Wigglesworth&rsquo;s skill could make it.
+There was something very characteristic in this contrivance to have his
+money&rsquo;s worth even from his own tombstone, which, indeed, afforded him
+more enjoyment in the few months that he lived thereafter than it probably will
+in a whole century, now that it is laid over his bones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This incident reminds me of a young girl&mdash;a pale, slender, feeble creature
+most unlike the other rosy and healthful damsels of the Vineyard, amid whose
+brightness she was fading away. Day after day did the poor maiden come to the
+sculptor&rsquo;s shop and pass from one piece of marble to another, till at
+last she pencilled her name upon a slender slab which, I think, was of a more
+spotless white than all the rest. I saw her no more, but soon afterward found
+Mr. Wigglesworth cutting her virgin-name into the stone which she had chosen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is dead, poor girl!&rdquo; said he, interrupting the tune which he
+was whistling, &ldquo;and she chose a good piece of stuff for her headstone.
+Now, which of these slabs would you like best to see your own name upon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, to tell you the truth, my good Mr. Wigglesworth,&rdquo; replied I,
+after a moment&rsquo;s pause, for the abruptness of the question had somewhat
+startled me&mdash;&ldquo;to be quite sincere with you, I care little or nothing
+about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to scepticism as to
+the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the dust that once was human.
+The weight of these heavy marbles, though unfelt by the dead corpse or the
+enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the spirit of the survivor and causes
+him to connect the idea of death with the dungeon-like imprisonment of the
+tomb, instead of with the freedom of the skies. Every gravestone that you ever
+made is the visible symbol of a mistaken system. Our thoughts should soar
+upward with the butterfly, not linger with the exuvi&aelig; that confined him.
+In truth and reason, neither those whom we call the living, and still less the
+departed, have anything to do with the grave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never heard anything so heathenish,&rdquo; said Mr. Wigglesworth,
+perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his notions and
+feelings and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his whole life&rsquo;s
+labor. &ldquo;Would you forget your dead friends the moment they are under the
+sod?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are not under the sod,&rdquo; I rejoined; &ldquo;then why should I
+mark the spot where there is no treasure hidden? Forget them? No; but, to
+remember them aright, I would forget what they have cast off. And to gain the
+truer conception of death I would forget the grave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still the good old sculptor murmured, and stumbled, as it were, over the
+gravestones amid which he had walked through life. Whether he were right or
+wrong, I had grown the wiser from our companionship and from my observations of
+nature and character as displayed by those who came, with their old griefs or
+their new ones, to get them recorded upon his slabs of marble. And yet with my
+gain of wisdom I had likewise gained perplexity; for there was a strange doubt
+in my mind whether the dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and regrets,
+have not as much real comfort in them&mdash;leaving religious influences out of
+the question&mdash;as what we term life&rsquo;s joys.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap34"></a>
+THE SHAKER BRIDAL</h2>
+
+<p>
+One day, in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty years the
+presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there was an assemblage
+of several of the chief men of the sect. Individuals had come from the rich
+establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury, Harvard and Alfred, and from all the
+other localities where this strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of
+New England by their systematic industry. An elder was likewise there who had
+made a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in
+Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted Mother Ann.
+He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables, had quaffed the
+far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred dance every step of which
+is believed to alienate the enthusiast from earth and bear him onward to
+heavenly purity and bliss. His brethren of the North had now courteously
+invited him to be present on an occasion when the concurrence of every eminent
+member of their community was peculiarly desirable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair, not only hoary-headed and
+infirm with age, but worn down by a lingering disease which it was evident
+would very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to other hands. At his footstool
+stood a man and woman, both clad in the Shaker garb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brethren,&rdquo; said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders,
+feebly exerting himself to utter these few words, &ldquo;here are the son and
+daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about to
+lighten my weary shoulders. Read their faces, I pray you, and say whether the
+inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice aright.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most scrutinizing
+gaze. The man&mdash;whose name was Adam Colburn&mdash;had a face sunburnt with
+labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and traced with cares enough
+for a whole lifetime, though he had barely reached middle age. There was
+something severe in his aspect and a rigidity throughout his
+person&mdash;characteristics that caused him generally to be taken for a
+schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he had formerly exercised for several
+years. The woman, Martha Pierson, was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as
+a Shaker sister almost invariably is, and not entirely free from that
+corpse-like appearance which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated
+to impart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This pair are still in the summer of their years,&rdquo; observed the
+elder from Harvard, a shrewd old man. &ldquo;I would like better to see the
+hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be exposed to
+peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which have heretofore
+subsisted between them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, brother,&rdquo; said the elder from Canterbury; &ldquo;the
+hoar-frost and the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister
+Martha, even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they
+are yet green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable
+Father&rsquo;s purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved one
+another as the world&rsquo;s people love? Are there not many brethren and
+sisters among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet, adopting our
+faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual affection?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it inexpedient
+that they should now preside together over a Shaker village, it was certainly
+most singular that such should be the final result of many warm and tender
+hopes. Children of neighboring families, their affection was older even than
+their school-days; it seemed an innate principle interfused among all their
+sentiments and feelings, and not so much a distinct remembrance as connected
+with their whole volume of remembrances. But just as they reached a proper age
+for their union misfortunes had fallen heavily on both and made it necessary
+that they should resort to personal labor for a bare subsistence. Even under
+these circumstances Martha Pierson would probably have consented to unite her
+fate with Adam Colburn&rsquo;s, and, secure of the bliss of mutual love, would
+patiently have awaited the less important gifts of Fortune. But Adam, being of
+a calm and cautious character, was loth to relinquish the advantages which a
+single man possesses for raising himself in the world. Year after year,
+therefore, their marriage had been deferred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adam Colburn had followed many vocations, had travelled far and seen much of
+the world and of life. Martha had earned her bread sometimes as a sempstress,
+sometimes as help to a farmer&rsquo;s wife, sometimes as schoolmistress of the
+village children, sometimes as a nurse or watcher of the sick, thus acquiring a
+varied experience the ultimate use of which she little anticipated. But nothing
+had gone prosperously with either of the lovers; at no subsequent moment would
+matrimony have been so prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the
+opening bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still, they had held fast
+their mutual faith. Martha might have been the wife of a man who sat among the
+senators of his native State, and Adam could have won the hand, as he had
+unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and comely widow. But neither of them
+desired good-fortune save to share it with the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length that calm despair which occurs only in a strong and somewhat stubborn
+character and yields to no second spring of hope settled down on the spirit of
+Adam Colburn. He sought an interview with Martha and proposed that they should
+join the Society of Shakers. The converts of this sect are oftener driven
+within its hospitable gates by worldly misfortune than drawn thither by
+fanaticism, and are received without inquisition as to their motives. Martha,
+faithful still, had placed her hand in that of her lover and accompanied him to
+the Shaker village. Here the natural capacity of each, cultivated and
+strengthened by the difficulties of their previous lives, had soon gained them
+an important rank in the society, whose members are generally below the
+ordinary standard of intelligence. Their faith and feelings had in some degree
+become assimilated to those of their fellow-worshippers. Adam Colburn gradually
+acquired reputation not only in the management of the temporal affairs of the
+society, but as a clear and efficient preacher of their doctrines. Martha was
+not less distinguished in the duties proper to her sex. Finally, when the
+infirmities of Father Ephraim had admonished him to seek a successor in his
+patriarchal office, he thought of Adam and Martha, and proposed to renew in
+their persons the primitive form of Shaker government as established by Mother
+Ann. They were to be the father and mother of the village. The simple ceremony
+which would constitute them such was now to be performed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Son Adam and daughter Martha,&rdquo; said the venerable Father Ephraim,
+fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, &ldquo;if ye can conscientiously
+undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your
+fitness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; replied Adam, speaking with the calmness of his
+character, &ldquo;I came to your village a disappointed man, weary of the
+world, worn out with continual trouble, seeking only a security against evil
+fortune, as I had no hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success were
+almost dead within me. I came hither as a man might come to a tomb willing to
+lie down in its gloom and coldness for the sake of its peace and quiet. There
+was but one earthly affection in my breast, and it had grown calmer since my
+youth; so that I was satisfied to bring Martha to be my sister in our new
+abode. We are brother and sister, nor would I have it otherwise. And in this
+peaceful village I have found all that I hope for&mdash;all that I desire. I
+will strive with my best strength for the spiritual and temporal good of our
+community. My conscience is not doubtful in this matter. I am ready to receive
+the trust.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou hast spoken well, son Adam,&rdquo; said the father. &ldquo;God will
+bless thee in the office which I am about to resign.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But our sister,&rdquo; observed the elder from Harvard. &ldquo;Hath she
+not likewise a gift to declare her sentiments?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha started and moved her lips as if she would have made a formal reply to
+this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old recollections, the
+long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and womanhood, might have gushed
+from her heart in words that it would have been profanation to utter there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Adam has spoken,&rdquo; said she, hurriedly; &ldquo;his sentiments are
+likewise mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But while speaking these few words Martha grew so pale that she looked fitter
+to be laid in her coffin than to stand in the presence of Father Ephraim and
+the elders; she shuddered, also, as if there were something awful or horrible
+in her situation and destiny. It required, indeed, a more than feminine
+strength of nerve to sustain the fixed observance of men so exalted and famous
+throughout the sect as these were. They had overcome their natural sympathy
+with human frailties and affections. One, when he joined the society, had
+brought with him his wife and children, but never from that hour had spoken a
+fond word to the former or taken his best-loved child upon his knee. Another,
+whose family refused to follow him, had been enabled&mdash;such was his gift of
+holy fortitude&mdash;to leave them to the mercy of the world. The youngest of
+the elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from infancy in a Shaker
+village, and was said never to have clasped a woman&rsquo;s hand in his own,
+and to have no conception of a closer tie than the cold fraternal one of the
+sect. Old Father Ephraim was the most awful character of all. In his youth he
+had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and
+had partaken of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered
+at the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his
+heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could be purified from earthly
+passions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However that might be, poor Martha had a woman&rsquo;s heart, and a tender one,
+and it quailed within her as she looked round at those strange old men, and
+from them to the calm features of Adam Colburn. But, perceiving that the elders
+eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath and again spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With what strength is left me by my many troubles,&rdquo; said she,
+&ldquo;I am ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My children, join your hands,&rdquo; said Father Ephraim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They did so. The elders stood up around, and the father feebly raised himself
+to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have bidden you to join your hands,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;not in
+earthly affection, for ye have cast off its chains for ever, but as brother and
+sister in spiritual love and helpers of one another in your allotted task.
+Teach unto others the faith which ye have received. Open wide your
+gates&mdash;I deliver you the keys thereof&mdash;open them wide to all who will
+give up the iniquities of the world and come hither to lead lives of purity and
+peace. Receive the weary ones who have known the vanity of earth; receive the
+little children, that they may never learn that miserable lesson. And a
+blessing be upon your labors; so that the time may hasten on when the mission
+of Mother Ann shall have wrought its full effect, when children shall no more
+be born and die, and the last survivor of mortal race&mdash;some old and weary
+man like me&mdash;shall see the sun go down nevermore to rise on a world of sin
+and sorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aged father sank back exhausted, and the surrounding elders deemed, with
+good reason, that the hour was come when the new heads of the village must
+enter on their patriarchal duties. In their attention to Father Ephraim their
+eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew paler and paler, unnoticed even
+by Adam Colburn. He, indeed, had withdrawn his hand from hers and folded his
+arms with a sense of satisfied ambition. But paler and paler grew Martha by his
+side, till, like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the feet of
+her early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could endure
+the weight of its desolate agony no longer.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap35"></a>
+NIGHT-SKETCHES,</h2>
+
+<h4>BENEATH AN UMBRELLA</h4>
+
+<p>
+Pleasant is a rainy winter&rsquo;s day within-doors. The best study for such a
+day&mdash;or the best amusement: call it what you will&mdash;is a book of
+travels describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is mistily
+presented through the windows. I have experienced that Fancy is then most
+successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors to the objects which
+the author has spread upon his page, and that his words become magic spells to
+summon up a thousand varied pictures. Strange landscapes glimmer through the
+familiar walls of the room, and outlandish figures thrust themselves almost
+within the sacred precincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space
+enough to contain the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its
+parched sands tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels patiently
+journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be not lofty, yet I
+can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it till their summits shine
+far above the clouds of the middle atmosphere. And with my humble means&mdash;a
+wealth that is not taxable&mdash;I can transport hither the magnificent
+merchandise of an Oriental bazaar, and call a crowd of purchasers from distant
+countries to pay a fair profit for the precious articles which are displayed on
+all sides. True it is, however, that amid the bustle of traffic, or whatever
+else may seem to be going on around me, the raindrops will occasionally be
+heard to patter against my window-panes, which look forth upon one of the
+quietest streets in a New England town. After a time, too, the visions vanish,
+and will not appear again at my bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy
+sense of unreality depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out before
+the clock shall strike bedtime to satisfy myself that the world is not entirely
+made up of such shadowy materials as have busied me throughout the day. A
+dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies that the things without him will seem
+as unreal as those within.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly buttoning my
+shaggy overcoat and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome of which immediately
+resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible raindrops. Pausing on the
+lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and cheerfulness of my deserted fireside
+with the drear obscurity and chill discomfort into which I am about to plunge.
+Now come fearful auguries innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood
+cry shame upon me, I should turn back within-doors, resume my elbow-chair, my
+slippers and my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as the day has
+been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering reluctance, no doubt, has
+quelled for a moment the adventurous spirit of many a traveller when his feet,
+which were destined to measure the earth around, were leaving their last tracks
+in the home-paths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I look upward
+and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but only a black,
+impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its lights were blotted from
+the system of the universe. It is as if Nature were dead and the world had put
+on black and the clouds were weeping for her. With their tears upon my cheek I
+turn my eyes earthward, but find little consolation here below. A lamp is
+burning dimly at the distant corner, and throws just enough of light along the
+street to show, and exaggerate by so faintly showing, the perils and
+difficulties which beset my path. Yonder dingily-white remnant of a huge
+snowbank, which will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days of March,
+over or through that wintry waste must I stride onward. Beyond lies a certain
+Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep,
+neck-deep&mdash;in a word, of unknown bottom&mdash;on which the lamplight does
+not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched in the gradual growth
+of its horrors from morn till nightfall. Should I flounder into its depths,
+farewell to upper earth! And hark! how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream
+the turbulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam of the lamp,
+but elsewhere brawls noisily through the densest gloom! Oh, should I be swept
+away in fording that impetuous and unclean torrent, the coroner will have a job
+with an unfortunate gentleman who would fain end his troubles anywhere but in a
+mud-puddle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pshaw! I will linger not another instant at arm&rsquo;s-length from these dim
+terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable the longer I delay to grapple
+with them. Now for the onset, and, lo! with little damage save a dash of rain
+in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up the pantaloons and the left
+boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at the corner of the street. The lamp
+throws down a circle of red light around me, and twinkling onward from corner
+to corner I discern other beacons, marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But
+this is a lonesome and dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to
+the storm with their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces a
+spattering gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin spouts! The
+puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from various quarters at
+once. I have often observed that this corner is a haunt and loitering-place for
+those winds which have no work to do upon the deep dashing ships against our
+iron-bound shores, nor in the forest tearing up the sylvan giants with half a
+rood of soil at their vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser freaks
+of mischief. See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is
+passing just within the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her
+umbrella and turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of her cloak
+across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable liberties with the
+lower part of her attire. Happily, the good dame is no gossamer, but a figure
+of rotundity and fleshly substance; else would these aerial tormentors whirl
+her aloft like a witch upon a broomstick, and set her down, doubtless, in the
+filthiest kennel hereabout.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town. Here there
+is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great victory has been won
+either on the battlefield or at the polls. Two rows of shops with windows down
+nearly to the ground cast a glow from side to side, while the black night hangs
+overhead like a canopy, and thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away.
+The wet sidewalks gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter
+as if the sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the
+scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around their
+footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till they forget the
+impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can be dispelled only by
+radiance from above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, after all, it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the wanderers in it.
+Here comes one who has so long been familiar with tempestuous weather that he
+takes the bluster of the storm for a friendly greeting, as if it should say,
+&ldquo;How fare ye, brother?&rdquo; He is a retired sea-captain wrapped in some
+nameless garment of the pea-jacket order, and is now laying his course toward
+the marine-insurance office, there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck with a
+crew of old seadogs like himself. The blast will put in its word among their
+hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them. Next I meet an unhappy
+slipshod gentleman with a cloak flung hastily over his shoulders, running a
+race with boisterous winds and striving to glide between the drops of rain.
+Some domestic emergency or other has blown this miserable man from his warm
+fireside in quest of a doctor. See that little vagabond! How carelessly he has
+taken his stand right underneath a spout while staring at some object of
+curiosity in a shop-window! Surely the rain is his native element; he must have
+fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here is a picture, and a pretty one&mdash;a young man and a girl, both
+enveloped in cloaks and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a cotton
+umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his dancing-pumps, and they
+are on their way no doubt, to some cotillon-party or subscription-ball at a
+dollar a head, refreshments included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy
+tempest, lured onward by a vision of festal splendor. But ah! a most lamentable
+disaster! Bewildered by the red, blue and yellow meteors in an
+apothecary&rsquo;s window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice,
+and are precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two
+streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a looker-on in
+life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be, I vow, should you be
+drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your fate as shall call forth tears
+enough to drown you both anew. Do ye touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they
+emerge like a water-nymph and a river-deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the
+depths of the dark pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, disconsolate, abashed,
+but with love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a test
+which proves too strong for many. Faithful though over head and ears in
+trouble!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied aspect of
+mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the lighted windows or is
+blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that mine is altogether a chameleon
+spirit with no hue of its own. Now I pass into a more retired street where the
+dwellings of wealth and poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of
+strongly-contrasted pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through
+yonder casement I discern a family circle&mdash;the grandmother, the parents
+and the children&mdash;all flickering, shadow-like, in the glow of a
+wood-fire.&mdash;Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against the
+window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside.&mdash;Surely my
+fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my bosom night
+and storm and solitude instead of wife and children. Peace, murmurer! Doubt not
+that darker guests are sitting round the hearth, though the warm blaze hides
+all but blissful images.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, here is still a brighter scene&mdash;a stately mansion illuminated for a
+ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every room, and sunny
+landscapes hanging round the walls. See! a coach has stopped, whence emerges a
+slender beauty who, canopied by two umbrellas, glides within the portal and
+vanishes amid lightsome thrills of music. Will she ever feel the night-wind and
+the rain? Perhaps&mdash;perhaps! And will Death and Sorrow ever enter that
+proud mansion? As surely as the dancers will be gay within its halls to-night.
+Such thoughts sadden yet satisfy my heart, for they teach me that the poor man
+in this mean, weatherbeaten hovel, without a fire to cheer him, may call the
+rich his brother&mdash;brethren by Sorrow, who must be an inmate of both their
+households; brethren by Death, who will lead them both to other homes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the utmost
+limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with the darkness like
+the farthest star that stands sentinel on the borders of uncreated space. It is
+strange what sensations of sublimity may spring from a very humble source. Such
+are suggested by this hollow roar of a subterranean cataract where the mighty
+stream of a kennel precipitates itself beneath an iron grate and is seen no
+more on earth. Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will magnify
+it till you start and smile at the illusion. And now another sound&mdash;the
+rumbling of wheels as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls heavily off the
+pavements and splashes through the mud and water of the road. All night long
+the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro between drowsy watch and troubled
+sleep, and will dream of their own quiet beds and awake to find themselves
+still jolting onward. Happier my lot, who will straightway hie me to my
+familiar room and toast myself comfortably before the fire, musing and fitfully
+dozing and fancying a strangeness in such sights as all may see. But first let
+me gaze at this solitary figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern which
+throws the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground about him. He
+passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will not follow him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This figure shall supply me with a moral wherewith, for lack of a more
+appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the dreary path
+before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the fireside of his home,
+will light him back to that same fireside again. And thus we, night-wanderers
+through a stormy and dismal world, if we bear the lamp of Faith enkindled at a
+celestial fire, it will surely lead us home to that heaven whence its radiance
+was borrowed.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap36"></a>
+ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS</h2>
+
+<p>
+At noon of an autumnal day more than two centuries ago the English colors were
+displayed by the standard bearer of the Salem train-band, which had mustered
+for martial exercise under the orders of John Endicott. It was a period when
+the religious exiles were accustomed often to buckle on their armor and
+practise the handling of their weapons of war. Since the first settlement of
+New England its prospects had never been so dismal. The dissensions between
+Charles I. and his subjects were then, and for several years afterward,
+confined to the floor of Parliament. The measures of the king and ministry were
+rendered more tyrannically violent by an opposition which had not yet acquired
+sufficient confidence in its own strength to resist royal injustice with the
+sword. The bigoted and haughty primate Laud, archbishop of Canterbury,
+controlled the religious affairs of the realm, and was consequently invested
+with powers which might have wrought the utter ruin of the two Puritan
+colonies, Plymouth and Massachusetts. There is evidence on record that our
+forefathers perceived their danger, but were resolved that their infant country
+should not fall without a struggle, even beneath the giant strength of the
+king&rsquo;s right arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the aspect of the times when the folds of the English banner with the
+red cross in its field were flung out over a company of Puritans. Their leader,
+the famous Endicott, was a man of stern and resolute countenance, the effect of
+which was heightened by a grizzled beard that swept the upper portion of his
+breastplate. This piece of armor was so highly polished that the whole
+surrounding scene had its image in the glittering steel. The central object in
+the mirrored picture was an edifice of humble architecture with neither steeple
+nor bell to proclaim it&mdash;what, nevertheless, it was&mdash;the house of
+prayer. A token of the perils of the wilderness was seen in the grim head of a
+wolf which had just been slain within the precincts of the town, and, according
+to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed on the porch of the
+meeting-house. The blood was still plashing on the doorstep. There happened to
+be visible at the same noontide hour so many other characteristics of the times
+and manners of the Puritans that we must endeavor to represent them in a
+sketch, though far less vividly than they were reflected in the polished
+breastplate of John Endicott.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important engine of
+Puritanic authority the whipping-post, with the soil around it well trodden by
+the feet of evil-doers who had there been disciplined. At one corner of the
+meeting-house was the pillory and at the other the stocks, and, by a singular
+good fortune for our sketch, the head of an Episcopalian and suspected Catholic
+was grotesquely encased in the former machine, while a fellow-criminal who had
+boisterously quaffed a health to the king was confined by the legs in the
+latter. Side by side on the meeting-house steps stood a male and a female
+figure. The man was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism,
+bearing on his breast this label, &ldquo;A WANTON GOSPELLER,&rdquo; which
+betokened that he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned
+by the infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect showed
+no lack of zeal to maintain his heterodoxies even at the stake. The woman wore
+a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribution for having wagged that
+unruly member against the elders of the church, and her countenance and
+gestures gave much cause to apprehend that the moment the stick should be
+removed a repetition of the offence would demand new ingenuity in chastising
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced to undergo their various
+modes of ignominy for the space of one hour at noonday. But among the crowd
+were several whose punishment would be lifelong&mdash;some whose ears had been
+cropped like those of puppy-dogs, others whose cheeks had been branded with the
+initials of their misdemeanors; one with his nostrils slit and seared, and
+another with a halter about his neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off
+or to conceal beneath his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously
+tempted to affix the other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough.
+There was likewise a young woman with no mean share of beauty whose doom it was
+to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown in the eyes of all the world and
+her own children. And even her own children knew what that initial signified.
+Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had embroidered the
+fatal token in scarlet cloth with golden thread and the nicest art of
+needlework; so that the capital A might have been thought to mean
+&ldquo;Admirable,&rdquo; or anything rather than &ldquo;Adulteress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let not the reader argue from any of these evidences of iniquity that the times
+of the Puritans were more vicious than our own, when as we pass along the very
+street of this sketch we discern no badge of infamy on man or woman. It was the
+policy of our ancestors to search out even the most secret sins and expose them
+to shame, without fear or favor, in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were
+such the custom now, perchance we might find materials for a no less piquant
+sketch than the above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Except the malefactors whom we have described and the diseased or infirm
+persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen years and sixty
+were seen in the ranks of the train-band. A few stately savages in all the pomp
+and dignity of the primeval Indian stood gazing at the spectacle. Their
+flint-headed arrows were but childish weapons, compared with the matchlocks of
+the Puritans, and would have rattled harmlessly against the steel caps and
+hammered iron breastplates which enclosed each soldier in an individual
+fortress. The valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy
+followers, and prepared to renew the martial toils of the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, my stout hearts!&rdquo; quoth he, drawing his sword. &ldquo;Let us
+show these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might. Well
+for them if they put us not to prove it in earnest!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and each man drew the heavy
+butt of his matchlock close to his left foot, thus awaiting the orders of the
+captain. But as Endicott glanced right and left along the front he discovered a
+personage at some little distance with whom it behoved him to hold a parley. It
+was an elderly gentleman wearing a black cloak and band and a high-crowned hat
+beneath which was a velvet skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan
+minister. This reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been recently
+cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as if he had been travelling on
+foot through the swamps of the wilderness. His aspect was perfectly that of a
+pilgrim, heightened also by an apostolic dignity. Just as Endicott perceived
+him he laid aside his staff and stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain which
+gushed into the sunshine about a score of yards from the corner of the
+meeting-house. But ere the good man drank he turned his face heavenward in
+thankfulness, and then, holding back his gray beard with one hand, he scooped
+up his simple draught in the hollow of the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho, good Mr. Williams!&rdquo; shouted Endicott. &ldquo;You are
+welcome back again to our town of peace. How does our worthy Governor Winthrop?
+And what news from Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The governor hath his health, worshipful sir,&rdquo; answered Roger
+Williams, now resuming his staff and drawing near. &ldquo;And, for the news,
+here is a letter which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, His
+Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it contains tidings of much import,
+for a ship arrived yesterday from England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course known to all the spectators,
+had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under the banner of his
+company, and put the governor&rsquo;s epistle into his hand. The broad seal was
+impressed with Winthrop&rsquo;s coat-of-arms. Endicott hastily unclosed the
+letter and began to read, while, as his eye passed down the page, a wrathful
+change came over his manly countenance. The blood glowed through it till it
+seemed to be kindling with an internal heat, nor was it unnatural to suppose
+that his breastplate would likewise become red hot with the angry fire of the
+bosom which it covered. Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the letter
+fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag above his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Black tidings these, Mr. Williams,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;blacker never
+came to New England. Doubtless you know their purport?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yea, truly,&rdquo; replied Roger Williams, &ldquo;for the governor
+consulted respecting this matter with my brethren in the ministry at Boston,
+and my opinion was likewise asked. And His Excellency entreats you by me that
+the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be stirred up unto some
+outbreak, and thereby give the king and the archbishop a handle against
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The governor is a wise man&mdash;a wise man, and a meek and
+moderate,&rdquo; said Endicott, setting his teeth grimly. &ldquo;Nevertheless,
+I must do according to my own best judgment. There is neither man, woman nor
+child in New England but has a concern as dear as life in these tidings; and if
+John Endicott&rsquo;s voice be loud enough, man, woman and child shall hear
+them.&mdash;Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square.&mdash;Ho, good people! Here
+are news for one and all of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The soldiers closed in around their captain, and he and Roger Williams stood
+together under the banner of the red cross, while the women and the aged men
+pressed forward and the mothers held up their children to look Endicott in the
+face. A few taps of the drum gave signal for silence and attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fellow-soldiers, fellow-exiles,&rdquo; began Endicott, speaking under
+strong excitement, yet powerfully restraining it, &ldquo;wherefore did ye leave
+your native country? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green and fertile
+fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls, where we were born and
+bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie buried? Wherefore have we come
+hither to set up our own tombstones in a wilderness? A howling wilderness it
+is. The wolf and the bear meet us within halloo of our dwellings. The savage
+lieth in wait for us in the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of
+the trees break our ploughshares when we would till the earth. Our children cry
+for bread, and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them.
+Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil and wintry
+sky? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights? Was it not for liberty
+to worship God according to our conscience?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call you this liberty of conscience?&rdquo; interrupted a voice on the
+steps of the meeting-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the wanton gospeller. A sad and quiet smile flitted across the mild
+visage of Roger Williams, but Endicott, in the excitement of the moment, shook
+his sword wrathfully at the culprit&mdash;an ominous gesture from a man like
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?&rdquo; cried he.
+&ldquo;I said liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him.
+Break not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this time
+to-morrow.&mdash;Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed rhapsodist. As
+I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have come to a land whereof
+the Old World hath scarcely heard, that we might make a new world unto
+ourselves and painfully seek a path from hence to heaven. But what think ye
+now? This son of a Scotch tyrant&mdash;this grandson of a papistical and
+adulterous Scotch woman whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always
+save an anointed head from the block&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, brother, nay,&rdquo; interposed Mr. Williams; &ldquo;thy words are
+not meet for a secret chamber, far less for a public street.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold thy peace, Roger Williams!&rdquo; answered Endicott, imperiously.
+&ldquo;My spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand.&mdash;I tell
+ye, fellow-exiles, that Charles of England and Laud, our bitterest persecutor,
+arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even hither. They are
+taking counsel, saith this letter, to send over a governor-general in whose
+breast shall be deposited all the law and equity of the land. They are minded,
+also, to establish the idolatrous forms of English episcopacy; so that when
+Laud shall kiss the pope&rsquo;s toe as cardinal of Rome he may deliver New
+England, bound hand and foot, into the power of his master.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A deep groan from the auditors&mdash;a sound of wrath as well as fear and
+sorrow&mdash;responded to this intelligence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look ye to it, brethren,&rdquo; resumed Endicott, with increasing
+energy. &ldquo;If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall
+briefly behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded,
+and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round it at
+noon-day. We shall hear the sacring-bell and the voices of the Romish priests
+saying the mass. But think ye, Christian men, that these abominations may be
+suffered without a sword drawn, without a shot fired, without blood
+spilt&mdash;yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit? No! Be ye strong of hand and
+stout of heart. Here we stand on our own soil, which we have bought with our
+goods, which we have won with our swords, which we have cleared with our axes,
+which we have tilled with the sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with
+our prayers to the God that brought us hither! Who shall enslave us here? What
+have we to do with this mitred prelate&mdash;with this crowned king? What have
+we to do with England?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now full of his
+own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the standard-bearer, who stood close
+behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Officer, lower your banner,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The officer obeyed, and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it through the
+cloth and with his left hand rent the red cross completely out of the banner.
+He then waved the tattered ensign above his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sacrilegious wretch!&rdquo; cried the high-churchman in the pillory,
+unable longer to restrain himself; &ldquo;thou hast rejected the symbol of our
+holy religion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Treason! treason!&rdquo; roared the royalist in the stocks. &ldquo;He
+hath defaced the king&rsquo;s banner!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Before God and man I will avouch the deed,&rdquo; answered
+Endicott.&mdash;&ldquo;Beat a flourish, drummer&mdash;shout, soldiers and
+people&mdash;in honor of the ensign of New England. Neither pope nor tyrant
+hath part in it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a cry of triumph the people gave their sanction to one of the boldest
+exploits which our history records. And for ever honored be the name of
+Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and recognize in the rending
+of the red cross from New England&rsquo;s banner the first omen of that
+deliverance which our fathers consummated after the bones of the stern Puritan
+had lain more than a century in the dust.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap37"></a>
+THE LILY&rsquo;S QUEST</h2>
+
+<h4>AN APOLOGUE</h4>
+
+<p>
+Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the form of an
+antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to all manner of
+refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold pleasant intercourse
+with one another and the circle of their familiar friends; there they would
+give festivals of delicious fruit; there they would hear lightsome music
+intermingled with the strains of pathos which make joy more sweet; there they
+would read poetry and fiction and permit their own minds to flit away in
+day-dreams and romance; there, in short&mdash;for why should we shape out the
+vague sunshine of their hopes?&mdash;there all pure delights were to cluster
+like roses among the pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and
+spontaneously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set out
+upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess together, seeking
+a proper site for their temple of happiness. They were themselves a fair and
+happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess for such a shrine, although, making
+poetry of the pretty name of Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her
+&ldquo;Lily&rdquo; because her form was as fragile and her cheek almost as
+pale. As they passed hand in hand down the avenue of drooping elms that led
+from the portal of Lilias Fay&rsquo;s paternal mansion they seemed to glance
+like winged creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness
+where the deep shadows fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was a dismal
+figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been made of a
+coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear drooping its broad
+brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them, the lovers well knew who it
+was that followed, but wished from their hearts that he had been elsewhere, as
+being a companion so strangely unsuited to their joyous errand. It was a near
+relative of Lilias Fay, an old man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had
+long labored under the burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes
+maddened into absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast
+between the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They looked
+as if moulded of heaven&rsquo;s sunshine and he of earth&rsquo;s gloomiest
+shade; they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand through life,
+while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all the woeful influences
+which life could fling upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased the gentle
+Lily, and she paused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What sweeter place shall we find than this?&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Why
+should we seek farther for the site of our temple?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by any very
+prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a hill, with the
+prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a church-spire in another.
+There were vistas and pathways leading onward and onward into the green
+woodlands and vanishing away in the glimmering shade. The temple, if erected
+here, would look toward the west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of
+magnificent dreams out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and
+few of their anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Adam Forrester; &ldquo;we might seek all day and find
+no lovelier spot. We will build our temple here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site which
+they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and frowned, and the
+young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to blight the spot and desecrate
+it for their airy temple that his dismal figure had thrown its shadow there. He
+pointed to some scattered stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to
+flowers such as young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had
+now relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not here,&rdquo; cried old Walter Gascoigne. &ldquo;Here, long ago,
+other mortals built their temple of happiness; seek another site for
+yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Lilias Fay. &ldquo;Have any ever planned such a
+temple save ourselves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor child!&rdquo; said her gloomy kinsman. &ldquo;In one shape or other
+every mortal has dreamed your dream.&rdquo; Then he told the lovers,
+how&mdash;not, indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling&mdash;had once stood
+there, and that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever
+at the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake of sorrow.
+He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the history of almost every
+household, and yet his hearers felt as if no sunshine ought to fall upon a spot
+where human grief had left so deep a stain&mdash;or, at least, that no joyous
+temple should be built there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is very sad,&rdquo; said the Lily, sighing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, there are lovelier spots than this,&rdquo; said Adam Forrester,
+soothingly&mdash;&ldquo;spots which sorrow has not blighted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them, looking as
+if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot and was bearing it as
+a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they rambled on, and soon found
+themselves in a rocky dell through the midst of which ran a streamlet with
+ripple and foam and a continual voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild
+retreat walled on either side with gray precipices which would have frowned
+somewhat too sternly had not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into
+their crevices and wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the
+chief joy of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the presence
+of a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble merrily and
+disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow, and throw the sunny
+gleams of its spirit upon all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, here is the spot!&rdquo; cried the two lovers, with one voice, as
+they reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. &ldquo;This glen
+was made on purpose for our temple.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears,&rdquo; said
+Lilias Fay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime,&rdquo; said
+Adam Forrester.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ye must build no temple here,&rdquo; murmured their dismal companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where they meant
+to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied symbol of some
+great woe that in forgotten days had happened there. And, alas! there had been
+woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a hundred years before had lured
+hither a girl that loved him, and on this spot had murdered her and washed his
+bloody hands in the stream which sang so merrily, and ever since the
+victim&rsquo;s death-shrieks were often heard to echo between the cliffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And see!&rdquo; cried old Gascoigne; &ldquo;is the stream yet pure from
+the stain of the murderer&rsquo;s hands?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Methinks it has a tinge of blood,&rdquo; faintly answered the Lily; and,
+being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover&rsquo;s
+arm, whispering, &ldquo;Let us flee from this dreadful vale.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, then,&rdquo; said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could;
+&ldquo;we shall soon find a happier spot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which millions&mdash;which
+every child of earth&mdash;has tried in turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those millions?
+For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old lunatic still
+glided behind them, and for every spot that looked lovely in their eyes he had
+some legend of human wrong or suffering so miserably sad that his auditors
+could never afterward connect the idea of joy with the place where it had
+happened. Here a heartbroken woman kneeling to her child had been spurned from
+his feet; here a desolate old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had
+received a fiendish malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born
+infant, sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
+mother&rsquo;s fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two
+lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses in each
+other&rsquo;s arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever evil and
+lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and when his funereal
+voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy of future woe as well as a
+tradition of the past. And now, by their sad demeanor, you would have fancied
+that the pilgrim-lovers were seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb
+for themselves and their posterity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where in this world,&rdquo; exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly,
+&ldquo;shall we build our temple of happiness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where in this world, indeed?&rdquo; repeated Lilias Fay; and, being
+faint and weary&mdash;the more so by the heaviness of her heart&mdash;the Lily
+drooped her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, &ldquo;Where
+in this world shall we build our temple?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?&rdquo; said their
+companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile that dwelt
+on them. &ldquo;Yet there is a place even in this world where ye may build
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly thrown their
+eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had chanced to pause
+possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted to their present mood of
+mind. It was a small rise of ground with a certain regularity of shape that had
+perhaps been bestowed by art, and a group of trees which almost surrounded it
+threw their pensive shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory
+of the sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers
+would dwell together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where they were
+to worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the ground, they smiled,
+yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale lily was growing at their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will build our temple here,&rdquo; said they, simultaneously, and
+with an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily turned an
+apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it hardly possible that
+some tale of earthly affliction should not make those precincts loathsome, as
+in every former case. The old man stood just behind them, so as to form the
+chief figure in the group, with his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his
+visage and his sombre hat overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of
+dissent from their purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers
+as a token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate the
+site of their temple of happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
+fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid the solemn
+shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright sunshine. It was built of
+white marble, with slender and graceful pillars supporting a vaulted dome, and
+beneath the centre of this dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined
+marble on which books and music might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among
+the people of the neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient
+mausoleum and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of dark-veined
+marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones. They doubted, too,
+whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a creature of this earth,
+being so very delicate and growing every day more fragile, so that she looked
+as if the summer breeze should snatch her up and waft her heavenward. But still
+she watched the daily growth of the temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne,
+who now made that spot his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his
+staff and giving as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a
+tomb. In due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple rite of
+dedication.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his mistress,
+he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a strange thrill of
+fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams faded from her figure she
+was exhaling away, and that something of her ethereal substance was withdrawn
+with each lessening gleam of light. With his farewell glance a shadow had
+fallen over the portal, and Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed
+it an omen at the time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which
+the Lily had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning
+in the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded upon the
+slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had long since
+breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a loving hand had now
+transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden of Paradise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam Forrester
+had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of many delightful
+hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there. And, lo! a wonder! Digging
+a grave beneath the temple&rsquo;s marble floor, the sexton found no virgin
+earth such as was meet to receive the maiden&rsquo;s dust, but an ancient
+sepulchre in which were treasured up the bones of generations that had died
+long ago. Among those forgotten ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the
+funeral procession brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter
+Gascoigne standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and
+face of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand the spot
+would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they lowered the coffin
+down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so,&rdquo; said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in
+which his insanity was wont to gleam forth, &ldquo;you have found no better
+foundation for your happiness than on a grave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its birth in
+Adam&rsquo;s mind even from the old man&rsquo;s taunting words, for then he
+knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself had acted,
+and the mystery of life and death was opened to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Joy! joy!&rdquo; he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. &ldquo;On a
+grave be the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and glimmered
+down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape of old Walter
+Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom, symbolic of all earthly
+sorrow, might no longer abide there now that the darkest riddle of humanity was
+read.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap38"></a>
+FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE</h2>
+
+<p>
+It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health and
+vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world to
+plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not infrequent ones,
+the forest and the ocean summon me&mdash;one with the roar of its waves, the
+other with the murmur of its boughs&mdash;forth from the haunts of men. But I
+must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath the shadow of even one
+primeval tree, much less be lost among the multitude of hoary trunks and hidden
+from the earth and sky by the mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my
+daily reach more like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some
+suburban farmhouse. When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a
+necessity within me, I am drawn to the seashore which extends its line of rude
+rocks and seldom-trodden sands for leagues around our bay. Setting forth at my
+last ramble on a September morning, I bound myself with a hermit&rsquo;s vow to
+interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to share no social pleasure, but to
+derive all that day&rsquo;s enjoyment from shore and sea and sky, from my
+soul&rsquo;s communion with these, and from fantasies and recollections or
+anticipated realities. Surely here is enough to feed a human spirit for a
+single day.&mdash;Farewell, then, busy world! Till your evening lights shall
+shine along the street&mdash;till they gleam upon my sea-flushed face as I
+tread homeward&mdash;free me from your ties and let me be a peaceful outlaw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and, clambering down a crag, I
+find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap
+forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad
+blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to the sea! I descend over its margin
+and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow. That
+far-resounding roar is Ocean&rsquo;s voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a
+blessing along with it. Now let us pace together&mdash;the reader&rsquo;s fancy
+arm in arm with mine&mdash;this noble beach, which extends a mile or more from
+that craggy promontory to yonder rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea; in
+the rear, a precipitous bank the grassy verge of which is breaking away year
+after year, and flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below. The
+beach itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with hardly any
+pebbles intermixed. Near the water&rsquo;s edge there is a wet margin which
+glistens brightly in the sunshine and reflects objects like a mirror, and as we
+tread along the glistening border a dry spot flashes around each footstep, but
+grows moist again as we lift our feet. In some spots the sand receives a
+complete impression of the sole, square toe and all; elsewhere it is of such
+marble firmness that we must stamp heavily to leave a print even of the
+iron-shod heel. Along the whole of this extensive beach gambols the surf-wave.
+Now it makes a feint of dashing onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek
+murmur and does but kiss the strand; now, after many such abortive efforts, it
+rears itself up in an unbroken line, heightening as it advances, without a
+speck of foam on its green crest. With how fierce a roar it flings itself
+forward and rushes far up the beach!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was startled,
+as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human life was within the
+magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the remote distance of the beach,
+appearing like sea-nymphs, or some airier things such as might tread upon the
+feathery spray, was a group of girls. Hardly had I beheld them, when they
+passed into the shadow of the rocks and vanished. To comfort myself&mdash;for
+truly I would fain have gazed a while longer&mdash;I made acquaintance with a
+flock of beach-birds. These little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by
+about a stone&rsquo;s-throw along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food upon
+its margin. Yet, with a philosophy which mankind would do well to imitate, they
+drew a continual pleasure from their toil for a subsistence. The sea was each
+little bird&rsquo;s great playmate. They chased it downward as it swept back,
+and again ran up swiftly before the impending wave, which sometimes overtook
+them and bore them off their feet. But they floated as lightly as one of their
+own feathers on the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings they seemed to
+rest on the evanescent spray. Their images&mdash;long-legged little figures
+with gray backs and snowy bosoms&mdash;were seen as distinctly as the realities
+in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a score or two
+of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf-wave;
+and thus they bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant fantasies,
+till at its extremity they took wing over the ocean and were gone. After
+forming a friendship with these small surf-spirits, it is really worth a sigh
+to find no memorial of them save their multitudinous little tracks in the sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we have paced the length of the beach, it is pleasant and not unprofitable
+to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and occupation of the mind
+during the former passage. Our tracks, being all discernible, will guide us
+with an observing consciousness through every unconscious wandering of thought
+and fancy. Here we followed the surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the
+sea seemed loth to relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown
+leaf, and trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
+live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer monster.
+Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon the surface of the
+water. Here we wet our feet while examining a jelly-fish which the waves,
+having just tossed it up, now sought to snatch away again. Here we trod along
+the brink of a fresh-water brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming
+shallower and more shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in
+the effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary appears to
+have bewildered us, for our tracks go round and round and are confusedly
+intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the level beach. And here
+amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost the only stone that breaks the
+surface of the sand, and were lost in an unlooked-for and overpowering
+conception of the majesty and awfulness of the great deep. Thus by tracking our
+footprints in the sand we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal
+a glance upon it when it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always
+make us wiser.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With your staff
+you may write verses&mdash;love-verses if they please you best&mdash;and
+consecrate them with a woman&rsquo;s name. Here, too, may be inscribed
+thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the heart&rsquo;s secret
+places, which you would not pour upon the sand without the certainty that
+almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea will wash them out. Stir not
+hence till the record be effaced. Now (for there is room enough on your canvas)
+draw huge faces&mdash;huge as that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands&mdash;and
+fit them with bodies of corresponding immensity and legs which might stride
+halfway to yonder island. Child&rsquo;s-play becomes magnificent on so grand a
+scale. But, after all, the most fascinating employment is simply to write your
+name in the sand. Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides may barely
+measure them, and three for the long strokes; cut deep, that the record may be
+permanent. Statesmen and warriors and poets have spent their strength in no
+better cause than this. Is it accomplished? Return, then, in an hour or two,
+and seek for this mighty record of a name. The sea will have swept over it,
+even as time rolls its effacing waves over the names of statesmen and warriors
+and poets. Hark! the surf-wave laughs at you.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing from the beach, I begin to clamber over the crags, making my difficult
+way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the assaults of a
+fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of attitude. Some of them have
+their feet in the foam and are shagged halfway upward with seaweed; some have
+been hollowed almost into caverns by the unwearied toil of the sea, which can
+afford to spend centuries in wearing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble.
+One huge rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a giant&rsquo;s
+tombstone, on which the veins resemble inscriptions, but in an unknown tongue.
+We will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antediluvian race, or else
+that Nature&rsquo;s own hand has here recorded a mystery which, could I read
+her language, would make mankind the wiser and the happier. How many a thing
+has troubled me with that same idea! Pass on and leave it unexplained. Here is
+a narrow avenue which might seem to have been hewn through the very heart of an
+enormous crag, affording passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth,
+filling it with tumultuous foam and then leaving its floor of black pebbles
+bare and glistening. In this chasm there was once an intersecting vein of
+softer stone, which the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the granite
+walls remain entire on either side. How sharply and with what harsh clamor does
+the sea rake back the pebbles as it momentarily withdraws into its own depths!
+At intervals the floor of the chasm is left nearly dry, but anon, at the
+outlet, two or three great waves are seen struggling to get in at once; two hit
+the walls athwart, while one rushes straight through, and all three thunder as
+if with rage and triumph. They heap the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and
+spray. While watching this scene I can never rid myself of the idea that a
+monster endowed with life and fierce energy is striving to burst his way
+through the narrow pass. And what a contrast to look through the stormy chasm
+and catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many interesting discoveries may be made among these broken cliffs. Once, for
+example, I found a dead seal which a recent tempest had tossed into the nook of
+the rocks, where his shaggy carcase lay rolled in a heap of eel-grass as if the
+sea-monster sought to hide himself from my eye. Another time a shark seemed on
+the point of leaping from the surf to swallow me, nor did I wholly without
+dread approach near enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his
+own death from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a
+bird&mdash;a large gray bird&mdash;but whether a loon or a wild goose or the
+identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology to decide.
+It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its head beside its wing,
+that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest it should suddenly spread
+its wings skyward. But the sea-bird would soar among the clouds no more, nor
+ride upon its native waves; so I drew near and pulled out one of its mottled
+tail-feathers for a remembrance. Another day I discovered an immense bone
+wedged into a chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a
+scymitar, bejewelled with barnacles and small shellfish and partly covered with
+a growth of seaweed. Some leviathan of former ages had used this ponderous mass
+as a jaw-bone. Curiosities of a minuter order may be observed in a deep
+reservoir which is replenished with water at every tide, but becomes a lake
+among the crags save when the sea is at its height. At the bottom of this rocky
+basin grow marine plants, some of which tower high beneath the water and cast a
+shadow in the sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro and hide themselves among
+the seaweed; there is also a solitary crab who appears to lead the life of a
+hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of the place, and likewise
+several five-fingers; for I know no other name than that which children give
+them. If your imagination be at all accustomed to such freaks, you may look
+down into the depths of this pool and fancy it the mysterious depth of ocean.
+But where are the hulks and scattered timbers of sunken ships? where the
+treasures that old Ocean hoards? where the corroded cannon? where the corpses
+and skeletons of seamen who went down in storm and battle?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the day of my last ramble&mdash;it was a September day, yet as warm as
+summer&mdash;what should I behold as I approached the above-described basin but
+three girls sitting on its margin and&mdash;yes, it is veritably
+so&mdash;laving their snowy feet in the sunny water? These, these are the warm
+realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on the beach.
+Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with their feet! They have
+not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock and steal away again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this
+encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant sensation. I
+know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet, glancing at them so
+briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with the ideal beings of my mind.
+It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down from some high crag and watch a group of
+children gathering pebbles and pearly shells and playing with the surf as with
+old Ocean&rsquo;s hoary beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see
+yonder boat at anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and
+sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew&mdash;four gentlemen in
+roundabout jackets&mdash;are busy with their fishing-lines. But with an inward
+antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any meditative
+stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his sauntering step, his shy
+demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily over the
+rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has given me a right
+to call my own. I would do battle for it even with the churl that should
+produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings melted into its rocky walls and
+sandy floor and made them a portion of myself? It is a recess in the line of
+cliffs, walled round by a rough, high precipice which almost encircles and
+shuts in a little space of sand. In front the sea appears as between the
+pillars of a portal; in the rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with
+earth which gives nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to
+trees that grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for
+footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir trees, but oaks hang
+their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on the beach, and shed
+their withering foliage upon the waves. At this autumnal season the precipice
+is decked with variegated splendor. Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the
+summit downward; tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their
+reddened leaves and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every
+glance I detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the
+stern gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little
+cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure.
+This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the feast? A few biscuits made
+savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft of samphire gathered from the
+beach, and an apple for the dessert. By this time the little rill has filled
+its reservoir again, and as I quaff it I thank God more heartily than for a
+civic banquet that he gives me the healthful appetite to make a feast of bread
+and water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the sand and, basking in the
+sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this my hermitage
+have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes fancy that they have ears
+to hear them and a soul to sympathize. There is a magic in this spot. Dreams
+haunt its precincts and flit around me in broad sunlight, nor require that
+sleep shall blindfold me to real objects ere these be visible. Here can I frame
+a story of two lovers, and make their shadows live before me and be mirrored in
+the tranquil water as they tread along the sand, leaving no footprints. Here,
+should I will it, I can summon up a single shade and be myself her
+lover.&mdash;Yes, dreamer, but your lonely heart will be the colder for such
+fancies.&mdash;Sometimes, too, the Past comes back, and finds me here, and in
+her train come faces which were gladsome when I knew them, yet seem not
+gladsome now. Would that my hiding-place were lonelier, so that the Past might
+not find me!&mdash;Get ye all gone, old friends, and let me listen to the
+murmur of the sea&mdash;a melancholy voice, but less sad than yours. Of what
+mysteries is it telling? Of sunken ships and whereabouts they lie? Of islands
+afar and undiscovered whose tawny children are unconscious of other islands and
+of continents, and deem the stars of heaven their nearest neighbors? Nothing of
+all this. What, then? Has it talked for so many ages and meant nothing all the
+while? No; for those ages find utterance in the sea&rsquo;s unchanging voice,
+and warn the listener to withdraw his interest from mortal vicissitudes and let
+the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul. This is wisdom, and therefore
+will I spend the next half-hour in shaping little boats of driftwood and
+launching them on voyages across the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a
+sail. If the voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to
+build ships of five hundred tons and launch them forth upon the main, bound to
+&ldquo;Far Cathay.&rdquo; Yet how would the merchant sneer at me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a thousand
+arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock mid-deep in the
+surf&mdash;see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars and
+foams,&mdash;let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise my
+oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and got the
+victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the gentleman in seaweed has
+nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable roaring. His voice, indeed, will
+be heard a long while after mine is hushed. Once more I shout and the cliffs
+reverberate the sound. Oh what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary
+that he may lift his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a
+listener!&mdash;But hush! Be silent, my good friend! Whence comes that stifled
+laughter? It was musical, but how should there be such music in my solitude?
+Looking upward, I catch a glimpse of three faces peeping from the summit of the
+cliff like angels between me and their native sky.&mdash;Ah, fair girls! you
+may make yourself merry at my eloquence, but it was my turn to smile when I saw
+your white feet in the pool. Let us keep each other&rsquo;s secrets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the sand
+just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will come and haunt me
+if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of these gray rocks. This is a
+dismal place in some moods of the mind. Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and
+pause a moment on the brink gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep
+where we have been what few can be&mdash;sufficient to our own pastime. Yes,
+say the word outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks
+the recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has been!
+There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head upon the sea. I
+will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my hands in triumph, and see my
+shadow clapping its unreal hands and claiming the triumph for itself. What a
+simpleton must I have been all day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my
+fooleries!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time&mdash;it is time; for
+as the sun sinks over the western wave the sea grows melancholy and the surf
+has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray and not of earth in their
+remoteness amid the desolate waste. My spirit wanders forth afar, but finds no
+resting-place and comes shivering back. It is time that I were hence. But
+grudge me not the day that has been spent in seclusion which yet was not
+solitude, since the great sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds
+my friends, and the wind has told me his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted
+around me in my hermitage. Such companionship works an effect upon a
+man&rsquo;s character as if he had been admitted to the society of creatures
+that are not mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets, the
+influence of this day will still be felt; so that I shall walk among men kindly
+and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but yet shall not melt into the
+indistinguishable mass of humankind. I shall think my own thoughts and feel my
+own emotions and possess my individuality unviolated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it is good at the eve of such a day to feel and know that there are men and
+women in the world. That feeling and that knowledge are mine at this moment,
+for on the shore, far below me, the fishing-party have landed from their skiff
+and are cooking their scaly prey by a fire of driftwood kindled in the angle of
+two rude rocks. The three visionary girls are likewise there. In the deepening
+twilight, while the surf is dashing near their hearth, the ruddy gleam of the
+fire throws a strange air of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is with
+pebbles and seaweed and exposed to the &ldquo;melancholy main.&rdquo; Moreover,
+as the smoke climbs up the precipice, it brings with it a savory smell from a
+pan of fried fish and a black kettle of chowder, and reminds me that my dinner
+was nothing but bread and water and a tuft of samphire and an apple. Methinks
+the party might find room for another guest at that flat rock which serves them
+for a table; and if spoons be scarce, I could pick up a clam-shell on the
+beach. They see me now; and&mdash;the blessing of a hungry man upon
+him!&mdash;one of them sends up a hospitable shout: &ldquo;Halloo, Sir
+Solitary! Come down and sup with us!&rdquo; The ladies wave their
+handkerchiefs. Can I decline? No; and be it owned, after all my solitary joys,
+that this is the sweetest moment of a day by the seashore.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap39"></a>
+EDWARD FANE&rsquo;S ROSEBUD</h2>
+
+<p>
+There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy than, while gazing at a
+figure of melancholy age, to recreate its youth, and without entirely
+obliterating the identity of form and features to restore those graces which
+Time has snatched away. Some old people&mdash;especially women&mdash;so
+age-worn and woeful are they, seem never to have been young and gay. It is
+easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent into the world as
+withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with sympathies only for pain and
+grief, to watch at death-beds and weep at funerals. Even the sable garments of
+their widowhood appear essential to their existence; all their attributes
+combine to render them darksome shadows creeping strangely amid the sunshine of
+human life. Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful
+creatures and set Fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken
+the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color, and repair the
+shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy maiden shall be seen in the old
+matron&rsquo;s elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let the years roll
+back again, each sadder than the last, and the whole weight of age and sorrow
+settle down upon the youthful figure. Wrinkles and furrows, the handwriting of
+Time, may thus be deciphered and found to contain deep lessons of thought and
+feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my much-respected
+friend the Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute who has breathed the
+atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying-breaths these forty years. See! she sits
+cowering over her lonesome hearth with her gown and upper petticoat drawn
+upward, gathering thriftily into her person the whole warmth of the fire which
+now at nightfall begins to dissipate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The
+blaze quivers capriciously in front, alternately glimmering into the deepest
+chasms of her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar the
+outlines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a teaspoon in her
+right hand with which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her left, whence
+steams a vapory fragrance abhorred of temperance societies. Now she sips, now
+stirs, now sips again. Her sad old heart has need to be revived by the rich
+infusion of Geneva which is mixed half and half with hot water in the tumbler.
+All day long she has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her
+home only when the spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too.
+But now are her melancholy meditations cheered and her torpid blood warmed and
+her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous years by a draught from
+the true fountain of youth in a case-bottle. It is strange that men should deem
+that fount a fable, when its liquor fills more bottles than the
+Congress-water.&mdash;Sip it again, good nurse, and see whether a second
+draught will not take off another score of years, and perhaps ten more, and
+show us in your high-backed chair the blooming damsel who plighted troths with
+Edward Fane.&mdash;Get you gone, Age and Widowhood!&mdash;Come back, unwedded
+Youth!&mdash;But, alas! the charm will not work. In spite of Fancy&rsquo;s most
+potent spell, I can see only an old dame cowering over the fire, a picture of
+decay and desolation, while the November blast roars at her in the chimney and
+fitful showers rush suddenly against the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton&mdash;such was the pretty maiden-name of
+Nurse Toothaker&mdash;possessed beauty that would have gladdened this dim and
+dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her the heart of Edward Fane, who
+has since made so great a figure in the world and is now a grand old gentleman
+with powdered hair and as gouty as a lord. These early lovers thought to have
+walked hand in hand through life. They had wept together for Edward&rsquo;s
+little sister Mary, whom Rose tended in her sickness&mdash;partly because she
+was the sweetest child that ever lived or died, but more for love of him. She
+was but three years old. Being such an infant, Death could not embody his
+terrors in her little corpse; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead child&rsquo;s
+brow, though chill, as she curled the silken hair around it, nor to take her
+tiny hand and clasp a flower within its fingers. Afterward, when she looked
+through the pane of glass in the coffin-lid and beheld Mary&rsquo;s face, it
+seemed not so much like death or life as like a wax-work wrought into the
+perfect image of a child asleep and dreaming of its mother&rsquo;s smile. Rose
+thought her too fair a thing to be hidden in the grave, and wondered that an
+angel did not snatch up little Mary&rsquo;s coffin and bear the slumbering babe
+to heaven and bid her wake immortal. But when the sods were laid on little
+Mary, the heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy that in
+grasping the child&rsquo;s cold fingers her virgin hand had exchanged a first
+greeting with mortality and could never lose the earthy taint. How many a
+greeting since! But as yet she was a fair young girl with the dewdrops of fresh
+feeling in her bosom, and, instead of &ldquo;Rose&rdquo;&mdash;which seemed too
+mature a name for her half-opened beauty&mdash;her lover called her
+&ldquo;Rosebud.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward Fane. His mother was a rich
+and haughty dame with all the aristocratic prejudices of colonial times. She
+scorned Rose Grafton&rsquo;s humble parentage and caused her son to break his
+faith, though, had she let him choose, he would have prized his Rosebud above
+the richest diamond. The lovers parted, and have seldom met again. Both may
+have visited the same mansions, but not at the same time, for one was bidden to
+the festal hall and the other to the sick-chamber; he was the guest of Pleasure
+and Prosperity, and she of Anguish. Rose, after their separation, was long
+secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with the
+revengeful hope of breaking her false lover&rsquo;s heart. She went to her
+bridegroom&rsquo;s arms with bitterer tears, they say, than young girls ought
+to shed at the threshold of the bridal-chamber. Yet, though her husband&rsquo;s
+head was getting gray and his heart had been chilled with an autumnal frost,
+Rose soon began to love him, and wondered at her own conjugal affection. He was
+all she had to love; there were no children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a year or two poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome infirmity
+which settled in his joints and made him weaker than a child. He crept forth
+about his business, and came home at dinner-time and eventide, not with the
+manly tread that gladdens a wife&rsquo;s heart, but slowly, feebly, jotting
+down each dull footstep with a melancholy dub of his staff. We must pardon his
+pretty wife if she sometimes blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard
+him coming, looked for the appearance of some old, old man, but he dragged his
+nerveless limbs into the parlor&mdash;and there was Mr. Toothaker! The disease
+increasing, he never went into the sunshine save with a staff in his right hand
+and his left on his wife&rsquo;s shoulder, bearing heavily downward like a dead
+man&rsquo;s hand. Thus, a slender woman still looking maiden-like, she
+supported his tall, broad-chested frame along the pathway of their little
+garden, and plucked the roses for her gray-haired husband, and spoke soothingly
+as to an infant. His mind was palsied with his body; its utmost energy was
+peevishness. In a few months more she helped him up the staircase with a pause
+at every step, and a longer one upon the landing-place, and a heavy glance
+behind as he crossed the threshold of his chamber. He knew, poor man! that the
+precincts of those four walls would thenceforth be his world&mdash;his world,
+his home, his tomb, at once a dwelling-and a burial-place&mdash;till he were
+borne to a darker and a narrower one. But Rose was with him in the tomb. He
+leaned upon her in his daily passage from the bed to the chair by the fireside,
+and back again from the weary chair to the joyless bed&mdash;his bed and hers,
+their marriage-bed&mdash;till even this short journey ceased and his head lay
+all day upon the pillow and hers all night beside it. How long poor Mr.
+Toothaker was kept in misery! Death seemed to draw near the door, and often to
+lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into the chamber,
+nodding to Rose and pointing at her husband, but still delayed to enter.
+&ldquo;This bedridden wretch cannot escape me,&rdquo; quoth Death. &ldquo;I
+will go forth and run a race with the swift and fight a battle with the strong,
+and come back for Toothaker at my leisure.&rdquo; Oh, when the deliverer came
+so near, in the dull anguish of her worn-out sympathies did she never long to
+cry, &ldquo;Death, come in&rdquo;?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But no; we have no right to ascribe such a wish to our friend Rose. She never
+failed in a wife&rsquo;s duty to her poor sick husband. She murmured not though
+a glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her as him, nor answered peevishly
+though his complaining accents roused her from sweetest dream only to share his
+wretchedness. He knew her faith, yet nourished a cankered jealousy; and when
+the slow disease had chilled all his heart save one lukewarm spot which
+Death&rsquo;s frozen fingers were searching for, his last words were,
+&ldquo;What would my Rose have done for her first love, if she has been so true
+and kind to a sick old man like me?&rdquo; And then his poor soul crept away
+and left the body lifeless, though hardly more so than for years before, and
+Rose a widow, though in truth it was the wedding-night that widowed her. She
+felt glad, it must be owned, when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because his corpse
+had retained such a likeness to the man half alive that she hearkened for the
+sad murmur of his voice bidding her shift his pillow. But all through the next
+winter, though the grave had held him many a month, she fancied him calling
+from that cold bed, &ldquo;Rose, Rose! Come put a blanket on my feet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So now the Rosebud was the widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come early, and,
+tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled. She was still
+fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a widow&rsquo;s cheerful gravity
+she might have won a widower, stealing into his heart in the very guise of his
+dead wife. But the widow Toothaker had no such projects. By her watchings and
+continual cares her heart had become knit to her first husband with a constancy
+which changed its very nature and made her love him for his infirmities, and
+infirmity for his sake. When the palsied old man was gone, even her early lover
+could not have supplied his place. She had dwelt in a sick-chamber and been the
+companion of a half-dead wretch till she could scarcely breathe in a free air
+and felt ill at ease with the healthy and the happy. She missed the fragrance
+of the doctor&rsquo;s stuff. She walked the chamber with a noiseless footfall.
+If visitors came in, she spoke in soft and soothing accents, and was startled
+and shocked by their loud voices. Often in the lonesome evening she looked
+timorously from the fireside to the bed, with almost a hope of recognizing a
+ghastly face upon the pillow. Then went her thoughts sadly to her
+husband&rsquo;s grave. If one impatient throb had wronged him in his lifetime,
+if she had secretly repined because her buoyant youth was imprisoned with his
+torpid age, if ever while slumbering beside him a treacherous dream had
+admitted another into her heart,&mdash;yet the sick man had been preparing a
+revenge which the dead now claimed. On his painful pillow he had cast a spell
+around her; his groans and misery had proved more captivating charms than
+gayety and youthful grace; in his semblance Disease itself had won the Rosebud
+for a bride, nor could his death dissolve the nuptials. By that indissoluble
+bond she had gained a home in every sick-chamber, and nowhere else; there were
+her brethren and sisters; thither her husband summoned her with that voice
+which had seemed to issue from the grave of Toothaker. At length she recognized
+her destiny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the widow; now we see her in a
+separate and insulated character: she was in all her attributes Nurse
+Toothaker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled lips, could make
+known her experience in that capacity. What a history might she record of the
+great sicknesses in which she has gone hand in hand with the exterminating
+angel! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every
+house along the street. She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a
+whole household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to
+follow her last loved one. Where would be Death&rsquo;s triumph if none lived
+to weep? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken out as if
+spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands with
+rich silks and other merchandise, the costliest portion of the cargo. And once,
+she recollects, the people died of what was considered a new pestilence, till
+the doctors traced it to the ancient grave of a young girl who thus caused many
+deaths a hundred years after her own burial. Strange that such black mischief
+should lurk in a maiden&rsquo;s grave! She loves to tell how strong men fight
+with fiery fevers, utterly refusing to give up their breath, and how
+consumptive virgins fade out of the world, scarcely reluctant, as if their
+lovers were wooing them to a far country.&mdash;Tell us, thou fearful woman;
+tell us the death-secrets. Fain would I search out the meaning of words faintly
+gasped with intermingled sobs and broken sentences half-audibly spoken between
+earth and the judgment-seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An awful woman! She is the patron-saint of young physicians and the
+bosom-friend of old ones. In the mansions where she enters the inmates provide
+themselves black garments; the coffin-maker follows her, and the bell tolls as
+she comes away from the threshold. Death himself has met her at so many a
+bedside that he puts forth his bony hand to greet Nurse Toothaker. She is an
+awful woman. And oh, is it conceivable that this handmaid of human infirmity
+and affliction&mdash;so darkly stained, so thoroughly imbued with all that is
+saddest in the doom of mortals&mdash;can ever again be bright and gladsome even
+though bathed in the sunshine of eternity? By her long communion with woe has
+she not forfeited her inheritance of immortal joy? Does any germ of bliss
+survive within her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hark! an eager knocking st Nurse Toothaker&rsquo;s door. She starts from her
+drowsy reverie, sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon, and lights a lamp at
+the dim embers of the fire. &ldquo;Rap, rap, rap!&rdquo; again, and she hurries
+adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can be at death&rsquo;s
+door now, since there is such an earnest messenger at Nurse Toothaker&rsquo;s.
+Again the peal resounds just as her hand is on the lock. &ldquo;Be quick, Nurse
+Toothaker!&rdquo; cries a man on the doorstep. &ldquo;Old General Fane is taken
+with the gout in his stomach and has sent for you to watch by his death-bed.
+Make haste, for there is no time to lose.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fane! Edward
+Fane! And has he sent for me at last? I am ready. I will get on my cloak and
+begone. So,&rdquo; adds the sable-gowned, ashen-visaged, funereal old figure,
+&ldquo;Edward Fane remembers his Rosebud.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss within her. Her long-hoarded
+constancy, her memory of the bliss that was remaining amid the gloom of her
+after-life like a sweet-smelling flower in a coffin, is a symbol that all may
+be renewed. In some happier clime the Rosebud may revive again with all the
+dewdrops in its bosom.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap40"></a>
+THE THREEFOLD DESTINY</h2>
+
+<h4>A FA&Euml;RY LEGEND</h4>
+
+<p>
+I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far as my
+own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in which the spirit
+and mechanism of the fa&euml;ry legend should be combined with the characters
+and manners of familiar life. In the little tale which follows a subdued tinge
+of the wild and wonderful is thrown over a sketch of New England personages and
+scenery, yet, it is hoped, without entirely obliterating the sober hues of
+nature. Rather than a story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered
+as an allegory such as the writers of the last century would have expressed in
+the shape of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to give a more
+lifelike warmth than could be infused into those fanciful productions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the twilight of a summer eve a tall dark figure over which long and remote
+travel had thrown an outlandish aspect was entering a village not in
+&ldquo;fa&euml;ry londe,&rdquo; but within our own familiar boundaries. The
+staff on which this traveller leaned had been his companion from the spot where
+it grew in the jungles of Hindostan; the hat that overshadowed his sombre brow,
+had shielded him from the suns of Spain; but his cheek had been blackened by
+the red-hot wind of an Arabian desert and had felt the frozen breath of an
+Arctic region. Long sojourning amid wild and dangerous men, he still wore
+beneath his vest the ataghan which he had once struck into the throat of a
+Turkish robber. In every foreign clime he had lost something of his New England
+characteristics, and perhaps from every people he had unconsciously borrowed a
+new peculiarity; so that when the world-wanderer again trod the street of his
+native village it is no wonder that he passed unrecognized, though exciting the
+gaze and curiosity of all. Yet, as his arm casually touched that of a young
+woman who was wending her way to an evening lecture, she started and almost
+uttered a cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ralph Cranfield!&rdquo; was the name that she half articulated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can that be my old playmate Faith Egerton?&rdquo; thought the traveller,
+looking round at her figure, but without pausing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ralph Cranfield from his youth upward had felt himself marked out for a high
+destiny. He had imbibed the idea&mdash;we say not whether it were revealed to
+him by witchcraft or in a dream of prophecy, or that his brooding fancy had
+palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of a sybil, but he had imbibed
+the idea, and held it firmest among his articles of faith&mdash;that three
+marvellous events of his life were to be confirmed to him by three signs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his youthful
+imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the maid who alone of
+all the maids on earth could make him happy by her love. He was to roam around
+the world till he should meet a beautiful woman wearing on her bosom a jewel in
+the shape of a heart&mdash;whether of pearl or ruby or emerald or carbuncle or
+a changeful opal, or perhaps a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared,
+so long as it were a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely
+stranger he was bound to address her thus: &ldquo;Maiden, I have brought you a
+heavy heart. May I rest its weight on you?&rdquo; And if she were his fated
+bride&mdash;if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here below
+which all eternity should only bind more closely&mdash;she would reply, with
+her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, &ldquo;This token which I have worn so
+long is the assurance that you may.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a mighty
+treasure hidden somewhere in the earth of which the burial-place would be
+revealed to none but him. When his feet should press upon the mysterious spot,
+there would be a hand before him pointing downward&mdash;whether carved of
+marble or hewn in gigantic dimensions on the side of a rocky precipice, or
+perchance a hand of flame in empty air, he could not tell, but at least he
+would discern a hand, the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the
+Latin word &ldquo;<i>Effode</i>&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Dig!&rdquo; And, digging
+thereabouts, the gold in coin or ingots, the precious stones, or of whatever
+else the treasure might consist, would be certain to reward his toil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The third and last of the miraculous events in the life of this high-destined
+man was to be the attainment of extensive influence and sway over his
+fellow-creatures. Whether he were to be a king and founder of a hereditary
+throne, or the victorious leader of a people contending for their freedom, or
+the apostle of a purified and regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show.
+As messengers of the sign by which Ralph Cranfield might recognize the summons,
+three venerable men were to claim audience of him. The chief among them&mdash;a
+dignified and majestic person arrayed, it may be supposed, in the flowing
+garments of an ancient sage&mdash;would be the bearer of a wand or
+prophet&rsquo;s rod. With this wand or rod or staff the venerable sage would
+trace a certain figure in the air, and then proceed to make known his
+Heaven-instructed message, which, if obeyed, must lead to glorious results.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his imaginative youth Ralph
+Cranfield had set forth to seek the maid, the treasure, and the venerable sage
+with his gift of extended empire. And had he found them? Alas! it was not with
+the aspect of a triumphant man who had achieved a nobler destiny than all his
+fellows, but rather with the gloom of one struggling against peculiar and
+continual adversity, that he now passed homeward to his mother&rsquo;s cottage.
+He had come back, but only for a time, to lay aside the pilgrim&rsquo;s staff,
+trusting that his weary manhood would regain somewhat of the elasticity of
+youth in the spot where his threefold fate had been foreshown him. There had
+been few changes in the village, for it was not one of those thriving places
+where a year&rsquo;s prosperity makes more than the havoc of a century&rsquo;s
+decay, but, like a gray hair in a young man&rsquo;s head, an antiquated little
+town full of old maids and aged elms and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to be
+the changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had a more majestic spread, the
+weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss, and
+doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the burial-ground inscribed with
+names that had once been familiar in the village street; yet, summing up all
+the mischief that ten years had wrought, it seemed scarcely more than if Ralph
+Cranfield had gone forth that very morning and dreamed a day-dream till the
+twilight, and then turned back again. But his heart grew cold because the
+village did not remember him as he remembered the village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is the change,&rdquo; sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast.
+&ldquo;Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering and
+heavy with disappointed hopes? The youth returns not who went forth so
+joyously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother&rsquo;s gate, in front of the small
+house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept herself
+comfortable during her son&rsquo;s long absence. Admitting himself within the
+enclosure, he leaned against a great old tree, trifling with his own impatience
+as people often do in those intervals when years are summed into a moment. He
+took a minute survey of the dwelling&mdash;its windows brightened with the
+sky-gleam, its doorway with the half of a millstone for a step, and the
+faintly-traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his
+childhood&rsquo;s friend&mdash;the old tree against which he leaned&mdash;and,
+glancing his eye down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy
+smile. It was a half-obliterated inscription&mdash;the Latin word
+&ldquo;<i>Effode</i>&rdquo;&mdash;which he remembered to have carved in the
+bark of the tree with a whole day&rsquo;s toil when he had first begun to muse
+about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted a rather singular coincidence
+that the bark just above the inscription had put forth an excrescence shaped
+not unlike a hand, with the forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate.
+Such, at least, was its appearance in the dusky light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, a credulous man,&rdquo; said Ralph Cranfield, carelessly, to
+himself, &ldquo;might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the
+world lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother&rsquo;s dwelling.
+That would be a jest indeed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More he thought not about the matter, for now the door was opened and an
+elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to discover who
+it might be that had intruded on her premises and was standing in the shadow of
+her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield&rsquo;s mother. Pass we over their greeting,
+and leave the one to her joy and the other to his rest&mdash;if quiet rest he
+found.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow, for his sleep and his
+wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was rekindled with
+which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold mystery of his fate. The
+crowd of his early visions seemed to have awaited him beneath his
+mother&rsquo;s roof and thronged riotously around to welcome his return. In the
+well-remembered chamber, on the pillow where his infancy had slumbered, he had
+passed a wilder night than ever in an Arab tent or when he had reposed his head
+in the ghastly shades of a haunted forest. A shadowy maid had stolen to his
+bedside and laid her finger on the scintillating heart; a hand of flame had
+glowed amid the darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the earth; a
+hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand and beckoned the dreamer onward to a
+chair of state. The same phantoms, though fainter in the daylight, still
+flitted about the cottage and mingled among the crowd of familiar faces that
+were drawn thither by the news of Ralph Cranfield&rsquo;s return to bid him
+welcome for his mother&rsquo;s sake. There they found him, a tall, dark,
+stately man of foreign aspect, courteous in demeanor and mild of speech, yet
+with an abstracted eye which seemed often to snatch a glance at the invisible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house full of joy that
+she again had somebody to love and be careful of, and for whom she might vex
+and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily life. It was nearly noon
+when she looked forth from the door and descried three personages of note
+coming along the street through the hot sunshine and the masses of elm-tree
+shade. At length they reached her gate and undid the latch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See, Ralph!&rdquo; exclaimed she, with maternal pride; &ldquo;here is
+Squire Hawkwood and the two other selectmen coming on purpose to see you. Now,
+do tell them a good long story about what you have seen in foreign
+parts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood, was a very pompous but
+excellent old gentleman, the head and prime-mover in all the affairs of the
+village, and universally acknowledged to be one of the sagest men on earth. He
+wore, according to a fashion even then becoming antiquated, a three-cornered
+hat, and carried a silver-headed cane the use of which seemed to be rather for
+flourishing in the air than for assisting the progress of his legs. His two
+companions were elderly and respectable yeomen who, retaining an
+ante-Revolutionary reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in
+the squire&rsquo;s rear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they approached along the pathway Ralph Cranfield sat in an oaken
+elbow-chair half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors and enveloping
+their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded his mental world.
+&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; thought he, smiling at the conceit&mdash;&ldquo;here come
+three elderly personages, and the first of the three is a venerable sage with a
+staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of my fate?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered, Ralph rose from his seat and
+advanced a few steps to receive them, and his stately figure and dark
+countenance as he bent courteously toward his guests had a natural dignity
+contrasting well with the bustling importance of the squire. The old gentleman,
+according to invariable custom, gave an elaborate preliminary flourish with his
+cane in the air, then removed his three-cornered hat in order to wipe his brow,
+and finally proceeded to make known his errand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My colleagues and myself,&rdquo; began the squire, &ldquo;are burdened
+with momentous duties, being jointly selectmen of this village. Our minds for
+the space of three days past have been laboriously bent on the selection of a
+suitable person to fill a most important office and take upon himself a charge
+and rule which, wisely considered, may be ranked no lower than those of kings
+and potentates. And whereas you, our native townsman, are of good natural
+intellect and well cultivated by foreign travel, and that certain vagaries and
+fantasies of your youth are doubtless long ago corrected,&mdash;taking all
+these matters, I say, into due consideration, we are of opinion that Providence
+hath sent you hither at this juncture for our very purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this harangue Cranfield gazed fixedly at the speaker, as if he beheld
+something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little figure, and as if the
+squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient sage instead of a
+square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet breeches and silk stockings. Nor
+was his wonder without sufficient cause, for the flourish of the squire&rsquo;s
+staff, marvellous to relate, had described precisely the signal in the air
+which was to ratify the message of the prophetic sage whom Cranfield had sought
+around the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what,&rdquo; inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor in his
+voice&mdash;&ldquo;what may this office be which is to equal me with kings and
+potentates?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No less than instructor of our village school,&rdquo; answered Squire
+Hawkwood, &ldquo;the office being now vacant by the death of the venerable
+Master Whitaker after a fifty years&rsquo; incumbency.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will consider of your proposal,&rdquo; replied Ralph Cranfield,
+hurriedly, &ldquo;and will make known my decision within three days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a few more words the village dignitary and his companions took their
+leave. But to Cranfield&rsquo;s fancy their images were still present, and
+became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures which had first
+appeared to him in a dream, and afterward had shown themselves in his waking
+moments, assuming homely aspects among familiar things. His mind dwelt upon the
+features of the squire till they grew confused with those of the visionary sage
+and one appeared but the shadow of the other. The same visage, he now thought,
+had looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops; the same form had
+beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure had
+mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great Geyser. At
+every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the dreamy messenger of
+destiny in this pompous, bustling, self-important, little-great man of the
+village. Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat all day in the cottage, scarcely
+hearing and vaguely answering his mother&rsquo;s thousand questions about his
+travels and adventures. At sunset he roused himself to take a stroll, and,
+passing the aged elm tree, his eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand
+pointing downward at the half-obliterated inscription.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Cranfield walked down the street of the village the level sunbeams threw his
+shadow far before him, and he fancied that, as his shadow walked among distant
+objects, so had there been a presentiment stalking in advance of him throughout
+his life. And when he drew near each object over which his tall shadow had
+preceded him, still it proved to be one of the familiar recollections of his
+infancy and youth. Every crook in the pathway was remembered. Even the more
+transitory characteristics of the scene were the same as in by-gone days. A
+company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and refreshed him with
+their fragrant breath. &ldquo;It is sweeter,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;than the
+perfume which was wafted to our ship from the Spice Islands.&rdquo; The round
+little figure of a child rolled from a doorway and lay laughing almost beneath
+Cranfield&rsquo;s feet. The dark and stately man stooped down, and, lifting the
+infant, restored him to his mother&rsquo;s arms. &ldquo;The children,&rdquo;
+said he to himself, and sighed and smiled&mdash;&ldquo;the children are to be
+my charge.&rdquo; And while a flow of natural feeling gushed like a well-spring
+in his heart he came to a dwelling which he could nowise forbear to enter. A
+sweet voice which seemed to come from a deep and tender soul was warbling a
+plaintive little air within. He bent his head and passed through the lowly
+door. As his foot sounded upon the threshold a young woman advanced from the
+dusky interior of the house, at first hastily, and then with a more uncertain
+step, till they met face to face. There was a singular contrast in their two
+figures&mdash;he dark and picturesque, one who had battled with the world, whom
+all suns had shone upon and whom all winds had blown on a varied course; she
+neat, comely and quiet&mdash;quiet even in her agitation&mdash;as if all her
+emotions had been subdued to the peaceful tenor of her life. Yet their faces,
+all unlike as they were, had an expression that seemed not so alien&mdash;a
+glow of kindred feeling flashing upward anew from half-extinguished embers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are welcome home,&rdquo; said Faith Egerton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Cranfield did not immediately answer, for his eye had, been caught by an
+ornament in the shape of a heart which Faith wore as a brooch upon her bosom.
+The material was the ordinary white quartz, and he recollected having himself
+shaped it out of one of those Indian arrowheads which are so often found in the
+ancient haunts of the red men. It was precisely on the pattern of that worn by
+the visionary maid. When Cranfield departed on his shadowy search, he had
+bestowed this brooch, in a gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So, Faith, you have kept the heart?&rdquo; said he, at length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said she, blushing deeply; then, more gayly, &ldquo;And what
+else have you brought me from beyond the sea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Faith,&rdquo; replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated words by an
+uncontrollable impulse, &ldquo;I have brought you nothing but a heavy heart.
+May I rest its weight on you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This token which I have worn so long,&rdquo; said Faith, laying her
+tremulous finger on the heart, &ldquo;is the assurance that you may.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Faith, Faith!&rdquo; cried Cranfield, clasping her in his arms;
+&ldquo;you have interpreted my wild and weary dream!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the mysterious treasure he was
+to till the earth around his mother&rsquo;s dwelling and reap its products;
+instead of warlike command or regal or religious sway, he was to rule over the
+village children; and now the visionary maid had faded from his fancy, and in
+her place he saw the playmate of his childhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Would all who cherish such wild wishes but look around them, they would
+oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity and happiness, within those
+precincts and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy
+they who read the riddle without a weary world-search or a lifetime spent in
+vain!
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Footnotes:
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn1"></a> <a href="#fnref1">[1]</a>
+Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York, Maine, who died
+about eighty years since, made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that
+is here related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol
+had a different import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved
+friend, and from that day till the hour of his own death he hid his face from
+men.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn2"></a> <a href="#fnref2">[2]</a>
+Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should suspect a mistake here.
+The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric, is not known to have been an
+immoral man. We rather doubt his identity with the priest of Merry Mount.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn3"></a> <a href="#fnref3">[3]</a>
+Essex and Washington streets, Salem.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn4"></a> <a href="#fnref4">[4]</a>
+The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant tale is founded is both
+too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought up in prose. Sullivan, in
+his history of Maine, written since the Revolution, remarks that even then the
+existence of the Great Carbuncle was not entirely discredited.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn5"></a> <a href="#fnref5">[5]</a>
+This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart related in Dunlap&rsquo;s
+<i>History of the Arts of Designs</i>&mdash;a most entertaining book to the
+general reader, and a deeply-interesting one, we should think, to the artist.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Twice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Twice Told Tales
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: October 11, 2004 [EBook #13707]
+Last Updated: July 28, 2016
+Last Updated: June 28, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE TOLD TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, John Hagerson, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+TWICE-TOLD TALES.
+
+BY
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA:
+DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER,
+23 SOUTH NINTH STREET.
+
+
+1889.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                               PAGE
+
+THE GRAY CHAMPION                                5
+
+SUNDAY AT HOME                                  15
+
+THE WEDDING-KNELL                               23
+
+THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL                       33
+
+THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT                      49
+
+THE GENTLE BOY                                  63
+
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE                  99
+
+LITTLE ANNIE'S RAMBLE                          113
+
+WAKEFIELD                                      123
+
+A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP                      133
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE                            141
+
+THE PROPHETIC PICTURES                         159
+
+DAVID SWAN                                     175
+
+SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE                          183
+
+THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS                  191
+
+THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY                        197
+
+THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN                     204
+
+FANCY'S SHOW-BOX                               211
+
+DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT                     218
+
+LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE:
+    I.--HOWE'S MASQUERADE                      233
+   II.--EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT             249
+  III.--LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE                 263
+   IV.--OLD ESTHER DUDLEY                      281
+
+THE HAUNTED MIND                               294
+
+THE VILLAGE UNCLE                              300
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST                            313
+
+THE SISTER-YEARS                               323
+
+SNOWFLAKES                                     332
+
+THE SEVEN VAGABONDS                            338
+
+THE WHITE OLD MAID                             358
+
+PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE                   370
+
+CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL                        393
+
+THE SHAKER BRIDAL                              405
+
+NIGHT-SKETCHES                                 412
+
+ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS                     419
+
+THE LILY'S QUEST                               427
+
+FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE                     435
+
+EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD                          447
+
+THE THREEFOLD DESTINY                          455
+
+
+
+
+TWICE-TOLD TALES.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY CHAMPION.
+
+
+There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual
+pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on
+the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the
+Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a
+harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger
+our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely
+a single characteristic of tyranny--a governor and council holding
+office from the king and wholly independent of the country; laws made
+and taxes levied without concurrence of the people, immediate or by
+their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated and the
+titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint
+stifled by restrictions on the press; and finally, disaffection
+overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on
+our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen
+submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their
+allegiance to the mother-country, whether its head chanced to be a
+Parliament, Protector or popish monarch. Till these evil times,
+however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists
+had ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the
+privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain.
+
+At length a rumor reached our shores that the prince of Orange had
+ventured on an enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of
+civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was
+but a doubtful whisper; it might be false or the attempt might fail,
+and in either case the man that stirred against King James would lose
+his head. Still, the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people
+smiled mysteriously in the streets and threw bold glances at their
+oppressors, while far and wide there was a subdued and silent
+agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from
+its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved
+to avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm
+their despotism by yet harsher measures.
+
+One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite
+councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the
+governor's guard and made their appearance in the streets of Boston.
+The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the
+drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets less as
+the martial music of the soldiers than as a muster-call to the
+inhabitants themselves. A multitude by various avenues assembled in
+King street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century
+afterward, of another encounter between the troops of Britain and a
+people struggling against her tyranny.
+
+Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the Pilgrims came, this
+crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features
+of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency
+than on happier occasions. There was the sober garb, the general
+severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural
+forms of speech and the confidence in Heaven's blessing on a righteous
+cause which would have marked a band of the original Puritans when
+threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet
+time for the old spirit to be extinct, since there were men in the
+street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees before a
+house was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old
+soldiers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the
+thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the
+house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans of King Philip's war,
+who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old with pious
+fierceness while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them
+with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the crowd, which,
+unlike all other mobs, regarded them with such reverence as if there
+were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their
+influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse them.
+
+Meantime, the purpose of the governor in disturbing the peace of the
+town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country
+into a ferment was almost the Universal subject of inquiry, and
+variously explained.
+
+"Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," cried some, "because
+he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be
+dragged to prison. We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King
+street."
+
+Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their
+minister, who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic
+dignity, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of his
+profession--a crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied at that
+period that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take
+the place of that worthy in the _Primer_.
+
+"The pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew," cried
+others. "We are to be massacred, man and male-child."
+
+Neither was this rumor wholly discredited; although the wiser class
+believed the governor's object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor
+under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first
+settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing
+that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade of
+military force and to confound the opposite faction by possessing
+himself of their chief.
+
+"Stand firm for the old charter-governor!" shouted the crowd, seizing
+upon the idea--"the good old Governor Bradstreet!"
+
+While this cry was at the loudest the people were surprised by the
+well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of
+nearly ninety, who appeared on the elevated steps of a door and with
+characteristic mildness besought them to submit to the constituted
+authorities.
+
+"My children," concluded this venerable person, "do nothing rashly.
+Cry not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England and expect
+patiently what the Lord will do in this matter."
+
+The event was soon to be decided. All this time the roll of the drum
+had been approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with
+reverberations from house to house and the regular tramp of martial
+footsteps it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made
+their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with
+shouldered matchlocks and matches burning, so as to present a row of
+fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a
+machine that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
+moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode
+a party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund
+Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his
+favorite councillors and the bitterest foes of New England. At his
+right hand rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that "blasted
+wretch," as Cotton Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our
+ancient government and was followed with a sensible curse-through life
+and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests
+and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came behind with a downcast look,
+dreading, as well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people,
+who beheld him, their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors
+of his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor and two or
+three civil officers under the Crown were also there. But the figure
+which most attracted the public eye and stirred up the deepest feeling
+was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel riding haughtily among
+the magistrates in his priestly vestments, the fitting representative
+of prelacy and persecution, the union of Church and State, and all
+those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness.
+Another guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.
+
+The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its
+moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the
+nature of things and the character of the people--on one side the
+religious multitude with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the
+other the group of despotic rulers with the high churchman in the
+midst and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently
+clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority and scoffing at the
+universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
+deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience
+could be secured.
+
+"O Lord of hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a champion
+for thy people!"
+
+This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry to
+introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were
+now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the
+soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The
+intervening space was empty--a paved solitude between lofty edifices
+which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen
+the figure of an ancient man who seemed to have emerged from among the
+people and was walking by himself along the centre of the street to
+confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress--a dark cloak
+and a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years
+before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to
+assist the tremulous gait of age.
+
+When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
+round, displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable
+by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at
+once of encouragement and warning, then turned again and resumed his
+way.
+
+"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.
+
+"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.
+
+But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of
+fourscore years and upward, were disturbed, deeming it strange that
+they should forget one of such evident authority whom they must have
+known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop and all the old
+councillors, giving laws and making prayers and leading them against
+the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with
+locks as gray in their youth as their own were now. And the young! How
+could he have passed so utterly from their memories--that hoary sire,
+the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely
+been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood?
+
+"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?"
+whispered the wondering crowd.
+
+Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
+solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
+advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
+ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the
+decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in
+gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior's
+step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced
+on one side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the
+other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man
+grasped his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader's
+truncheon.
+
+"Stand!" cried he.
+
+The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal
+of that voice--fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
+raised to God in prayer--were irresistible. At the old man's word and
+outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the
+advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
+multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
+gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to
+some old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor's drum had
+summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation,
+and looked for the deliverance of New England.
+
+The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
+brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
+have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the
+hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his
+severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent
+it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark
+old man was chief ruler there, and that the governor and council with
+soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of
+the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
+
+"What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely.--"On,
+Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
+choice that you give all his countrymen--to stand aside or be trampled
+on."
+
+"Nay, nay! Let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant,
+laughing. "See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary who hath
+lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of
+times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
+Noll's name."
+
+"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
+tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's governor?"
+
+"I have stayed the march of a king himself ere now," replied the gray
+figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the
+cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and,
+beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
+appear once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And
+what speak ye of James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the
+throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word
+in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back,
+thou that wast a governor, back! With this night thy power is ended.
+To-morrow, the prison! Back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"
+
+The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the
+words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
+unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago. But
+his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not
+wholly without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street
+into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he
+cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude and beheld them burning
+with that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench, and again
+he fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in an open
+space where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his
+thoughts he uttered no word which might discover, but, whether the
+oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look or perceived his
+peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he
+gave back and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded
+retreat. Before another sunset the governor and all that rode so
+proudly with him were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James
+had abdicated King William was proclaimed throughout New England.
+
+But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops
+had gone from King street and the people were thronging tumultuously
+in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged governor, was seen to embrace a
+form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed that while they
+marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man had
+faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till
+where he stood there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary
+shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his
+reappearance in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor
+knew when his funeral passed nor where his gravestone was.
+
+And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the
+records of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too
+mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times for its humbling
+lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have
+heard that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the
+spirit of their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had
+passed, he walked once more in King street. Five years later, in the
+twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green beside the
+meeting-house at Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a
+slab of slate inlaid commemorates the first-fallen of the Revolution.
+And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill,
+all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long
+may it be ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness and
+adversity and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us or the
+invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come! for
+he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit, and his shadowy
+march on the eve of danger must ever be the pledge that New England's
+sons will vindicate their ancestry.
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY AT HOME.
+
+
+Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to
+watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my
+chamber window. First the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter
+lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower
+and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to
+the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now
+the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
+At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the
+stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing with
+fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves
+among the nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same
+sun brightens it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar
+robe of brightness for the Sabbath.
+
+By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for
+the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls
+and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and
+somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our
+thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind
+comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and
+small concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the
+few that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their
+separate and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings
+abroad the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither
+have gladness and festivity found a better utterance than by its
+tongue; and when the dead are slowly passing to their home, the
+steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of
+this connection with human interests, what a moral loneliness on
+week-days broods round about its stately height! It has no kindred
+with the houses above which it towers; it looks down into the narrow
+thoroughfare--the lonelier because the crowd are elbowing their
+passage at its base. A glance at the body of the church deepens this
+impression. Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted
+shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent
+organ, the voiceless pulpit and the clock which tells to solitude how
+time is passing. Time--where man lives not--what is it but eternity?
+And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up throughout the
+week all thoughts and feelings that have reference to eternity, until
+the holy day comes round again to let them forth. Might not, then, its
+more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town, with space for
+old trees to wave around it and throw their solemn shadows over a
+quiet green? We will say more of this hereafter.
+
+But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a
+holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices
+on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business
+anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether
+I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across
+the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the
+figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the
+Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions--and
+this among them--are the shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit
+around me or seem to close their evil wings and settle down, but so
+long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven
+retains its sanctity on the Sabbath--while that blessed sunshine lives
+within me--never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If
+it have gone astray, it will return again.
+
+I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind
+the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot so
+near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple
+should be deemed consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it
+said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil
+one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has no such
+holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency. It must suffice
+that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to
+church, while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats
+have left their souls at home. But I am there even before my friend
+the sexton. At length he comes--a man of kindly but sombre aspect, in
+dark gray clothes, and hair of the same mixture. He comes and applies
+his key to the wide portal. Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty
+pews or ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again
+to enjoy the music of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too! All the
+steeples in town are talking together aloft in the sunny air and
+rejoicing among themselves while their spires point heavenward.
+Meantime, here are the children assembling to the Sabbath-school,
+which is kept somewhere within the church. Often, while looking at the
+arched portal, I have been gladdened by the sight of a score of these
+little girls and boys in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks
+bursting suddenly forth into the sunshine like a swarm of gay
+butterflies that had been shut up in the solemn gloom. Or I might
+compare them to cherubs haunting that holy place.
+
+About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell
+individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is
+invariably an old woman in black whose bent frame and rounded
+shoulders are evidently laden with some heavy affliction which she is
+eager to rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as
+often, for the sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is an elderly
+man, also, who arrives in good season and leans against the corner of
+the tower, just within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a
+darksome brow. I sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of
+the two. After these, others drop in singly and by twos and threes,
+either disappearing through the doorway or taking their stand in its
+vicinity. At last, and always with an unexpected sensation, the bell
+turns in the steeple overhead and throws out an irregular clangor,
+jarring the tower to its foundation. As if there were magic in the
+sound, the sidewalks of the street, both up and down along, are
+immediately thronged with two long lines of people, all converging
+hitherward and streaming into the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of
+a coach draws nearer--a deeper thunder by its contrast with the
+surrounding stillness--until it sets down the wealthy worshippers at
+the portal among their humblest brethren. Beyond that entrance--in
+theory, at least--there are no distinctions of earthly rank; nor,
+indeed, by the goodly apparel which is flaunting in the sun would
+there seem to be such on the hither side. Those pretty girls! Why will
+they disturb my pious meditations? Of all days in the week, they
+should strive to look least fascinating on the Sabbath, instead of
+heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival the blessed angels
+and keep our thoughts from heaven. Were I the minister himself, I must
+needs look. One girl is white muslin from the waist upward and black
+silk downward to her slippers; a second blushes from top-knot to
+shoe-tie, one universal scarlet; another shines of a pervading yellow,
+as if she had made a garment of the sunshine. The greater part,
+however, have adopted a milder cheerfulness of hue. Their veils,
+especially when the wind raises them, give a lightness to the general
+effect and make them appear like airy phantoms as they flit up the
+steps and vanish into the sombre doorway. Nearly all--though it is
+very strange that I should know it--wear white stockings, white as
+snow, and neat slippers laced crosswise with black ribbon pretty high
+above the ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effective than a
+black one.
+
+Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe simplicity,
+needing no black silk gown to denote his office. His aspect claims my
+reverence, but cannot win my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter
+keeping fast the gate of Heaven and frowning, more stern than pitiful,
+on the wretched applicants, that face should be my study. By middle
+age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought upon the heart or been
+attempered by it. As the minister passes into the church the bell
+holds its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the congregation dies
+away. The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then at my
+window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he
+has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies
+asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me,
+and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties.
+Oh, I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising
+congregation reaches my ears. They are standing up to pray. Could I
+bring my heart into unison with those who are praying in yonder church
+and lift it heavenward with a fervor of supplication, but no distinct
+request, would not that be the safest kind of prayer?--"Lord, look
+down upon me in mercy!" With that sentiment gushing from my soul,
+might I not leave all the rest to him?
+
+Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I
+can enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir
+and the massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me.
+At this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my
+heart-strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be
+praised! I know nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate
+harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse's lullaby.
+The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful
+echoes till I start from my reverie and find that the sermon has
+commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify in a regular way by
+any but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher
+utters gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward step by
+step quite out of hearing of the good man's voice unless he be indeed
+a son of thunder. At my open window, catching now and then a sentence
+of the "parson's saw," I am as well situated as at the foot of the
+pulpit stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this one
+discourse will be the texts of many sermons preached by those
+colleague pastors--colleagues, but often disputants--my Mind and
+Heart. The former pretends to be a scholar and perplexes me with
+doctrinal points; the latter takes me on the score of feeling; and
+both, like several other preachers, spend their strength to very
+little purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand them.
+
+Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my
+curtain just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour-hand
+on the dial has passed beyond four o'clock. The declining sun is
+hidden behind the steeple and throws its shadow straight across the
+street; so that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the
+church door all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the
+threshold. A commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down and the
+pew doors thrown back; a multitude of feet are trampling along the
+unseen aisles, and the congregation bursts suddenly through the
+portal. Foremost scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense
+and dark phalanx of grown men, and lastly a crowd of females with
+young children and a few scattered husbands. This instantaneous
+outbreak of life into loneliness is one of the pleasantest scenes of
+the day. Some of the good people are rubbing their eyes, thereby
+intimating that they have been wrapped, as it were, in a sort of holy
+trance by the fervor of their devotion. There is a young man, a
+third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always to flourish a white
+handkerchief and brush the seat of a tight pair of black silk
+pantaloons which shine as if varnished. They must have been made of
+the stuff called "everlasting," or perhaps of the same piece as
+Christian's garments in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, for he put them
+on two summers ago and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a
+great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But now, with nods and
+greetings among friends, each matron takes her husband's arm and paces
+gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging
+sunset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve
+of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here, with
+faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable
+gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his
+severe visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the
+most captivating picture of bliss in heaven is "There we shall be
+white!"
+
+All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now,
+attuning its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ.
+Who are the choristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down
+from heaven this blessed morn to blend themselves with the worship of
+the truly good are playing and singing their farewell to the earth. On
+the wings of that rich melody they were borne upward.
+
+This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the
+singing-men and singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and
+raised their voices fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ.
+Yet it lifted my soul higher than all their former strains. They are
+gone--the sons and daughters of Music--and the gray sexton is just
+closing the portal. For six days more there will be no face of man in
+the pews and aisles and galleries, nor a voice in the pulpit, nor
+music in the choir. Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice to
+be a desert in the heart of the town and populous only for a few hours
+of each seventh day? Oh, but the church is a symbol of religion. May
+its site, which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was
+felled, be kept holy for ever, a spot of solitude and peace amid the
+trouble and vanity of our week-day world! There is a moral, and a
+religion too, even in the silent walls. And may the steeple still
+point heavenward and be decked with the hallowed sunshine of the
+Sabbath morn!
+
+
+
+
+THE WEDDING-KNELL.
+
+
+There is a certain church, in the city of New York which I have always
+regarded with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there
+solemnized under very singular circumstances in my grandmother's
+girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene,
+and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now
+standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred I
+am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would it be worth while to
+correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error by reading the date of
+its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church
+surrounded by an enclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear
+urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the
+tributes of private affection or more splendid memorials of historic
+dust. With such a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath
+its tower, one would be willing to connect some legendary interest.
+
+The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement,
+though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part and
+forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr.
+Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all
+men who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions
+a vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always
+an indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of
+public advantage or personal ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and
+fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable
+relaxation in his behalf of the common rules of society. In truth,
+there were so many anomalies in his character, and, though shrinking
+with diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been his fatality
+so often to become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of
+conduct, that people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of
+insanity. But there was no need of this. His caprices had their origin
+in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose, and in
+feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food. If he
+were mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless and
+abortive life.
+
+The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom in
+everything but age as can well be conceived. Compelled to relinquish
+her first engagement, she had been united to a man of twice her own
+years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and by whose death she
+was left in possession of a splendid fortune. A Southern gentleman
+considerably younger than herself succeeded to her hand and carried
+her to Charleston, where after many uncomfortable years she found
+herself again a widow. It would have been singular if any uncommon
+delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's;
+it could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment,
+the cold duty of her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart's
+principles consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her
+Southern husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea
+of his death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was that
+wisest but unloveliest variety of woman, a philosopher, bearing
+troubles of the heart with equanimity, dispensing with all that should
+have been her happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in
+most matters, the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one
+frailty that made her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not
+remain beautiful by proxy in the person of a daughter; she therefore
+refused to grow old and ugly on any consideration; she struggled with
+Time, and held fast her roses in spite of him, till the venerable
+thief appeared to have relinquished the spoil as not worth the trouble
+of acquiring it.
+
+The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such an
+unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's
+return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones,
+seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no
+inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of
+expediency which she would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr.
+Ellenwood, and there was just the specious phantom of sentiment and
+romance in this late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a
+fool of a woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of
+life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly
+wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been
+induced to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But
+while people talked the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be
+solemnized according to the Episcopalian forms and in open church,
+with a degree of publicity that attracted many spectators, who
+occupied the front seats of the galleries and the pews near the altar
+and along the broad aisle. It had been arranged, or possibly it was
+the custom of the day, that the parties should proceed separately to
+church. By some accident the bridegroom was a little less punctual
+than the widow and her bridal attendants, with whose arrival, after
+this tedious but necessary preface, the action of our tale may be said
+to commence.
+
+The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were heard, and the
+gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal-party came through the
+church door with the sudden and gladsome effect of a burst of
+sunshine. The whole group, except the principal figure, was made up of
+youth and gayety. As they streamed up the broad aisle, while the pews
+and pillars seemed to brighten on either side, their steps were as
+buoyant as if they mistook the church for a ball-room and were ready
+to dance hand in hand to the altar. So brilliant was the spectacle
+that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its
+entrance. At the moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold
+the bell swung heavily in the tower above her and sent forth its
+deepest knell. The vibrations died away, and returned with prolonged
+solemnity as she entered the body of the church.
+
+"Good heavens! What an omen!" whispered a young lady to her lover.
+
+"On my honor," replied the gentleman, "I believe the bell has the good
+taste to toll of its own accord. What has she to do with weddings? If
+you, dearest Julia, were approaching the altar, the bell would ring
+out its merriest peal. It has only a funeral-knell for her."
+
+The bride and most of her company had been too much occupied with the
+bustle of entrance to hear the first boding stroke of the bell--or, at
+least, to reflect on the singularity of such a welcome to the altar.
+They therefore continued to advance with undiminished gayety. The
+gorgeous dresses of the time--the crimson velvet coats, the gold-laced
+hats, the hoop-petticoats, the silk, satin, brocade and embroidery,
+the buckles, canes and swords, all displayed to the best advantage on
+persons suited to such finery--made the group appear more like a
+bright-colored picture than anything real. But by what perversity of
+taste had the artist represented his principal figure as so wrinkled
+and decayed, while yet he had decked her out in the brightest splendor
+of attire, as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into age
+and become a moral to the beautiful around her? On they went, however,
+and had glittered along about a third of the aisle, when another
+stroke of the bell seemed to fill the church with a visible gloom,
+dimming and obscuring the bright-pageant till it shone forth again as
+from a mist.
+
+This time the party wavered, stopped and huddled closer together,
+while a slight scream was heard from some of the ladies and a confused
+whispering among the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might
+have been fancifully compared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly
+shaken by a puff of wind which threatened to scatter the leaves of an
+old brown, withered rose on the same stalk with two dewy buds, such
+being the emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But
+her heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible
+shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her
+heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in
+dismay, she took the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell
+continued to swing, strike and vibrate with the same doleful
+regularity as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb.
+
+"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," said the
+widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But so many
+weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and
+yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under
+such different auspices."
+
+"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strange
+occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of the famous Bishop
+Taylor wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe
+that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he seems to hang the
+bridal-chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a
+coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse
+something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, so to keep death
+in mind while contracting that engagement which is life's chiefest
+business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this
+funeral-knell."
+
+But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener
+point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the
+mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a
+marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken
+only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the
+wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were
+disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
+have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
+The widow's glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a
+window of the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that
+she had dedicated to her first husband; then her eyelids dropped over
+their faded orbs and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another
+grave. Two buried men with a voice at her ear and a cry afar off were
+calling her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth of
+feeling, she thought how much happier had been her fate if, after
+years of bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral and she were
+followed to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover, long
+her husband. But why had she returned to him when their cold hearts
+shrank from each other's embrace?
+
+Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to
+fade in the air. A whisper, communicated from those who stood nearest
+the windows, now spread through the church: a hearse with a train of
+several coaches was creeping along the street, conveying some dead man
+to the churchyard, while the bride awaited a living one at the altar.
+Immediately after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends
+were heard at the door. The widow looked down the aisle and clenched
+the arm of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand with such
+unconscious violence that the fair girl trembled.
+
+"You frighten me, my dear madam," cried she. "For heaven's sake, what
+is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear--nothing," said the widow; then, whispering close to
+her ear, "There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of. I am
+expecting my bridegroom to come into the church with my two first
+husbands for groomsmen."
+
+"Look! look!" screamed the bridemaid. "What is here? The funeral!"
+
+As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. First came an
+old man and woman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head
+to foot in the deepest black, all but their pale features and hoary
+hair, he leaning on a staff and supporting her decrepit form with his
+nerveless arm. Behind appeared another and another pair, as aged, as
+black and mournful as the first. As they drew near the widow
+recognized in every face some trait of former friends long forgotten,
+but now returning as if from their old graves to warn her to prepare a
+shroud, or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their
+wrinkles and infirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens
+of her own decay. Many a merry night had she danced with them in
+youth, and now in joyless age she felt that some withered partner
+should request her hand and all unite in a dance of death to the music
+of the funeral-bell.
+
+While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed
+that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe
+as some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full
+in sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid
+stare, and a young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the
+laughter on her lips. When the spectral procession approached the
+altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in the centre
+appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with all this gloomy
+pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his
+shroud.
+
+No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like
+aspect. The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all
+else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
+The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that
+seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the
+air while he spoke.
+
+"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips. "The hearse is ready; the
+sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us be
+married, and then to our coffins!"
+
+How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her the
+ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful friends stood apart,
+shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom and herself; the
+whole scene expressed by the strongest imagery the vain struggle of
+the gilded vanities of this world when opposed to age, infirmity,
+sorrow and death.
+
+The awestruck silence was first broken by the clergyman.
+
+"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of authority,
+"you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by the unusual
+circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must be deferred.
+As an old friend, let me entreat you to return home."
+
+"Home--yes; but not without my bride," answered he, in the same hollow
+accents. "You deem this mockery--perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my
+aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my
+withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have been mockery
+or madness; but now let young and old declare which of us has come
+hither without a wedding-garment--the bridegroom or the bride."
+
+He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside the widow,
+contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
+glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None
+that beheld them could deny the terrible strength of the moral which
+his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.
+
+"Cruel! cruel!" groaned the heartstricken bride.
+
+"Cruel?" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a wild
+bitterness, "Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the other! In
+youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took
+away all the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality
+enough even to grieve at--with only a pervading gloom, through which I
+walked wearily and cared not whither. But after forty years, when I
+have built my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting
+there--no, not for such a life as we once pictured--you call me to the
+altar. At your summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your
+youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed
+your life. What is there for me but your decay and death? And
+therefore I have bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the
+sexton's deepest knell, and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a
+burial-service, that we may join our hands at the door of the
+sepulchre and enter it together."
+
+It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion
+in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. The stern
+lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She
+seized the bridegroom's hand.
+
+"Yes!" cried she; "let us wed even at the door of the sepulchre. My
+life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is one
+true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth: it makes me worthy
+of you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for eternity."
+
+With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while
+a tear was gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human
+feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear,
+even with his shroud.
+
+"Beloved of my youth," said he, "I have been wild. The despair of my
+whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me. Forgive and be
+forgiven. Yes; it is evening with us now, and we have realized none of
+our morning dreams of happiness. But let us join our hands before the
+altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through
+life, yet who meet again as they are leaving it and find their earthly
+affection changed into something holy as religion. And what is time to
+the married of eternity?"
+
+Amid the tears of many and a swell of exalted sentiment in those who
+felt aright was solemnized the union of two immortal souls. The train
+of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale
+features of the aged bride and the death-bell tolling through the
+whole till its deep voice overpowered the marriage-words,--all marked
+the funeral of earthly hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the
+organ, as if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene,
+poured forth an anthem, first mingling with the dismal knell, then
+rising to a loftier strain, till the soul looked down upon its woe.
+And when the awful rite was finished and with cold hand in cold hand
+the married of eternity withdrew, the organ's peal of solemn triumph
+drowned the wedding-knell.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL.
+
+A PARABLE.[1]
+
+
+The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house pulling lustily
+at the bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along
+the street. Children with bright faces tripped merrily beside their
+parents or mimicked a graver gait in the conscious dignity of their
+Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty
+maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than
+on week-days. When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the
+sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr.
+Hooper's door. The first glimpse of the clergyman's figure was the
+signal for the bell to cease its summons.
+
+[Footnote 1: Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of
+York, Maine, who died about eighty years since, made himself
+remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the
+Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different
+import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend, and
+from that day till the hour of his own death he hid his face from
+men.]
+
+"But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?" cried the sexton,
+in astonishment.
+
+All within hearing immediately turned about and beheld the semblance
+of Mr. Hooper pacing slowly his meditative way toward the
+meeting-house. With one accord they started, expressing more wonder
+than if some strange minister were coming to dust the cushions of Mr.
+Hooper's pulpit.
+
+"Are you sure it is our parson?" inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton.
+
+"Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper," replied the sexton. "He was to
+have exchanged pulpits with Parson Shute of Westbury, but Parson Shute
+sent to excuse himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral sermon."
+
+The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight. Mr.
+Hooper, a gentlemanly person of about thirty, though still a bachelor,
+was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had
+starched his band and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday's garb.
+There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about
+his forehead and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by
+his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed
+to consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his
+features except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his
+sight further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and
+inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper
+walked onward at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking
+on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly
+to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house
+steps. But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met
+with a return.
+
+"I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper's face was behind that
+piece of crape," said the sexton.
+
+"I don't like it," muttered an old woman as she hobbled into the
+meeting-house. "He has changed himself into something awful only by
+hiding his face."
+
+"Our parson has gone mad!" cried Goodman Gray, following him across
+the threshold.
+
+A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into
+the meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could
+refrain from twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright
+and turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon
+the seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a
+general bustle, a rustling of the women's gowns and shuffling of the
+men's feet, greatly at variance with that hushed repose which should
+attend the entrance of the minister. But Mr. Hooper appeared not to
+notice the perturbation of his people. He entered with an almost
+noiseless step, bent his head mildly to the pews on each side and
+bowed as he passed his oldest parishioner, a white-haired
+great-grandsire, who occupied an arm-chair in the centre of the aisle.
+It was strange to observe how slowly this venerable man became
+conscious of something singular in the appearance of his pastor. He
+seemed not fully to partake of the prevailing wonder till Mr. Hooper
+had ascended the stairs and showed himself in the pulpit, face to face
+with his congregation except for the black veil. That mysterious
+emblem was never once withdrawn. It shook with his measured breath as
+he gave out the psalm, it threw its obscurity between him and the holy
+page as he read the Scriptures, and while he prayed the veil lay
+heavily on his uplifted countenance. Did he seek to hide it from the
+dread Being whom he was addressing?
+
+Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape that more than one
+woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet
+perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to
+the minister as his black veil to them.
+
+Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic
+one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive
+influences rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the
+word. The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same
+characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his
+pulpit oratory, but there was something either in the sentiment of the
+discourse itself or in the imagination of the auditors which made it
+greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their
+pastor's lips. It was tinged rather more darkly than usual with the
+gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper's temperament. The subject had reference to
+secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and
+dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even
+forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them. A subtle power was
+breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most
+innocent girl and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher
+had crept upon them behind his awful veil and discovered their hoarded
+iniquity of deed or thought. Many spread their clasped hands on their
+bosoms. There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said--at least,
+no violence; and yet with every tremor of his melancholy voice the
+hearers quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe. So
+sensible were the audience of some unwonted attribute in their
+minister that they longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil,
+almost believing that a stranger's visage would be discovered, though
+the form, gesture and voice were those of Mr. Hooper.
+
+At the close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous
+confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious
+of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some
+gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their
+mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped
+in silent meditation; some talked loudly and profaned the Sabbath-day
+with ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads,
+intimating that they could penetrate the mystery, while one or two
+affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper's
+eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp as to require a shade.
+
+After a brief interval forth came good Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of
+his flock. Turning his veiled face from one group to another, he paid
+due reverence to the hoary heads, saluted the middle-aged with kind
+dignity as their friend and spiritual guide, greeted the young with
+mingled authority and love, and laid his hands on the little
+children's heads to bless them. Such was always his custom on the
+Sabbath-day. Strange and bewildered looks repaid him for his courtesy.
+None, as on former occasions, aspired to the honor of walking by their
+pastor's side. Old Squire Saunders--doubtless by an accidental lapse
+of memory--neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table, where the good
+clergyman had been wont to bless the food almost every Sunday since
+his settlement. He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and at the
+moment of closing the door was observed to look back upon the people,
+all of whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister. A sad smile
+gleamed faintly from beneath the black veil and flickered about his
+mouth, glimmering as he disappeared.
+
+"How strange," said a lady, "that a simple black veil, such as any
+woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on
+Mr. Hooper's face!"
+
+"Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper's intellects,"
+observed her husband, the physician of the village. "But the strangest
+part of the affair is the effect of this vagary even on a sober-minded
+man like myself. The black veil, though it covers only our pastor's
+face, throws its influence over his whole person and makes him
+ghost-like from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?"
+
+"Truly do I," replied the lady; "and I would not be alone with him for
+the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself."
+
+"Men sometimes are so," said her husband.
+
+The afternoon service was attended with similar circumstances. At its
+conclusion the bell tolled for the funeral of a young lady. The
+relatives and friends were assembled in the house and the more distant
+acquaintances stood about the door, speaking of the good qualities of
+the deceased, when their talk was interrupted by the appearance of Mr.
+Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It was now an appropriate
+emblem. The clergyman stepped into the room where the corpse was laid,
+and bent over the coffin to take a last farewell of his deceased
+parishioner. As he stooped the veil hung straight down from his
+forehead, so that, if her eye-lids had not been closed for ever, the
+dead maiden might have seen his face. Could Mr. Hooper be fearful of
+her glance, that he so hastily caught back the black veil? A person
+who watched the interview between the dead and living scrupled not to
+affirm that at the instant when the clergyman's features were
+disclosed the corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and
+muslin cap, though the countenance retained the composure of death. A
+superstitious old woman was the only witness of this prodigy.
+
+From the coffin Mr. Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners,
+and thence to the head of the staircase, to make the funeral prayer.
+It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so
+imbued with celestial hopes that the music of a heavenly harp swept by
+the fingers of the dead seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest
+accents of the minister. The people trembled, though they but darkly
+understood him, when he prayed that they and himself, and all of
+mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been,
+for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.
+The bearers went heavily forth and the mourners followed, saddening
+all the street, with the dead before them and Mr. Hooper in his black
+veil behind.
+
+"Why do you look back?" said one in the procession to his partner.
+
+"I had a fancy," replied she, "that the minister and the maiden's
+spirit were walking hand in hand."
+
+"And so had I at the same moment," said the other.
+
+That night the handsomest couple in Milford village were to be joined
+in wedlock. Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid
+cheerfulness for such occasions which often excited a sympathetic
+smile where livelier merriment would have been thrown away. There was
+no quality of his disposition which made him more beloved than this.
+The company at the wedding awaited his arrival with impatience,
+trusting that the strange awe which had gathered over him throughout
+the day would now be dispelled. But such was not the result. When Mr.
+Hooper came, the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same
+horrible black veil which had added deeper gloom to the funeral and
+could portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate
+effect on the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from
+beneath the black crape and dimmed the light of the candles. The
+bridal pair stood up before the minister, but the bride's cold fingers
+quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her death-like
+paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been buried a few
+hours before was come from her grave to be married. If ever another
+wedding were so dismal, it was that famous one where they tolled the
+wedding-knell.
+
+After performing the ceremony Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his
+lips, wishing happiness to the new-married couple in a strain of mild
+pleasantry that ought to have brightened the features of the guests
+like a cheerful gleam from the hearth. At that instant, catching a
+glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved
+his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His
+frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon
+the carpet and rushed forth into the darkness, for the Earth too had
+on her black veil.
+
+The next day the whole village of Milford talked of little else than
+Parson Hooper's black veil. That, and the mystery concealed behind it,
+supplied a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the
+street and good women gossipping at their open windows. It was the
+first item of news that the tavernkeeper told to his guests. The
+children babbled of it on their way to school. One imitative little
+imp covered his face with an old black handkerchief, thereby so
+affrighting his playmates that the panic seized himself and he
+wellnigh lost his wits by his own waggery.
+
+It was remarkable that, of all the busybodies and impertinent people
+in the parish, not one ventured to put the plain question to Mr.
+Hooper wherefore he did this thing. Hitherto, whenever there appeared
+the slightest call for such interference, he had never lacked advisers
+nor shown himself averse to be guided by their judgment. If he erred
+at all, it was by so painful a degree of self-distrust that even the
+mildest censure would lead him to consider an indifferent action as a
+crime. Yet, though so well acquainted with this amiable weakness, no
+individual among his parishioners chose to make the black veil a
+subject of friendly remonstrance. There was a feeling of dread,
+neither plainly confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each
+to shift the responsibility upon another, till at length it was found
+expedient to send a deputation of the church, in order to deal with
+Mr. Hooper about the mystery before it should grow into a scandal.
+Never did an embassy so ill discharge its duties. The minister
+received them with friendly courtesy, but became silent after they
+were seated, leaving to his visitors the whole burden of introducing
+their important business. The topic, it might be supposed, was obvious
+enough. There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper's forehead
+and concealing every feature above his placid mouth, on which, at
+times, they could perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But
+that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before
+his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them. Were
+the veil but cast aside, they might speak freely of it, but not till
+then. Thus they sat a considerable time, speechless, confused and
+shrinking uneasily from Mr. Hooper's eye, which they felt to be fixed
+upon them with an invisible glance. Finally, the deputies returned
+abashed to their constituents, pronouncing the matter too weighty to
+be handled except by a council of the churches, if, indeed, it might
+not require a General Synod.
+
+But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with
+which the black veil had impressed all besides herself. When the
+deputies returned without an explanation, or even venturing to demand
+one, she with the calm energy of her character determined to chase
+away the strange cloud that appeared to be settling round Mr. Hooper
+every moment more darkly than before. As his plighted wife it should
+be her privilege to know what the black veil concealed. At the
+minister's first visit, therefore, she entered upon the subject with a
+direct simplicity which made the task easier both for him and her.
+After he had seated himself she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the
+veil, but could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so
+overawed the multitude; it was but a double fold of crape hanging down
+from his forehead to his mouth and slightly stirring with his breath.
+
+"No," said she, aloud, and smiling, "there is nothing terrible in this
+piece of crape, except that it hides a face which I am always glad to
+look upon. Come, good sir; let the sun shine from behind the cloud.
+First lay aside your black veil, then tell me why you put it on."
+
+Mr. Hooper's smile glimmered faintly.
+
+"There is an hour to come," said he, "when all of us shall cast aside
+our veils. Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece of
+crape till then."
+
+"Your words are a mystery too," returned the young lady. "Take away
+the veil from them, at least."
+
+"Elizabeth, I will," said he, "so far as my vow may suffer me. Know,
+then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it
+ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of
+multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No
+mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me
+from the world; even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it."
+
+"What grievous affliction hath befallen you," she earnestly inquired,
+"that you should thus darken your eyes for ever?"
+
+"If it be a sign of mourning," replied Mr. Hooper, "I, perhaps, like
+most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black
+veil."
+
+"But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an
+innocent sorrow?" urged Elizabeth. "Beloved and respected as you are,
+there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness
+of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office do away this scandal."
+
+The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the
+rumors that were already abroad in the village. But Mr. Hooper's
+mildness did not forsake him. He even smiled again--that same sad
+smile which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light
+proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil.
+
+"If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough," he merely
+replied; "and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do
+the same?" And with this gentle but unconquerable obstinacy did he
+resist all her entreaties.
+
+At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in
+thought, considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to
+withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other
+meaning, was perhaps a symptom of mental disease. Though of a firmer
+character than his own, the tears rolled down her cheeks. But in an
+instant, as it were, a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes
+were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when like a sudden twilight
+in the air its terrors fell around her. She arose and stood trembling
+before him.
+
+"And do you feel it, then, at last?" said he, mournfully.
+
+She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand and turned to
+leave the room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.
+
+"Have patience with me, Elizabeth!" cried he, passionately. "Do not
+desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine,
+and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between
+our souls. It is but a mortal veil; it is not for eternity. Oh, you
+know not how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my
+black veil! Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity for ever."
+
+"Lift the veil but once and look me in the face," said she.
+
+"Never! It cannot be!" replied Mr. Hooper.
+
+"Then farewell!" said Elizabeth.
+
+She withdrew her arm from his grasp and slowly departed, pausing at
+the door to give one long, shuddering gaze that seemed almost to
+penetrate the mystery of the black veil. But even amid his grief Mr.
+Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him
+from happiness, though the horrors which it shadowed forth must be
+drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.
+
+From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil
+or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to
+hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was
+reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the
+sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its
+own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was
+irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of
+mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside
+to avoid him, and that others would make it a point of hardihood to
+throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of the latter class
+compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the
+burial-ground; for when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would
+always be faces behind the gravestones peeping at his black veil. A
+fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him
+thence. It grieved him to the very depth of his kind heart to observe
+how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest
+sports while his melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive
+dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else that a
+preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black
+crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so
+great that he never willingly passed before a mirror nor stooped to
+drink at a still fountain lest in its peaceful bosom he should be
+affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to the whispers
+that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too
+horrible to be entirely concealed or otherwise than so obscurely
+intimated. Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into
+the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor
+minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said
+that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings
+and outward terrors he walked continually in its shadow, groping
+darkly within his own soul or gazing through a medium that saddened
+the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his
+dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr.
+Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he
+passed by.
+
+Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable
+effect of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of
+his mysterious emblem--for there was no other apparent cause--he
+became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His
+converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves,
+affirming, though but figuratively, that before he brought them to
+celestial light they had been with him behind the black veil. Its
+gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections.
+Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper and would not yield their
+breath till he appeared, though ever, as he stooped to whisper
+consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own. Such
+were the terrors of the black veil even when Death had bared his
+visage. Strangers came long distances to attend service at his church
+with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure because it was
+forbidden them to behold his face. But many were made to quake ere
+they departed. Once, during Governor Belcher's administration, Mr.
+Hooper was appointed to preach the election sermon. Covered with his
+black veil, he stood before the chief magistrate, the council and the
+representatives, and wrought so deep an impression that the
+legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom
+and piety of our earliest ancestral sway.
+
+In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward
+act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though
+unloved and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their
+health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish. As
+years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired
+a name throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father
+Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners who were of mature age when he was
+settled had been borne away by many a funeral: he had one congregation
+in the church and a more crowded one in the churchyard; and, having
+wrought so late into the evening and done his work so well, it was now
+good Father Hooper's turn to rest.
+
+Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight in the
+death-chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none.
+But there was the decorously grave though unmoved physician, seeking
+only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save.
+There were the deacons and other eminently pious members of his
+church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark of Westbury, a young
+and zealous divine who had ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of
+the expiring minister. There was the nurse--no hired handmaiden of
+Death, but one whose calm affection had endured thus long in secrecy,
+in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not perish even at the
+dying-hour. Who but Elizabeth! And there lay the hoary head of good
+Father Hooper upon the death-pillow with the black veil still swathed
+about his brow and reaching down over his face, so that each more
+difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it to stir. All through life
+that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had
+separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him
+in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; and still it lay upon
+his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber and shade
+him from the sunshine of eternity.
+
+For some time previous his mind had been confused, wavering doubtfully
+between the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at
+intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to come. There had
+been feverish turns which tossed him from side to side and wore away
+what little strength he had. But in his most convulsive struggles and
+in the wildest vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought
+retained its sober influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lest
+the black veil should slip aside. Even if his bewildered soul could
+have forgotten, there was a faithful woman at his pillow who with
+averted eyes would have covered that aged face which she had last
+beheld in the comeliness of manhood.
+
+At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of
+mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath
+that grew fainter and fainter except when a long, deep and irregular
+inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit.
+
+The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.
+
+"Venerable Father Hooper," said he, "the moment of your release is at
+hand. Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time
+from eternity?"
+
+Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head;
+then--apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful--he
+exerted himself to speak.
+
+"Yea," said he, in faint accents; "my soul hath a patient weariness
+until that veil be lifted."
+
+"And is it fitting," resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, "that a man so
+given to prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and
+thought, so far as mortal judgment may pronounce,--is it fitting that
+a father in the Church should leave a shadow on his memory that may
+seem to blacken a life so pure? I pray you, my venerable brother, let
+not this thing be! Suffer us to be gladdened by your triumphant aspect
+as you go to your reward. Before the veil of eternity be lifted let me
+cast aside this black veil from your face;" and, thus speaking, the
+Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward to reveal the mystery of so many
+years.
+
+But, exerting a sudden energy that made all the beholders stand
+aghast, Father Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the
+bedclothes and pressed them strongly on the black veil, resolute to
+struggle if the minister of Westbury would contend with a dying man.
+
+"Never!" cried the veiled clergyman. "On earth, never!"
+
+"Dark old man," exclaimed the affrighted minister, "with what horrible
+crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?"
+
+Father Hooper's breath heaved: it rattled in his throat; but, with a
+mighty effort grasping forward with his hands, he caught hold of life
+and held it back till he should speak. He even raised himself in bed,
+and there he sat shivering with the arms of Death around him, while
+the black veil hung down, awful at that last moment in the gathered
+terrors of a lifetime. And yet the faint, sad smile so often there now
+seemed to glimmer from its obscurity and linger on Father Hooper's
+lips.
+
+"Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled face
+round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each other. Have
+men avoided me and women shown no pity and children screamed and fled
+only for my black veil? What but the mystery which it obscurely
+typifies has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows
+his inmost heart to his friend, the lover to his best-beloved; when
+man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely
+treasuring up the secret of his sin,--then deem me a monster for the
+symbol beneath which I have lived and die. I look around me, and, lo!
+on every visage a black veil!"
+
+While his auditors shrank from one another in mutual affright, Father
+Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile
+lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and
+a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years
+has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is
+moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the
+thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT.
+
+
+    There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in
+    the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston,
+    or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted the facts
+    recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists have
+    wrought themselves almost spontaneously into a sort of allegory.
+    The masques, mummeries and festive customs described in the text
+    are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these
+    points may be found in Strutt's _Book of English Sports and
+    Pastimes_.
+
+Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the
+banner-staff of that gay colony. They who reared it, should their
+banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's rugged
+hills and scatter flower-seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom
+were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep
+verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap of a more vivid hue than
+the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all
+the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the summer months and
+revelling with autumn and basking in the glow of winter's fireside.
+Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile,
+and came hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry
+Mount.
+
+Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on Midsummer
+eve. This venerated emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the
+slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the
+old wood-monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner colored like
+the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with
+birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with
+silvery leaves fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots
+of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden-flowers and
+blossoms of the wilderness laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so
+fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine
+tree. Where this green and flowery splendor terminated the shaft of
+the Maypole was stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at
+its top. On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of
+roses--some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the
+forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the colonists had
+reared from English seed. O people of the Golden Age, the chief of
+your husbandry was to raise flowers!
+
+But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the
+Maypole? It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from
+their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as
+all the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were
+Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders
+of a comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag; a
+second, human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a
+third, still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the
+beard and horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a
+bear erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with
+pink silk stockings. And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real
+bear of the dark forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of
+a human hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His
+inferior nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped.
+Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or
+extravagant, with red noses pendulous before their mouths, which
+seemed of awful depth and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit
+of laughter. Here might be seen the salvage man--well known in
+heraldry--hairy as a baboon and girdled with green leaves. By his
+side--a nobler figure, but still a counterfeit--appeared an Indian
+hunter with feathery crest and wampum-belt. Many of this strange
+company wore foolscaps and had little bells appended to their
+garments, tinkling with a silvery sound responsive to the inaudible
+music of their gleesome spirits. Some youths and maidens were of
+soberer garb, yet well maintained their places in the irregular throng
+by the expression of wild revelry upon their features.
+
+Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad
+smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole. Had a wanderer
+bewildered in the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a
+half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus,
+some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast,
+and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the
+change; but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible
+themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with
+whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.
+
+Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had
+ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud.
+One was a youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow
+pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded
+staff--the ensign of high dignity among the revellers--and his left
+grasped the slender fingers of a fair maiden not less gayly decorated
+than himself. Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy
+curls of each, and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up
+spontaneously there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the
+Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an
+English priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in
+heathen fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By
+the riot of his rolling eye and the pagan decorations of his holy
+garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the very Comus of the
+crew.
+
+"Votaries of the Maypole," cried the flower-decked priest, "merrily
+all day long have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your
+merriest hour, my hearts! Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May,
+whom I, a clerk of Oxford and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently
+to join in holy matrimony.--Up with your nimble spirits, ye
+morrice-dancers, green men and glee-maidens, bears and wolves and
+horned gentlemen! Come! a chorus now rich with the old mirth of Merry
+England and the wilder glee of this fresh forest, and then a dance, to
+show the youthful pair what life is made of and how airily they should
+go through it!--All ye that love the Maypole, lend your voices to the
+nuptial song of the Lord and Lady of the May!"
+
+This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where
+jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival.
+The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at
+sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life,
+beginning the measure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses that
+hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole had been twined for
+them, and would be thrown over both their heads in symbol of their
+flowery union. When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar
+burst from the rout of monstrous figures.
+
+"Begin you the stave, reverend sir," cried they all, "and never did
+the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send
+up."
+
+Immediately a prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with
+practised minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such
+a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the
+sound. But the May-lord--he of the gilded staff--chancing to look into
+his lady's eyes, was wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that
+met his own.
+
+"Edith, sweet Lady of the May," whispered he, reproachfully, "is yon
+wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look so
+sad? Oh, Edith, this is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive
+shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be
+brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing."
+
+"That was the very thought that saddened me. How came it in your mind
+too?" said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high
+treason to be sad at Merry Mount. "Therefore do I sigh amid this
+festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream,
+and fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary and
+their mirth unreal, and that we are no true lord and lady of the May.
+What is the mystery in my heart?"
+
+Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower
+of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers!
+No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were
+sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former
+pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. From
+the moment that they truly loved they had subjected themselves to
+earth's doom of care and sorrow and troubled joy, and had no more a
+home at Merry Mount. That was Edith's mystery. Now leave we the priest
+to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole till the
+last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit and the shadows of the
+forest mingle gloomily in the dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who
+these gay people were.
+
+Two hundred years ago, and more, the Old World and its inhabitants
+became mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the
+West--some to barter glass and such like jewels for the furs of the
+Indian hunter, some to conquer virgin empires, and one stern band to
+pray. But none of these motives had much weight with the colonists of
+Merry Mount. Their leaders were men who had sported so long with life,
+that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these unwelcome guests were led
+astray by the crowd of vanities which they should have put to flight.
+Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on masques, and
+play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the heart's fresh
+gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act
+out their latest day-dream. They gathered followers from all that giddy
+tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men. In their
+train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets; wandering players,
+whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers,
+and mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and
+fairs; in a word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that
+age, but now began to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of
+Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly they
+came across the sea. Many had been maddened by their previous troubles
+into a gay despair; others were as madly gay in the flush of youth, like
+the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever might be the quality of their
+mirth, old and young were gay at Merry Mount. The young deemed
+themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the
+counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully,
+because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a
+lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even
+to be truly blest.
+
+All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted
+hither. The King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of
+Misrule bore potent sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled
+whole acres of the forest to make bonfires, and danced by the
+blaze all night, crowned with garlands, and throwing flowers into
+the flame. At harvest time, though their crop was of the
+smallest, they made an image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and
+wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it home
+triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists of
+Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made
+their true history a poet's tale. Spring decked the hallowed
+emblem with young blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought
+roses of the deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the
+forest; Autumn enriched it with that red and yellow gorgeousness
+which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower; and
+Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles,
+till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam.
+Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it
+a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced round
+it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it
+their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner
+staff of Merry Mount.
+
+Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith
+than those Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a
+settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their
+prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the
+cornfield till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons
+were always at hand to shoot down the straggling savage. When
+they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English
+mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim
+bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their
+festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of
+psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance!
+The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the
+light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was
+round the whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan
+Maypole.
+
+A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult
+woods, each with a horseload of iron armor to burden his
+footsteps, would sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry
+Mount. There were the silken colonists, sporting round their
+Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear to dance, or striving to
+communicate their mirth to the grave Indian, or masquerading in the
+skins of deer and wolves which they had hunted for that especial
+purpose. Often the whole colony were playing at Blindman's Buff,
+magistrates and all with their eyes bandaged, except a single
+scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the
+bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a
+flower-decked corpse with merriment and festive music to his grave.
+But did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times they sang ballads
+and told tales for the edification of their pious visitors, or
+perplexed them with juggling tricks, or grinned at them through
+horse-collars; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of
+their own stupidity and began a yawning-match. At the very least of
+these enormities the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so
+darkly that the revellers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud
+had overcast the sunshine which was to be perpetual there. On the
+other hand, the Puritans affirmed that when a psalm was pealing from
+their place of worship the echo which the forest sent them back seemed
+often like the chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of
+laughter. Who but the fiend and his bond-slaves the crew of Merry
+Mount had thus disturbed them? In due time a feud arose, stern and
+bitter on one side, and as serious on the other as anything could be
+among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the Maypole. The
+future complexion of New England was involved in this important
+quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jurisdiction over
+the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime and
+make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm
+for ever; but should the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate,
+sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the
+forest and late posterity do homage to the Maypole.
+
+After these authentic passages from history we return to the nuptials
+of the Lord and Lady of the May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and
+must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the Maypole a
+solitary sunbeam is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint
+golden tinge blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even that
+dim light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry
+Mount to the evening gloom which has rushed so instantaneously from
+the black surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have
+rushed forth in human shape.
+
+Yes, with the setting sun the last day of mirth had passed from Merry
+Mount. The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag
+lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the
+bells of the morrice-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The
+Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.
+Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their
+foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment when waking thoughts
+start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the
+hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of
+monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a
+dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So
+stern was the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame
+and soul, seemed wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all
+of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the
+Puritan of Puritans: it was Endicott himself.
+
+"Stand off, priest of Baal!" said he, with a grim frown and laying no
+reverent hand upon the surplice. "I know thee, Blackstone![1] Thou art
+the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted
+Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of
+it in thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified
+this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would
+defile it! And first for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of
+thy worship!"
+
+[Footnote 1: Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should
+suspect a mistake here. The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric,
+is not known to have been an immoral man. We rather doubt his identity
+with the priest of Merry Mount.]
+
+And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor
+long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound, it
+showered leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast, and
+finally, with all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic
+of departed pleasures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. As
+it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew darker and the woods
+threw forth a more sombre shadow.
+
+"There!" cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work; "there lies
+the only Maypole in New England. The thought is strong within me that
+by its fall is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirthmakers
+amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott!"
+
+"Amen!" echoed his followers.
+
+But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol. At the
+sound the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure
+of broad mirth, yet at this moment strangely expressive of sorrow and
+dismay.
+
+"Valiant captain," quoth Peter Palfrey, the ancient of the band, "what
+order shall be taken with the prisoners?"
+
+"I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole," replied
+Endicott, "yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again and give
+each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It
+would have served rarely for a whipping-post."
+
+"But there are pine trees enow," suggested the lieutenant.
+
+"True, good ancient," said the leader. "Wherefore bind the heathen
+crew and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece as earnest of
+our future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks to rest
+themselves so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own
+well-ordered settlements where such accommodations may be found.
+Further penalties, such as branding and cropping of ears, shall be
+thought of hereafter."
+
+"How many stripes for the priest?" inquired Ancient Palfrey.
+
+"None as yet," answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the
+culprit. "It must be for the Great and General Court to determine
+whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penalty, may
+atone for his transgressions. Let him look to himself. For such as
+violate our civil order it may be permitted us to show mercy, but woe
+to the wretch that troubleth our religion!"
+
+"And this dancing bear?" resumed the officer. "Must he share the
+stripes of his fellows?"
+
+"Shoot him through the head!" said the energetic Puritan. "I suspect
+witchcraft in the beast."
+
+"Here be a couple of shining ones," continued Peter Palfrey, pointing
+his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. "They seem to be of high
+station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be
+fitted with less than a double share of stripes."
+
+Endicott rested on his sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect
+of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and
+apprehensive, yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure
+affection seeking aid and giving it that showed them to be man and
+wife with the sanction of a priest upon their love. The youth in the
+peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded staff and thrown his arm
+about the Lady of the May, who leaned against his breast too lightly
+to burden him, but with weight enough to express that their destinies
+were linked together for good or evil. They looked first at each other
+and then into the grim captain's face. There they stood in the first
+hour of wedlock, while the idle pleasures of which their companions
+were the emblems had given place to the sternest cares of life,
+personified by the dark Puritans. But never had their youthful beauty
+seemed so pure and high as when its glow was chastened by adversity.
+
+"Youth," said Endicott, "ye stand in an evil case--thou and thy
+maiden-wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both
+have a token to remember your wedding-day."
+
+"Stern man," cried the May-lord, "how can I move thee? Were the means
+at hand, I would resist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
+with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched."
+
+"Not so," replied the immitigable zealot. "We are not wont to show an
+idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.--What
+sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the
+penalty besides his own?"
+
+"Be it death," said Edith, "and lay it all on me."
+
+Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case.
+Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their
+home desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous
+destiny in the shape of the Puritan leader their only guide. Yet the
+deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was
+softened. He smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost
+sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes.
+
+"The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,"
+observed Endicott. "We will see how they comport themselves under
+their present trials ere we burden them with greater. If among the
+spoil there be any garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put
+upon this May-lord and his Lady instead of their glistening vanities.
+Look to it, some of you."
+
+"And shall not the youth's hair be cut?" asked Peter Palfrey, looking
+with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young
+man.
+
+"Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,"
+answered the captain. "Then bring them along with us, but more gently
+than their fellows. There be qualities in the youth which may make him
+valiant to fight and sober to toil and pious to pray, and in the
+maiden that may fit her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing up
+babes in better nurture than her own hath been.--Nor think ye, young
+ones, that they are the happiest, even in our lifetime of a moment,
+who misspend it in dancing round a Maypole."
+
+And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock-foundation
+of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the
+Maypole and threw it with his own gauntleted hand over the heads of
+the Lord and Lady of the May. It was a deed of prophecy. As the moral
+gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gayety, even so was their
+home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to
+it no more. But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest
+roses that had grown there, so in the tie that united them were
+intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys. They went
+heavenward supporting each other along the difficult path which it was
+their lot to tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the
+vanities of Merry Mount.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE BOY.
+
+
+In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called
+Quakers--led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the
+spirit--made their appearance in New England. Their reputation as
+holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them,
+the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further
+intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was
+intended to purge the land of heresy, though more than sufficiently
+vigorous, were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming
+persecution as a divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a
+holy courage unknown to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the
+cross by providing for the peaceable exercise of their religion in a
+distant wilderness. Though it was the singular fact that every nation
+of the earth rejected the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace
+toward all men, the place of greatest uneasiness and peril, and
+therefore in their eyes the most eligible, was the province of
+Massachusetts Bay.
+
+The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our
+pious forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured
+nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were
+attractions as powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor and reward
+would have been for the worldly-minded. Every European vessel brought
+new cargoes of the sect, eager to testify against the oppression which
+they hoped to share; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy
+fines from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous
+journeys through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as
+if conveyed by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened
+almost to madness by the treatment which they received, produced
+actions contrary to the rules of decency as well as of rational
+religion, and presented a singular contrast to the calm and staid
+deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day. The
+command of the Spirit, inaudible except to the soul and not to be
+controverted on grounds of human wisdom, was made a plea for most
+indecorous exhibitions which, abstractedly considered, well deserved
+the moderate chastisement of the rod. These extravagances, and the
+persecution which was at once their cause and consequence, continued
+to increase, till in the year 1659 the government of Massachusetts Bay
+indulged two members of the Quaker sect with the crown of martyrdom.
+
+An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to
+this act, but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon
+the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow
+mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made
+hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his
+influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the
+enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by
+brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less
+deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his
+associates in after-times. The historian of the sect affirms that by
+the wrath of Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the
+"bloody town" of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he
+takes his stand, as it were, among the graves of the ancient
+persecutors, and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook
+them in old age or at the parting-hour. He tells us that they died
+suddenly and violently and in madness, but nothing can exceed the
+bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome disease and "death
+by rottenness" of the fierce and cruel governor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of
+two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from
+the metropolis to the neighboring country-town in which he resided.
+The air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made
+brighter by the rays of a young moon which had now nearly reached the
+verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a
+gray frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the
+outskirts of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay
+between him and his home. The low straw-thatched houses were scattered
+at considerable intervals along the road, and, the country having been
+settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still
+bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn wind
+wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except
+the pine trees and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which
+it was the instrument. The road had penetrated the mass of woods that
+lay nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space,
+when the traveller's ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than
+even that of the wind. It was like the wailing of some one in
+distress, and it seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir
+tree in the centre of a cleared but unenclosed and uncultivated field.
+The Puritan could not but remember that this was the very spot which
+had been made accursed a few hours before by the execution of the
+Quakers, whose bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave
+beneath the tree on which they suffered. He struggled, however,
+against the superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and
+compelled himself to pause and listen.
+
+"The voice is most likely mortal, nor have I cause to tremble if it be
+otherwise," thought he, straining his eyes through the dim moonlight.
+"Methinks it is like the wailing of a child--some infant, it may be,
+which has strayed from its mother and chanced upon this place of
+death. For the ease of mine own conscience I must search this matter
+out." He therefore left the path and walked somewhat fearfully across
+the field. Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and
+trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the
+spectacle of that day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead
+to their loneliness.
+
+The traveller at length reached the fir tree, which from the middle
+upward was covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been
+erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death.
+Under this unhappy tree--which in after-times was believed to drop
+poison with its dew--sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood.
+It was a slender and light-clad little boy who leaned his face upon a
+hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth and wailed bitterly, yet
+in a suppressed tone, as if his grief might receive the punishment of
+crime. The Puritan, whose approach had been unperceived, laid his hand
+upon the child's shoulder and addressed him compassionately.
+
+"You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you
+weep," said he. "But dry your eyes and tell me where your mother
+dwells; I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you
+in her arms tonight."
+
+The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to
+the stranger. It was a pale, bright-eyed countenance, certainly not
+more than six years old, but sorrow, fear and want had destroyed much
+of its infantile expression. The Puritan, seeing the boy's frightened
+gaze and feeling that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to
+reassure him:
+
+"Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were
+to leave you here. What! you do not fear to sit beneath the gallows on
+a new-made grave, and yet you tremble at a friend's touch? Take heart,
+child, and tell me what is your name and where is your home."
+
+"Friend," replied the little boy, in a sweet though faltering voice,
+"they call me Ilbrahim, and my home is here."
+
+The pale, spiritual face, the eyes that seemed to mingle with the
+moonlight, the sweet, airy voice and the outlandish name almost made
+the Puritan believe that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung
+up out of the grave on which he sat; but perceiving that the
+apparition stood the test of a short mental prayer, and remembering
+that the arm which he had touched was lifelike, he adopted a more
+rational supposition. "The poor child is stricken in his intellect,"
+thought he, "but verily his words are fearful in a place like this."
+He then spoke soothingly, intending to humor the boy's fantasy:
+
+"Your home will scarce be comfortable, Ilbrahim, this cold autumn
+night, and I fear you are ill-provided with food. I am hastening to a
+warm supper and bed; and if you will go with me, you shall share
+them."
+
+"I thank thee, friend, but, though I be hungry and shivering with
+cold, thou wilt not give me food nor lodging," replied the boy, in the
+quiet tone which despair had taught him even so young. "My father was
+of the people whom all men hate; they have laid him under this heap of
+earth, and here is my home."
+
+The Puritan, who had laid hold of little Ilbrahim's hand, relinquished
+it as if he were touching a loathsome reptile. But he possessed a
+compassionate heart which not even religious prejudice could harden
+into stone. "God forbid that I should leave this child to perish,
+though he comes of the accursed sect," said he to himself. "Do we not
+all spring from an evil root? Are we not all in darkness till the
+light doth shine upon us? He shall not perish, neither in body nor, if
+prayer and instruction may avail for him, in soul." He then spoke
+aloud and kindly to Ilbrahim, who had again hid his face in the cold
+earth of the grave:
+
+"Was every door in the land shut against you, my child, that you have
+wandered to this unhallowed spot?"
+
+"They drove me forth from the prison when they took my father thence,"
+said the boy, "and I stood afar off watching the crowd of people; and
+when they were gone, I came hither, and found only this grave. I knew
+that my father was sleeping here, and I said, 'This shall be my
+home.'"
+
+"No, child, no, not while I have a roof over my head or a morsel to
+share with you," exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now
+fully excited. "Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm."
+
+The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth as if the cold
+heart beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast. The
+traveller, however, continued to entreat him tenderly, and, seeming to
+acquire some degree of confidence, he at length arose; but his slender
+limbs tottered with weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he
+leaned against the tree of death for support.
+
+"My poor boy, are you so feeble?" said the Puritan. "When did you
+taste food last?"
+
+"I ate of bread and water with my father in the prison," replied
+Ilbrahim, "but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day,
+saying that he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey's end.
+Trouble not thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food
+many times ere now."
+
+The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about
+him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the
+gratuitous cruelty of the instruments in this persecution. In the
+awakened warmth of his feelings he resolved that at whatever risk he
+would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had
+confided to his care. With this determination he left the accursed
+field and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy
+had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his
+progress, and he soon beheld the fire-rays from the windows of the
+cottage which he, a native of a distant clime, had built in the
+Western wilderness. It was surrounded by a considerable extent of
+cultivated ground, and the dwelling was situated in the nook of a
+wood-covered hill, whither it seemed to have crept for protection.
+
+"Look up, child," said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head had
+sunk upon his shoulder; "there is our home."
+
+At the word "home" a thrill passed through the child's frame, but he
+continued silent. A few moments brought them to the cottage door, at
+which the owner knocked; for at that early period, when savages were
+wandering everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were
+indispensable to the security of a dwelling. The summons was answered
+by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity,
+who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the
+door and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Farther back
+in the passageway the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no
+little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father's
+return.
+
+As the Puritan entered he thrust aside his cloak and displayed
+Ilbrahim's face to the female.
+
+"Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
+hands," observed he. "Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear
+ones who have departed from us."
+
+"What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?" she inquired.
+"Is he one whom the wilderness-folk have ravished from some Christian
+mother?"
+
+"No, Dorothy; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness," he
+replied. "The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
+morsel and to drink of his birchen cup, but Christian men, alas! had
+cast him out to die." Then he told her how he had found him beneath
+the gallows, upon his father's grave, and how his heart had prompted
+him like the speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast
+home and be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and
+clothe him as if he were his own child, and to afford him the
+instruction which should counteract the pernicious errors hitherto
+instilled into his infant mind.
+
+Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband,
+and she approved of all his doings and intentions.
+
+"Have you a mother, dear child?" she inquired.
+
+The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply,
+but Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother, who like the
+rest of her sect was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from
+the prison a short time before, carried into the uninhabited
+wilderness and left to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was
+no uncommon method of disposing of the Quakers, and they were
+accustomed to boast that the inhabitants of the desert were more
+hospitable to them than civilized man.
+
+"Fear not, little boy; you shall not need a mother, and a kind one,"
+said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. "Dry your tears,
+Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother."
+
+The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had
+successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim
+would consent to occupy it he knelt down, and as Dorothy listed to his
+simple and affecting prayer she marvelled how the parents that had
+taught it to him could have been judged worthy of death. When the boy
+had fallen asleep, she bent over his pale and spiritual countenance,
+pressed a kiss upon his white brow, drew the bedclothes up about his
+neck, and went away with a pensive gladness in her heart.
+
+Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old
+country. He had remained in England during the first years of the
+Civil War, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons
+under Cromwell. But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to
+develop themselves, he quitted the army of the Parliament and sought a
+refuge from the strife which was no longer holy among the people of
+his persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts. A more worldly
+consideration had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither, for New
+England offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as
+to dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it
+difficult to provide for a wife and increasing family. To this
+supposed impurity of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to
+impute the removal by death of all the children for whose earthly good
+the father had been over-thoughtful. They had left their native
+country blooming like roses, and like roses they had perished in a
+foreign soil. Those expounders of the ways of Providence, who had thus
+judged their brother and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin,
+were not more charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to
+fill up the void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the
+accursed sect. Nor did they fail to communicate their disapprobation
+to Tobias, but the latter in reply merely pointed at the little quiet,
+lovely boy, whose appearance and deportment were indeed as powerful
+arguments as could possibly have been adduced in his own favor. Even
+his beauty, however, and his winning manners sometimes produced an
+effect ultimately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the outer surfaces
+of their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard, affirmed
+that no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their
+antipathy to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of
+divers theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince
+him of the errors of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful
+controversialist, but the feeling of his religion was strong as
+instinct in him, and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the
+faith which his father had died for.
+
+The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the
+child's protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly
+began to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold
+regards of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people
+manifested their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some
+consideration, being a representative to the General Court and an
+approved lieutenant in the train-bands, yet within a week after his
+adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also,
+when walking through a solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice
+from some invisible speaker, and it cried, "What shall be done to the
+backslider? Lo! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine
+cords, and every cord three knots." These insults irritated Pearson's
+temper for the moment; they entered also into his heart, and became
+imperceptible but powerful workers toward an end which his most secret
+thought had not yet whispered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
+Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
+at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this
+measure from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the
+appointed hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had
+wrought for him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent
+years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of
+religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that
+martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and
+Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two
+parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path
+through the leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of
+their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the
+other side; but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had
+descended the hill and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house
+of prayer. Around the door, from which the drummer still sent forth
+his thundering summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including
+several of the oldest members of the congregation, many of the
+middle-aged and nearly all the younger males. Pearson found it
+difficult to sustain their united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy,
+whose mind was differently circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer
+to her and faltered not in her approach. As they entered the door they
+overheard the muttered sentiments of the assemblage; and when the
+reviling voices of the little children smote Ilbrahim's ear, he wept.
+
+The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling,
+the unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit
+offered nothing to excite the devotion which without such external
+aids often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was
+occupied by rows of long cushionless benches, supplying the place of
+pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division impassable except
+by children beneath a certain age.
+
+Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and
+Ilbrahim, being within the years of infancy, was retained under the
+care of the latter. The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their
+rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to
+dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose and turned his
+repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the
+sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a sweet infant of the
+skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the inhabitants of
+this miserable world closed up their impure hearts against him, drew
+back their earth-soiled garments from his touch and said, "We are
+holier than thou."
+
+Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother and retaining fast
+hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might
+befit a person of matured taste and understanding who should find
+himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not
+recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not
+yet commenced, however, when the boy's attention was arrested by an
+event apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her face muffled
+in a hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced slowly
+up the broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim's
+faint color varied, his nerves fluttered; he was unable to turn his
+eyes from the muffled female.
+
+When the preliminary prayer and hymn were over, the minister arose,
+and, having turned the hour-glass which stood by the great Bible,
+commenced his discourse. He was now well stricken in years, a man of
+pale, thin countenance, and his gray hairs were closely covered by a
+black velvet skull-cap. In his younger days he had practically learned
+the meaning of persecution from Archbishop Laud, and he was not now
+disposed to forget the lesson against which he had murmured then.
+Introducing the often-discussed subject of the Quakers, he gave a
+history of that sect and a description of their tenets in which error
+predominated and prejudice distorted the aspect of what was true. He
+adverted to the recent measures in the province, and cautioned his
+hearers of weaker parts against calling in question the just severity
+which God-fearing magistrates had at length been compelled to
+exercise. He spoke of the danger of pity--in some cases a commendable
+and Christian virtue, but inapplicable to this pernicious sect. He
+observed that such was their devilish obstinacy in error that even the
+little children, the sucking babes, were hardened and desperate
+heretics. He affirmed that no man without Heaven's especial warrant
+should attempt their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw
+them from the slough he should himself be precipitated into its lowest
+depths.
+
+The sands of the second hour were principally in the lower half of the
+glass when the sermon concluded. An approving murmur followed, and the
+clergyman, having given out a hymn, took his seat with much
+self-congratulation, and endeavored to read the effect of his
+eloquence in the visages of the people. But while voices from all
+parts of the house were tuning themselves to sing a scene occurred
+which, though not very unusual at that period in the province,
+happened to be without precedent in this parish.
+
+The muffled female, who had hitherto sat motionless in the front rank
+of the audience, now arose and with slow, stately and unwavering step
+ascended the pulpit stairs. The quaverings of incipient harmony were
+hushed and the divine sat in speechless and almost terrified
+astonishment while she undid the door and stood up in the sacred desk
+from which his maledictions had just been thundered. She then divested
+herself of the cloak and hood, and appeared in a most singular array.
+A shapeless robe of sackcloth was girded about her waist with a
+knotted cord; her raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its
+blackness was defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strewn
+upon her head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the
+deathly whiteness of a countenance which, emaciated with want and wild
+with enthusiasm and strange sorrows, retained no trace of earlier
+beauty. This figure stood gazing earnestly on the audience, and there
+was no sound nor any movement except a faint shuddering which every
+man observed in his neighbor, but was scarcely conscious of in
+himself. At length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke for
+the first few moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct
+utterance. Her discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly
+entangled with her reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible
+rhapsody, which, however, seemed to spread its own atmosphere round
+the hearer's soul, and to move his feelings by some influence
+unconnected with the words. As she proceeded beautiful but shadowy
+images would sometimes be seen like bright things moving in a turbid
+river, or a strong and singularly shaped idea leapt forth and seized
+at once on the understanding or the heart. But the course of her
+unearthly eloquence soon led her to the persecutions of her sect, and
+from thence the step was short to her own peculiar sorrows. She was
+naturally a woman of mighty passions, and hatred and revenge now
+wrapped themselves in the garb of piety. The character of her speech
+was changed; her images became distinct though wild, and her
+denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness.
+
+"The governor and his mighty men," she said, "have gathered together,
+taking counsel among themselves and saying, 'What shall we do unto
+this people--even unto the people that have come into this land to put
+our iniquity to the blush?' And, lo! the devil entereth into the
+council-chamber like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled,
+with a dark and twisted countenance and a bright, downcast eye. And he
+standeth up among the rulers; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to
+each; and every man lends his ear, for his word is 'Slay! Slay!' But I
+say unto ye, Woe to them that slay! Woe to them that shed the blood of
+saints! Woe to them that have slain the husband and cast forth the
+child, the tender infant, to wander homeless and hungry and cold till
+he die, and have saved the mother alive in the cruelty of their tender
+mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are they in the delight
+and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their death-hour, whether
+it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and lingering
+pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave, when the
+children's children shall revile the ashes of the fathers! Woe, woe,
+woe, at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the slain in
+this bloody land, and the father, the mother and the child, shall
+await them in a day that they cannot escape! Seed of the faith, seed
+of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know
+not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your voices,
+chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!"
+
+Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
+inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the
+hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience
+generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They
+remained stupefied, stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent
+which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its
+violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the
+usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed
+her in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.
+
+"Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane," he said,
+"Is it to the Lord's house that you come to pour forth the foulness of
+your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and
+remember that the sentence of death is on you--yea, and shall be
+executed, were it but for this day's work."
+
+"I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance," replied
+she, in a depressed, and even mild, tone. "I have done my mission unto
+thee and to thy people; reward me with stripes, imprisonment or death,
+as ye shall be permitted." The weakness of exhausted passion caused
+her steps to totter as she descended the pulpit stairs.
+
+The people, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on the floor
+of the house, whispering among themselves and glancing toward the
+intruder. Many of them now recognized her as the woman who had
+assaulted the governor with frightful language as he passed by the
+window of her prison; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer
+death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into
+the wilderness. The new outrage by which she had provoked her fate
+seemed to render further lenity impossible, and a gentleman in
+military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the
+door of the meetinghouse and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her
+feet press the floor, however, when an unexpected scene occurred. In
+that moment of her peril, when every eye frowned with death, a little
+timid boy threw his arms round his mother.
+
+"I am here, mother; it is I, and I will go with thee to prison," he
+exclaimed.
+
+She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost frightened expression, for
+she knew that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not
+hoped to see his face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one
+of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived
+her in the solitude of the desert or in prison; but when she felt his
+hand warm within her own and heard his little eloquence of childish
+love, she began to know that she was yet a mother.
+
+"Blessed art thou, my son!" she sobbed. "My heart was withered--yea,
+dead with thee and with thy father--and now it leaps as in the first
+moment when I pressed thee to my bosom."
+
+She knelt down and embraced him again and again, while the joy that
+could find no words expressed itself in broken accents, like the
+bubbles gushing up to vanish at the surface of a deep fountain. The
+sorrows of past years and the darker peril that was nigh cast not a
+shadow on the brightness of that fleeting moment. Soon, however, the
+spectators saw a change upon her face as the consciousness of her sad
+estate returned, and grief supplied the fount of tears which joy had
+opened. By the words she uttered it would seem that the indulgence of
+natural love had given her mind a momentary sense of its errors, and
+made her know how far she had strayed from duty in following the
+dictates of a wild fanaticism.
+
+"In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy," she said, "for
+thy mother's path has gone darkening onward, till now the end is
+death. Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were
+tottering, and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for;
+yet I have ill-performed a mother's part by thee in life, and now I
+leave thee no inheritance but woe and shame. Thou wilt go seeking
+through the world, and find all hearts closed against thee and their
+sweet affections turned to bitterness for my sake. My child, my child,
+how many a pang awaits thy gentle spirit, and I the cause of all!"
+
+She hid her face on Ilbrahim's head, and her long raven hair,
+discolored with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a
+veil. A low and interrupted moan was the voice of her heart's anguish,
+and it did not fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their
+involuntary virtue for a sin. Sobs were audible in the female section
+of the house, and every man who was a father drew his hand across his
+eyes.
+
+Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain feeling like the
+consciousness of guilt oppressed him; so that he could not go forth
+and offer himself as the protector of the child. Dorothy, however, had
+watched her husband's eye. Her mind was free from the influence that
+had begun to work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman and
+addressed her in the hearing of all the congregation.
+
+"Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be his mother," she said,
+taking Ilbrahim's hand. "Providence has signally marked out my husband
+to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our roof
+now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him.
+Leave the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his
+welfare."
+
+The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while
+she gazed earnestly in Dorothy's face. Her mild but saddened features
+and neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of
+fireside poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far
+as mortal could be so, in respect to God and man, while the
+enthusiast, in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had
+as evidently violated the duties of the present life and the future by
+fixing her attention wholly on the latter. The two females, as they
+held each a hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory: it was
+rational piety and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a
+young heart.
+
+"Thou art not of our people," said the Quaker, mournfully.
+
+"No, we are not of your people," replied Dorothy, with mildness, "but
+we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you. Doubt
+not that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our
+tender and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own
+children have gone before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no
+longer so," she added, in a faltering tone, "and your son will have
+all my care."
+
+"But will ye lead him in the path which his parents have trodden?"
+demanded the Quaker. "Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his
+father has died for, and for which I--even I--am soon to become an
+unworthy martyr? The boy has been baptized in blood; will ye keep the
+mark fresh and ruddy upon his forehead?"
+
+"I will not deceive you," answered Dorothy. "If your child become our
+child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has
+imparted to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we
+must do toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences,
+and not of yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your
+trust, even in complying with your wishes."
+
+The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and
+then turned her eyes upward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally,
+and the contention of her soul was evident.
+
+"Friend," she said, at length, to Dorothy, "I doubt not that my son
+shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe
+that even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world, for
+surely thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a
+husband. Doth he stand here among this multitude of people? Let him
+come forth, for I must know to whom I commit this most precious
+trust."
+
+She turned her face upon the male auditors, and after a momentary
+delay Tobias Pearson came forth from among them. The Quaker saw the
+dress which marked his military rank, and shook her head; but then she
+noted the hesitating air, the eyes that struggled with her own and
+were vanquished, the color that went and came and could find no
+resting-place. As she gazed an unmirthful smile spread over her
+features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot.
+Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake:
+
+"I hear it, I hear it! The voice speaketh within me and saith, 'Leave
+thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I have
+other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy
+love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.'
+I go, friends, I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence
+trusting that all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands
+there is a labor in the vineyard."
+
+She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and
+clung to his mother with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she
+had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands
+over his head in mental prayer, she was ready to depart.
+
+"Farewell, friends in mine extremity," she said to Pearson and his
+wife; "the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in heaven,
+to be returned a thousandfold hereafter.--And farewell, ye mine
+enemies, to whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a hair of my
+head, nor to stay my footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming
+when ye shall call upon me to witness for ye to this one sin
+uncommitted, and I will rise up and answer."
+
+She turned her steps toward the door, and the men who had stationed
+themselves to guard it withdrew and suffered her to pass. A general
+sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred.
+Sanctified by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the
+people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill and was lost
+behind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to
+renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already
+heard in many lands of Christendom, and she had pined in the cells of
+a Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the
+dungeons of the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the
+followers of the Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy
+and kindness which all the contending sects of our purer religion
+united to deny her. Her husband and herself had resided many months in
+Turkey, where even the sultan's countenance was gracious to them; in
+that pagan land, too, was Ilbrahim's birthplace, and his Oriental name
+was a mark of gratitude for the good deeds of an unbeliever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over
+Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like
+the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a
+piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after
+a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by
+many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their
+house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted
+infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed
+native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth and
+security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in
+the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim's demeanor lost a
+premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he
+became more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with
+freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered
+imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a
+certain unhealthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state
+Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from
+every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of
+happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
+points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety,
+coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the
+family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening
+moody countenances and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of
+the cottage.
+
+On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of
+pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy's prevailing temper
+sometimes yielded to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not
+always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently
+they appeared to flow--though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a
+cause--from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him
+often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household,
+and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the
+slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in
+distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and
+poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely
+forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
+sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he
+would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting
+in the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine
+beautifully round something stronger than itself; but if repulsed or
+torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's
+acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the
+child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a
+butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew
+daily less productive of familiar caresses.
+
+The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant
+and his protectors had not undergone a favorable change, in spite of
+the momentary triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over
+their sympathies. The scorn and bitterness of which he was the object
+were very grievous to Ilbrahim, especially when any circumstance made
+him sensible that the children his equals in age partook of the enmity
+of their parents. His tender and social nature had already overflowed
+in attachments to everything about him, and still there was a residue
+of unappropriated love which he yearned to bestow upon the little ones
+who were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on
+Ilbrahim was accustomed to remain for hours silent and inactive within
+hearing of the children's voices at their play, yet with his usual
+delicacy of feeling he avoided their notice, and would flee and hide
+himself from the smallest individual among them. Chance, however, at
+length seemed to open a medium of communication between his heart and
+theirs; it was by means of a boy about two years older than Ilbrahim,
+who was injured by a fall from a tree in the vicinity of Pearson's
+habitation. As the sufferer's own home was at some distance, Dorothy
+willingly received him under her roof and became his tender and
+careful nurse.
+
+Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy,
+and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting
+to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter
+immediately impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some
+examination to discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of
+the mouth and the irregular, broken line and near approach of the
+eyebrows. Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was an
+almost imperceptible twist of every joint and the uneven prominence of
+the breast, forming a body regular in its general outline, but faulty
+in almost all its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and
+reserved, and the village schoolmaster stigmatized him as obtuse in
+intellect, although at a later period of life he evinced ambition and
+very peculiar talents. But, whatever might be his personal or moral
+irregularities, Ilbrahim's heart seized upon and clung to him from the
+moment that he was brought wounded into the cottage; the child of
+persecution seemed to compare his own fate with that of the sufferer,
+and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had created a sort
+of relationship between them. Food, rest and the fresh air for which
+he languished were neglected; he nestled continually by the bedside of
+the little stranger and with a fond jealousy endeavored to be the
+medium of all the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became
+convalescent Ilbrahim contrived games suitable to his situation or
+amused him by a faculty which he had perhaps breathed in with the air
+of his barbaric birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary
+adventures on the spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible
+succession. His tales were, of course, monstrous, disjointed and
+without aim, but they were curious on account of a vein of human
+tenderness which ran through them all and was like a sweet familiar
+face encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The
+auditor paid much attention to these romances and sometimes
+interrupted them by brief remarks upon the incidents, displaying
+shrewdness above his years, mingled with a moral obliquity which
+grated very harshly against Ilbrahim's instinctive rectitude. Nothing,
+however, could arrest the progress of the latter's affection, and
+there were many proofs that it met with a response from the dark and
+stubborn nature on which it was lavished. The boy's parents at length
+removed him to complete his cure under their own roof.
+
+Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure, but he made
+anxious and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of
+the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant
+summer afternoon the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the
+little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the
+recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score
+of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced
+among the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this
+weary world as they journeyed by the spot marvelled why life,
+beginning in such brightness, should proceed in gloom, and their
+hearts or their imaginations answered them and said that the bliss of
+childhood gushes from its innocence. But it happened that an
+unexpected addition was made to the heavenly little band. It was
+Ilbrahim, who came toward the children with a look of sweet confidence
+on his fair and spiritual face, as if, having manifested his love to
+one of them, he had no longer to fear a repulse from their society. A
+hush came over their mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood
+whispering to each other while he drew nigh; but all at once the devil
+of their fathers entered into the unbreeched fanatics, and, sending up
+a fierce, shrill cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an
+instant he was the centre of a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks
+against him, pelted him with stones and displayed an instinct of
+destruction far more loathsome than the bloodthirstiness of manhood.
+
+The invalid, in the mean while, stood apart from the tumult, crying
+out with a loud voice, "Fear not, Ilbrahim; come hither and take my
+hand," and his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching
+the victim's struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye,
+the foul-hearted little villain lifted his staff and struck Ilbrahim
+on the mouth so forcibly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor
+child's arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of
+blows, but now he dropped them at once. His persecutors beat him down,
+trampled upon him, dragged him by his long fair locks, and Ilbrahim
+was on the point of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever entered
+bleeding into heaven. The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a
+few neighbors, who put themselves to the trouble of rescuing the
+little heretic, and of conveying him to Pearson's door.
+
+Ilbrahim's bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
+accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was
+more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a
+negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had
+previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried
+by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion which had once corresponded
+to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its
+former play of expression--the dance of sunshine reflected from moving
+water--was destroyed by the cloud over his existence; his notice was
+attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to
+find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him than at a
+happier period. A stranger founding his judgment upon these
+circumstances would have said that the dulness of the child's
+intellect widely contradicted the promise of his features, but the
+secret was in the direction of Ilbrahim's thoughts, which were
+brooding within him when they should naturally have been wandering
+abroad. An attempt of Dorothy to revive his former sportiveness was
+the single occasion on which his quiet demeanor yielded to a violent
+display of grief; he burst into passionate weeping and ran and hid
+himself, for his heart had become so miserably sore that even the hand
+of kindness tortured it like fire. Sometimes at night, and probably in
+his dreams, he was heard to cry, "Mother! Mother!" as if her place,
+which a stranger had supplied while Ilbrahim was happy, admitted of no
+substitute in his extreme affliction. Perhaps among the many
+life-weary wretches then upon the earth there was not one who combined
+innocence and misery like this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the
+victim of his own heavenly nature.
+
+While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an
+earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection
+in his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences
+found Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted
+and longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first
+effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened feeling,
+an incipient love for the child's whole sect, but joined to this, and
+resulting, perhaps, from self-suspicion, was a proud and ostentatious
+contempt of their tenets and practical extravagances. In the course of
+much thought, however--for the subject struggled irresistibly into his
+mind--the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident, and
+the points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another
+aspect or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go
+on even while he slept, and that which had been a doubt when he laid
+down to rest would often hold the place of a truth confirmed by some
+forgotten demonstration when he recalled his thoughts in the morning.
+But, while he was thus becoming assimilated to the enthusiasts, his
+contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them, grew very fierce against
+himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a
+sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his
+state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim's misfortune, and the emotions
+consequent upon that event completed the change of which the child had
+been the original instrument.
+
+In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the
+infatuation of their victims had decreased. The dungeons were never
+empty; the streets of almost every village echoed daily with the lash;
+the life of a woman whose mild and Christian spirit no cruelty could
+embitter had been sacrificed, and more innocent blood was yet to
+pollute the hands that were so often raised in prayer. Early after the
+Restoration the English Quakers represented to Charles II. that a
+"vein of blood was open in his dominions," but, though the displeasure
+of the voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not prompt.
+And now the tale must stride forward over many months, leaving Pearson
+to encounter ignominy and misfortune; his wife, to a firm endurance of
+a thousand sorrows; poor Ilbrahim, to pine and droop like a cankered
+rose-bud; his mother, to wander on a mistaken errand, neglectful of
+the holiest trust which can be committed to a woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson's
+habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from
+his broad hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and
+a ruddy light, and large logs dripping with half-melted snow lay ready
+to cast upon the embers. But the apartment was saddened in its aspect
+by the absence of much of the homely wealth which had once adorned it,
+for the exaction of repeated fines and his own neglect of temporal
+affairs had greatly impoverished the owner. And with the furniture of
+peace the implements of war had likewise disappeared; the sword was
+broken, the helm and cuirass were cast away for ever: the soldier had
+done with battles, and might not lift so much as his naked hand to
+guard his head. But the Holy Book remained, and the table on which it
+rested was drawn before the fire, while two of the persecuted sect
+sought comfort from its pages.
+
+He who listened while the other read was the master of the house, now
+emaciated in form and altered as to the expression and healthiness of
+his countenance, for his mind had dwelt too long among visionary
+thoughts and his body had been worn by imprisonment and stripes. The
+hale and weatherbeaten old man who sat beside him had sustained less
+injury from a far longer course of the same mode of life. In person he
+was tall and dignified, and, which alone would have made him hateful
+to the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed
+hat and rested on his shoulders. As the old man read the sacred page
+the snow drifted against the windows or eddied in at the crevices of
+the door, while a blast kept laughing in the chimney and the blaze
+leaped fiercely up to seek it. And sometimes, when the wind struck the
+hill at a certain angle and swept down by the cottage across the
+wintry plain, its voice was the most doleful that can be conceived; it
+came as if the past were speaking, as if the dead had contributed each
+a whisper, as if the desolation of ages were breathed in that one
+lamenting sound.
+
+The Quaker at length closed the book, retaining, however, his hand
+between the pages which he had been reading, while he looked
+steadfastly at Pearson. The attitude and features of the latter might
+have indicated the endurance of bodily pain; he leaned his forehead on
+his hands, his teeth were firmly closed and his frame was tremulous at
+intervals with a nervous agitation.
+
+"Friend Tobias," inquired the old man, compassionately, "hast thou
+found no comfort in these many blessed passages of Scripture?"
+
+"Thy voice has fallen on my ear like a sound afar off and indistinct,"
+replied Pearson, without lifting his eyes. "Yea; and when I have
+hearkened carefully, the words seemed cold and lifeless and intended
+for another and a lesser grief than mine. Remove the book," he added,
+in a tone of sullen bitterness; "I have no part in its consolations,
+and they do but fret my sorrow the more."
+
+"Nay, feeble brother; be not as one who hath never known the light,"
+said the elder Quaker, earnestly, but with mildness. "Art thou he that
+wouldst be content to give all and endure all for conscience' sake,
+desiring even peculiar trials that thy faith might be purified and thy
+heart weaned from worldly desires? And wilt thou sink beneath an
+affliction which happens alike to them that have their portion here
+below and to them that lay up treasure in heaven? Faint not, for thy
+burden is yet light."
+
+"It is heavy! It is heavier than I can bear!" exclaimed Pearson, with
+the impatience of a variable spirit. "From my youth upward I have been
+a man marked out for wrath, and year by year--yea, day after day--I
+have endured sorrows such as others know not in their lifetime. And
+now I speak not of the love that has been turned to hatred, the honor
+to ignominy, the ease and plentifulness of all things to danger, want
+and nakedness. All this I could have borne and counted myself blessed.
+But when my heart was desolate with many losses, I fixed it upon the
+child of a stranger, and he became dearer to me than all my buried
+ones; and now he too must die as if my love were poison. Verily, I am
+an accursed man, and I will lay me down in the dust and lift up my
+head no more."
+
+"Thou sinnest, brother, but it is not for me to rebuke thee, for I
+also have had my hours of darkness wherein I have murmured against the
+cross," said the old Quaker. He continued, perhaps in the hope of
+distracting his companion's thoughts from his own sorrows: "Even of
+late was the light obscured within me, when the men of blood had
+banished me on pain of death and the constables led me onward from
+village to village toward the wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was
+wielding the knotted cords; they sunk deep into the flesh, and thou
+mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my footsteps by the
+blood that followed. As we went on--"
+
+"Have I not borne all this, and have I murmured?" interrupted Pearson,
+impatiently.
+
+"Nay, friend, but hear me," continued the other. "As we journeyed on
+night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of the
+persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven forbid
+that I should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in the
+cottage windows, and I could discern the inmates as they gathered in
+comfort and security, every man with his wife and children by their
+own evening hearth. At length we came to a tract of fertile land. In
+the dim light the forest was not visible around it, and, behold, there
+was a straw-thatched dwelling which bore the very aspect of my home
+far over the wild ocean--far in our own England. Then came bitter
+thoughts upon me--yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul.
+The happiness of my early days was painted to me, the disquiet of my
+manhood, the altered faith of my declining years. I remembered how I
+had been moved to go forth a wanderer when my daughter, the youngest,
+the dearest of my flock, lay on her dying-bed, and--"
+
+"Couldst thou obey the command at such a moment?" exclaimed Pearson,
+shuddering.
+
+"Yea! yea!" replied the old man, hurriedly. "I was kneeling by her
+bedside when the voice spoke loud within me, but immediately I rose
+and took my staff and gat me gone. Oh that it were permitted me to
+forget her woeful look when I thus withdrew my arm and left her
+journeying through the dark valley alone! for her soul was faint and
+she had leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was
+assailed by the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a
+cruel parent; yea, even my daughter with her pale dying features
+seemed to stand by me and whisper, 'Father, you are deceived; go home
+and shelter your gray head.'--O Thou to whom I have looked in my
+furthest wanderings," continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes
+to heaven, "inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the
+unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and
+suffered for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!--But I
+yielded not; I knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the
+scourge bit more fiercely into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I
+went on in peace and joy toward the wilderness."
+
+The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of
+reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale, and his unwonted
+emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat
+in silence, with their faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its
+red embers new scenes of persecution yet to be encountered. The snow
+still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of
+the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed
+upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a
+neighboring apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyes of both
+Quakers to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous gust
+of wind had led his thoughts by a natural association to homeless
+travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation.
+
+"I have wellnigh sunk under my own share of this trial," observed he,
+sighing heavily; "yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so
+the child's mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and
+many, but this will be the sorest of all."
+
+"Fear not for Catharine," replied the old Quaker, "for I know that
+valiant woman and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother's
+heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with
+her faith; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has
+been thus early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and
+she will feel that he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her.
+Blessed, blessed are they that with so little suffering can enter into
+peace!"
+
+The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound:
+it was a quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson's wan
+countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him
+what to dread; the old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his
+glance was firm as that of the tried soldier who awaits his enemy.
+
+"The men of blood have come to seek me," he observed, with calmness.
+"They have heard how I was moved to return from banishment, and now am
+I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long
+looked for. I will open unto them lest they say, 'Lo, he feareth!'"
+
+"Nay; I will present myself before them," said Pearson, with recovered
+fortitude. "It may be that they seek me alone and know not that thou
+abidest with me."
+
+"Let us go boldly, both one and the other," rejoined his companion.
+"It is not fitting that thou or I should shrink."
+
+They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they
+opened, bidding the applicant "Come in, in God's name!" A furious
+blast of wind drove the storm into their faces and extinguished the
+lamp; they had barely time to discern a figure so white from head to
+foot with the drifted snow that it seemed like Winter's self come in
+human shape to seek refuge from its own desolation.
+
+"Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it may," said Pearson.
+"It must needs be pressing, since thou comest on such a bitter night."
+
+"Peace be with this household!" said the stranger, when they stood on
+the floor of the inner apartment.
+
+Pearson started; the elder Quaker stirred the slumbering embers of the
+fire till they sent up a clear and lofty blaze. It was a female voice
+that had spoken; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry,
+in that comfortable light.
+
+"Catharine, blessed woman," exclaimed the old man, "art thou come to
+this darkened land again? Art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as
+in former years? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and
+from the dungeon hast thou come forth triumphant, but strengthen,
+strengthen now thy heart, Catharine, for Heaven will prove thee yet
+this once ere thou go to thy reward."
+
+"Rejoice, friends!" she replied. "Thou who hast long been of our
+people, and thou whom a little child hath led to us, rejoice! Lo, I
+come, the messenger of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is
+over-past. The heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in
+gentleness toward us, and he hath sent forth his letters to stay the
+hands of the men of blood. A ship's company of our friends hath
+arrived at yonder town, and I also sailed joyfully among them."
+
+As Catharine spoke her eyes were roaming about the room in search of
+him for whose sake security was dear to her. Pearson made a silent
+appeal to the old man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task
+assigned him.
+
+"Sister," he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone, "thou
+tellest us of his love manifested in temporal good, and now must we
+speak to thee of that selfsame love displayed in chastenings.
+Hitherto, Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome
+and difficult path and leading an infant by the hand; fain wouldst
+thou have looked heavenward continually, but still the cares of that
+little child have drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth.
+Sister, go on rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede
+thine own no more."
+
+But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled. She shook like a
+leaf; she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her
+hair. The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his
+eye upon hers as if to repress any outbreak of passion.
+
+"I am a woman--I am but a woman; will He try me above my strength?"
+said Catharine, very quickly and almost in a whisper. "I have been
+wounded sore; I have suffered much--many things in the body, many in
+the mind; crucified in myself and in them that were dearest to me.
+Surely," added she, with a long shudder, "he hath spared me in this
+one thing." She broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence:
+"Tell me, man of cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast
+me down never to rise again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his
+hand?--And thou to whom I committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled
+thy trust? Give me back the boy well, sound, alive--alive--or earth
+and heaven shall avenge me!"
+
+The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint--the very
+faint--voice of a child.
+
+On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest and to
+Dorothy that Ilbrahim's brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its
+close. The two former would willingly have remained by him to make use
+of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to
+the time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing
+traveller's reception in the world whither he goes, may at least
+sustain him in bidding adieu to earth. But, though Ilbrahim uttered no
+complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked upon him; so that
+Dorothy's entreaties and their own conviction that the child's feet
+might tread heaven's pavement and not soil it had induced the two
+Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and,
+except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have
+been thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm
+began to rise, something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy's
+mind and to render his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing
+wind lingered to shake the casement, he strove to turn his head toward
+it; if the door jarred to and fro upon its hinges, he looked long and
+anxiously thitherward; if the heavy voice of the old man as he read
+the Scriptures rose but a little higher, the child almost held his
+dying-breath to listen; if a snowdrift swept by the cottage with a
+sound like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that
+some visitant should enter. But after a little time he relinquished
+whatever secret hope had agitated him and with one low complaining
+whisper turned his cheek upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy
+with his usual sweetness and besought her to draw near him; she did
+so, and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his, grasping it with a
+gentle pressure, as if to assure himself that he retained it. At
+intervals, and without disturbing the repose of his countenance, a
+very faint trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a mild
+but somewhat cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver.
+
+As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the
+borders of eternity, Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern
+the near though dim delightfulness of the home he was about to reach;
+she would not have enticed the little wanderer back, though she
+bemoaned herself that she must leave him and return. But just when
+Ilbrahim's feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice
+behind him, and it recalled him a few, few paces of the weary path
+which he had travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features she
+perceived that their placid expression was again disturbed. Her own
+thoughts had been so wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and
+of human speech were lost to her; but when Catharine's shriek pierced
+through the room, the boy strove to raise himself.
+
+"Friend, she is come! Open unto her!" cried he.
+
+In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside; she drew Ilbrahim
+to her bosom, and he nestled there with no violence of joy, but
+contentedly as if he were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into her
+face, and, reading its agony, said with feeble earnestness,
+
+"Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now;" and with these words the
+gentle boy was dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The king's mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual
+in preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities,
+trusting in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the
+supposed instability of the royal government, shortly renewed their
+severities in all other respects. Catharine's fanaticism had become
+wilder by the sundering of all human ties; and wherever a scourge was
+lifted, there was she to receive the blow; and whenever a dungeon was
+unbarred, thither she came to cast herself upon the floor. But in
+process of time a more Christian spirit--a spirit of forbearance,
+though not of cordiality or approbation--began to pervade the land in
+regard to the persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims
+eyed her rather in pity than in wrath, when the matrons fed her with
+the fragments of their children's food and offered her a lodging on a
+hard and lowly bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their
+sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast,--then did Catharine
+return to Pearson's dwelling, and made that her home.
+
+As if Ilbrahim's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his
+gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true
+religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same
+griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made
+the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement,
+she became a subject of not deep but general interest--a being on whom
+the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every
+one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to
+experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which
+are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a
+long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent
+sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim's
+green and sunken grave.
+
+
+
+
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
+Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker
+settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had
+a neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on
+each side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden
+tobacco-stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare and
+was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none
+the worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them say, would
+rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he
+beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used
+to court by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock, knowing
+well that the country-lasses of New England are generally great
+performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my
+story, the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always
+itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.
+
+After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler--whose name
+was Dominicus Pike--had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece
+of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little
+gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a
+morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An
+opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a
+sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of
+the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart.
+Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a
+bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a
+weary yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the
+freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do
+the same all day.
+
+"Good-morning, mister," said Dominicus, when within speaking-distance.
+"You go a pretty good jog. What's the latest news at Parker's Falls?"
+
+The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and
+answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker's Falls,
+which, as being the limit of his own day's journey, the pedler had
+naturally mentioned in his inquiry.
+
+"Well, then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, "let's have the latest news
+where you did come from. I'm not particular about Parker's Falls. Any
+place will answer."
+
+Being thus importuned, the traveller--who was as ill-looking a fellow
+as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods--appeared to
+hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news
+or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on the
+step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he
+might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.
+
+"I do remember one little trifle of news," said he. "Old Mr.
+Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight
+o'clock last night by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to
+the branch of a St. Michael's pear tree where nobody would find him
+till the morning."
+
+As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger
+betook himself to his journey again with more speed than ever, not
+even turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish
+cigar and relate all the particulars. The pedler whistled to his mare
+and went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr.
+Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him
+many a bunch of long nines and a great deal of pig-tail, lady's twist
+and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which
+the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a
+straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o'clock
+the preceding night, yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the
+morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham's own family
+had but just discovered his corpse hanging on the St. Michael's pear
+tree. The stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots, to
+travel at such a rate.
+
+"Ill-news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike, "but this
+beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
+President's message."
+
+The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a
+mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend
+did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and
+country-store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish
+wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself
+invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
+with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline till it
+became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of
+corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader, and a former
+clerk of his to whom Dominicus related the facts testified that the
+old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about
+nightfall with the money and valuable papers of the store in his
+pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham's
+catastrophe, hinting--what the pedler had discovered in his own
+dealings with him--that he was a crusty old fellow as close as a vise.
+His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping
+school in Kimballton.
+
+What with telling the news for the public good and driving bargains
+for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose
+to put up at a tavern about five miles short of Parker's Falls. After
+supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the
+bar-room and went through the story of the murder, which had grown so
+fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as
+twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for
+gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer who had arrived on
+horseback a short time before and was now seated in a corner, smoking
+his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately,
+brought his chair right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in
+the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever
+smelt.
+
+"Will you make affidavit," demanded he, in the tone of a
+country-justice taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham
+of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last and
+found hanging on his great pear tree yesterday morning?"
+
+"I tell the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus, dropping
+his half-burnt cigar. "I don't say that I saw the thing done, so I
+can't take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that way."
+
+"But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that if Squire Higginbotham
+was murdered night before last I drank a glass of bitters with his
+ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
+store as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
+little business for him on the road. He didn't seem to know any more
+about his own murder than I did."
+
+"Why, then it can't be a fact!" exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
+
+"I guess he'd have mentioned, if it was," said the old farmer; and he
+removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in
+the mouth.
+
+Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no
+heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself
+with a glass of gin and water and went to bed, where all night long he
+dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree.
+
+To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would
+have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham's), Dominicus rose in
+the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart and
+trotted swiftly away toward Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy
+road and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have
+encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to
+bear it, but he met neither ox-team, light wagon, chaise, horseman nor
+foot-traveller till, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came
+trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder, on the
+end of a stick.
+
+"Good-morning, mister," said the pedler, reining in his mare. "If you
+come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, maybe you can tell me the
+real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old
+fellow actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a
+nigger?"
+
+Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the
+stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this
+sudden question the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow
+hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus
+replied:
+
+"No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him
+last night at eight o'clock; I came away at seven. His folks can't
+have looked for him in the orchard yet."
+
+Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself and,
+though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace
+which would have kept the pedler's mare on a smart trot. Dominicus
+stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been
+committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it
+in all its circumstances on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham's
+corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the
+mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he was hanging
+in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the
+unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with
+the stranger's surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a
+hue-and-cry after him as an accomplice in the murder, since a murder,
+it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
+
+"But let the poor devil go," thought the pedler. "I don't want his
+black blood on my head, and hanging the nigger wouldn't unhang Mr.
+Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman? It's a sin, I know, but I
+should hate to have him come to life a second time and give me the
+lie."
+
+With these meditations Dominicus Pike drove into the street of
+Parker's Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as
+three cotton-factories and a slitting-mill can make it. The machinery
+was not in motion and but a few of the shop doors unbarred when he
+alighted in the stable-yard of the tavern and made it his first
+business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His second duty, of
+course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe to the hostler.
+He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too positive as to the date
+of the direful fact, and also to be uncertain whether it were
+perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto or by the son of Erin alone.
+Neither did he profess to relate it on his own authority or that of
+any one person, but mentioned it as a report generally diffused.
+
+The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and
+became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had
+originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker's Falls as
+any citizen of the place, being part-owner of the slitting-mill and a
+considerable stockholder in the cotton-factories. The inhabitants felt
+their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such was the excitement
+that the Parker's Falls _Gazette_ anticipated its regular day of
+publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and a column
+of double pica emphasized with capitals and headed "HORRID MURDER OF
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!" Among other dreadful details, the printed account
+described the mark of the cord round the dead man's neck and stated
+the number of thousand dollars of which he had been robbed; there was
+much pathos, also, about the affliction of his niece, who had gone
+from one fainting-fit to another ever since her uncle was found
+hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree with his pockets inside out.
+The village poet likewise commemorated the young lady's grief in
+seventeen stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and in
+consideration of Mr. Higginbotham's claims on the town determined to
+issue handbills offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the
+apprehension of his murderers and the recovery of the stolen property.
+
+Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker's Falls, consisting of
+shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory-girls, mill-men
+and schoolboys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible
+loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the
+cotton-machines, which refrained from their usual din out of respect
+to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown,
+his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult.
+
+Our friend Dominicus in his vanity of heart forgot his intended
+precautions, and, mounting on the town-pump, announced himself as the
+bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a
+sensation. He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had
+just begun a new edition of the narrative with a voice like a
+field-preacher when the mail-stage drove into the village street. It
+had travelled all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton at
+three in the morning.
+
+"Now we shall hear all the particulars!" shouted the crowd.
+
+The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern followed by a
+thousand people; for if any man had been minding his own business till
+then, he now left it at sixes and sevens to hear the news. The pedler,
+foremost in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom had been
+startled from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the centre of a
+mob. Every man assailing them with separate questions, all propounded
+at once, the couple were struck speechless, though one was a lawyer
+and the other a young lady.
+
+"Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about old
+Mr. Higginbotham!" bawled the mob. "What is the coroner's verdict? Are
+the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham's niece come out of her
+fainting-fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!"
+
+The coachman said not a word except to swear awfully at the hostler
+for not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had
+generally his wits about him even when asleep; the first thing he did
+after learning the cause of the excitement was to produce a large red
+pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely polite young
+man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as
+glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a
+fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such
+a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a
+love-tale from it as a tale of murder.
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies," said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the
+mill-men and the factory-girls, "I can assure you that some
+unaccountable mistake--or, more probably, a wilful falsehood
+maliciously contrived to injure Mr. Higginbotham's credit--has excited
+this singular uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o'clock
+this morning, and most certainly should have been informed of the
+murder had any been perpetrated. But I have proof nearly as strong as
+Mr. Higginbotham's own oral testimony in the negative. Here is a note
+relating to a suit of his in the Connecticut courts which was
+delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten
+o'clock last evening."
+
+So saying, the lawyer, exhibited the date and signature of the note,
+which irrefragably proved either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham
+was alive when he wrote it, or, as some deemed the more probable case
+of two doubtful ones, that he was so absorbed in worldly business as
+to continue to transact it even after his death. But unexpected
+evidence was forthcoming. The young lady, after listening to the
+pedler's explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and
+put her curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern door, making a
+modest signal to be heard.
+
+"Good people," said she, "I am Mr. Higginbotham's niece."
+
+A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy
+and bright--that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the
+authority of the Parker's Falls _Gazette_, to be lying at death's
+door in a fainting-fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted all along
+whether a young lady would be quite so desperate at the hanging of a
+rich old uncle.
+
+"You see," continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, "that this
+strange story is quite unfounded as to myself, and I believe I may
+affirm it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham. He
+has the kindness to give me a home in his house, though I contribute
+to my own support by teaching a school. I left Kimballton this morning
+to spend the vacation of commencement-week with a friend about five
+miles from Parker's Falls. My generous uncle, when he heard me on the
+stairs, called me to his bedside and gave me two dollars and fifty
+cents to pay my stage-fare, and another dollar for my extra expenses.
+He then laid his pocketbook under his pillow, shook hands with me, and
+advised me to take some biscuit in my bag instead of breakfasting on
+the road. I feel confident, therefore, that I left my beloved relative
+alive, and trust that I shall find him so on my return."
+
+The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so
+sensible and well worded, and delivered with such grace and propriety,
+that everybody thought her fit to be preceptress of the best academy
+in the State. But a stranger would have supposed that Mr. Higginbotham
+was an object of abhorrence at Parker's Falls and that a thanksgiving
+had been proclaimed for his murder, so excessive was the wrath of the
+inhabitants on learning their mistake. The mill-men resolved to bestow
+public honors on Dominicus Pike, only hesitating whether to tar and
+feather him, ride him on a rail or refresh him with an ablution at the
+town-pump, on the top of which he had declared himself the bearer of
+the news. The selectmen, by advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting
+him for a misdemeanor in circulating unfounded reports, to the great
+disturbance of the peace of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus
+either from mob-law or a court of justice but an eloquent appeal made
+by the young lady in his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt
+gratitude to his benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out
+of town under a discharge of artillery from the schoolboys, who found
+plenty of ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he
+turned his head to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham's
+niece a ball of the consistence of hasty-pudding hit him slap in the
+mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His whole person was so
+bespattered with the like filthy missiles that he had almost a mind to
+ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the town-pump;
+for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been a deed of
+charity.
+
+However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud--an
+emblem of all stains of undeserved opprobrium--was easily brushed off
+when dry. Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he
+refrain from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had excited.
+The handbills of the selectmen would cause the commitment of all the
+vagabonds in the State, the paragraph in the Parker's Falls _Gazette_
+would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in
+the London newspapers, and many a miser would tremble for his
+moneybags and life on learning the catastrophe of Mr. Higginbotham.
+The pedler meditated with much fervor on the charms of the young
+schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke nor looked
+so like an angel as Miss Higginbotham while defending him from the
+wrathful populace at Parker's Falls.
+
+Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along
+determined to visit that place, though business had drawn, him out of
+the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of
+the supposed murder he continued to revolve the circumstances in his
+mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed.
+Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveller,
+it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
+evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact, and there was
+a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly
+questioned. When to this singular combination of incidents it was
+added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's character
+and habits of life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael's
+pear tree, near which he always passed at nightfall, the
+circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted
+whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's
+direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries
+along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had
+in his service an Irishman of doubtful character whom he had hired
+without a recommendation, on the score of economy.
+
+"May I be hanged myself," exclaimed Dominicus Pike, aloud, on reaching
+the top of a lonely hill, "if I'll believe old Higginbotham is
+unhanged till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his own
+mouth. And, as he's a real shaver, I'll have the minister, or some
+other responsible man, for an endorser."
+
+It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton
+turnpike, about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name. His
+little mare was fast bringing him up with a man on horseback who
+trotted through the gate a few rods in advance of him, nodded to the
+toll-gatherer and kept on towards the village. Dominicus was
+acquainted with the toll-man, and while making change the usual
+remarks on the weather passed between them.
+
+"I suppose," said the pedler, throwing back his whiplash to bring it
+down like a feather on the mare's flank, "you have not seen anything
+of old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?"
+
+"Yes," answered the toll-gatherer; "he passed the gate just before you
+drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the
+dusk. He's been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff's
+sale there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat
+with me, but to-night he nodded, as if to say, 'Charge my toll,' and
+jogged on; for, wherever he goes, he must always be at home by eight
+o'clock."
+
+"So they tell me," said Dominicus.
+
+"I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,"
+continued the toll-gatherer. "Says I to myself tonight, 'He's more
+like a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.'"
+
+The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just
+discern the horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to
+recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham, but through the evening
+shadows and amid the dust from the horse's feet the figure appeared
+dim and unsubstantial, as if the shape of the mysterious old man were
+faintly moulded of darkness and gray light.
+
+Dominicus shivered. "Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other
+world by way of the Kimballton turnpike," thought he. He shook the
+reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the rear of
+the gray old shadow till the latter was concealed by a bend of the
+road. On reaching this point the pedler no longer saw the man on
+horseback, but found himself at the head of the village street, not
+far from a number of stores and two taverns clustered round the
+meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a gate, the
+boundary of a wood-lot beyond which lay an orchard, farther still a
+mowing-field, and last of all a house. These were the premises of Mr.
+Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had
+been left in the background by the Kimballton turnpike.
+
+Dominicus knew the place, and the little mare stopped short by
+instinct, for he was not conscious of tightening the reins. "For the
+soul of me, I cannot get by this gate!" said he, trembling. "I never
+shall be my own man again till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is
+hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree." He leaped from the cart, gave
+the rein a turn round the gate-post, and ran along the green path of
+the wood-lot as if Old Nick were chasing behind. Just then the village
+clock tolled eight, and as each deep stroke fell Dominicus gave a
+fresh bound and flew faster than before, till, dim in the solitary
+centre of the orchard, he saw the fated pear tree. One great branch
+stretched from the old contorted trunk across the path and threw the
+darkest shadow on that one spot. But something seemed to struggle
+beneath the branch.
+
+The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of
+peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful
+emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed forward, prostrated
+a sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip, and found--not,
+indeed, hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree, but trembling beneath
+it with a halter round his neck--the old identical Mr. Higginbotham.
+
+"Mr. Higginbotham," said Dominicus, tremulously, "you're an honest
+man, and I'll take your word for it. Have you been hanged, or not?"
+
+If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the
+simple machinery by which this "coming event" was made to cast its
+"shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr.
+Higginbotham; two of them successively lost courage and fled, each
+delaying the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in
+the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of
+fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of
+Dominicus Pike.
+
+It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into high
+favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress and
+settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves the
+interest. In due time the old gentleman capped the climax of his
+favors by dying a Christian death in bed; since which melancholy
+event, Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton and established a
+large tobacco-manufactory in my native village.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE ANNIE'S RAMBLE.
+
+
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+
+The town-crier has rung his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie
+stands on her father's doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the
+loud voice is talking about. Let me listen too. Oh, he is telling the
+people that an elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with
+horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to
+town and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them.
+Perhaps little Annie would like to go? Yes, and I can see that the
+pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street with the green
+trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine and the pavements
+and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept them
+with her broom. She feels that impulse to go strolling away--that
+longing after the mystery of the great world--which many children
+feel, and which I felt in my childhood. Little Annie shall take a
+ramble with me. See! I do but hold out my hand, and like some bright
+bird in the sunny air, with her blue silk frock fluttering upward from
+her white pantalets, she comes bounding on tiptoe across the street.
+
+Smooth back your brown curls, Annie, and let me tie on your bonnet,
+and we will set forth. What a strange couple to go on their rambles
+together! One walks in black attire, with a measured step and a heavy
+brow and his thoughtful eyes bent down, while the gay little girl
+trips lightly along as if she were forced to keep hold of my hand lest
+her feet should dance away from the earth. Yet there is sympathy
+between us. If I pride myself on anything, it is because I have a
+smile that children love; and, on the other hand, there are few grown
+ladies that could entice me from the side of little Annie, for I
+delight to let my mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless
+child. So come, Annie; but if I moralize as we go, do not listen to
+me: only look about you and be merry.
+
+Now we turn the corner. Here are hacks with two horses and
+stage-coaches with four thundering to meet each other, and trucks and
+carts moving at a slower pace, being heavily laden with barrels from
+the wharves; and here are rattling gigs which perhaps will be smashed
+to pieces before our eyes. Hitherward, also, comes a man trundling a
+wheelbarrow along the pavement. Is not little Annie afraid of such a
+tumult? No; she does not even shrink closer to my side, but passes on
+with fearless confidence, a happy child amidst a great throng of grown
+people who pay the same reverence to her infancy that they would to
+extreme old age. Nobody jostles her: all turn aside to make way for
+little Annie; and, what is most singular, she appears conscious of her
+claim to such respect. Now her eyes brighten with pleasure. A
+street-musician has seated himself on the steps of yonder church and
+pours forth his strains to the busy town--a melody that has gone
+astray among the tramp of footsteps, the buzz of voices and the war of
+passing wheels. Who heeds the poor organ-grinder? None but myself and
+little Annie, whose feet begin to move in unison with the lively tune,
+as if she were loth that music should be wasted without a dance. But
+where would Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes or
+the rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age, some feeble
+with disease; some are so lean that their bones would rattle, and
+others of such ponderous size that their agility would crack the
+flagstones; but many, many have leaden feet because their hearts are
+far heavier than lead. It is a sad thought that I have chanced upon.
+What a company of dancers should we be! For I too am a gentleman of
+sober footsteps, and therefore, little Annie, let us walk sedately on.
+
+It is a question with me whether this giddy child or my sage self have
+most pleasure in looking at the shop-windows. We love the silks of
+sunny hue that glow within the darkened premises of the spruce
+dry-goods men; we are pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver and
+the chased gold, the rings of wedlock and the costly love-ornaments,
+glistening at the window of the jeweller; but Annie, more than I,
+seeks for a glimpse of her passing figure in the dusty looking-glasses
+at the hardware-stores. All that is bright and gay attracts us both.
+
+Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood as well as
+present partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the
+fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner--those pies with such
+white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich
+mince with whole plums intermixed, or piquant apple delicately
+rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty
+pyramid; those sweet little circlets sweetly named kisses; those dark
+majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress,
+mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered with sugar! Then
+the mighty treasures of sugarplums, white and crimson and yellow, in
+large glass vases, and candy of all varieties, and those little
+cockles--or whatever they are called--much prized by children for
+their sweetness, and more for the mottoes which they enclose, by
+love-sick maids and bachelors! Oh, my mouth waters, little Annie, and
+so doth yours, but we will not be tempted except to an imaginary
+feast; so let us hasten onward devouring the vision of a plum-cake.
+
+Here are pleasures, as some people would say, of a more exalted kind,
+in the window of a bookseller. Is Annie a literary lady? Yes; she is
+deeply read in Peter Parley's tomes and has an increasing love for
+fairy-tales, though seldom met with nowadays, and she will subscribe
+next year to the _Juvenile Miscellany_. But, truth to tell, she
+is apt to turn away from the printed page and keep gazing at the
+pretty pictures, such as the gay-colored ones which make this
+shop-window the continual loitering-place of children. What would
+Annie think if, in the book which I mean to send her on New Year's
+day, she should find her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco
+with gilt edges, there to remain till she become a woman grown with
+children of her own to read about their mother's childhood? That would
+be very queer.
+
+Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand,
+till suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town. Oh,
+my stars! Is this a toyshop, or is it fairy-land? For here are gilded
+chariots in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by
+side, while their courtiers on these small horses should gallop in
+triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair. Here, too, are
+dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of those same princely
+personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest hall of
+their palace--full five feet high--and behold their nobles feasting
+adown the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen
+should sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here
+stands a turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly
+heathen as he is, and next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at
+Annie and myself. Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot in
+red-and-blue uniforms, with drums, fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of
+noiseless music; they have halted on the shelf of this window after
+their weary march from Liliput. But what cares Annie for soldiers? No
+conquering queen is she--neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine; her
+whole heart is set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a
+fashionable stare. This is the little girl's true plaything. Though
+made of wood, a doll is a visionary and ethereal personage endowed by
+childish fancy with a peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of
+romance, an actor and a sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the
+chief inhabitant of that wild world with which children ape the real
+one. Little Annie does not understand what I am saying, but looks
+wishfully at the proud lady in the window. We will invite her home
+with us as we return.--Meantime, good-bye, Dame Doll! A toy yourself,
+you look forth from your window upon many ladies that are also toys,
+though they walk and speak, and upon a crowd in pursuit of toys,
+though they wear grave visages. Oh, with your never-closing eyes, had
+you but an intellect to moralize on all that flits before them, what a
+wise doll would you be!--Come, little Annie, we shall find toys
+enough, go where we may.
+
+Now we elbow our way among the throng again. It is curious in the most
+crowded part of a town to meet with living creatures that had their
+birthplace in some far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in
+the wilderness of men. Look up, Annie, at that canary-bird hanging out
+of the window in his cage. Poor little fellow! His golden feathers are
+all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he would have glistened twice as
+brightly among the summer islands, but still he has become a citizen
+in all his tastes and habits, and would not sing half so well without
+the uproar that drowns his music. What a pity that he does not know
+how miserable he is! There is a parrot, too, calling out, "Pretty
+Poll! Pretty Poll!" as we pass by. Foolish bird, to be talking about
+her prettiness to strangers, especially as she is not a pretty Poll,
+though gaudily dressed in green and yellow! If she had said "Pretty
+Annie!" there would have been some sense in it. See that gray squirrel
+at the door of the fruit-shop whirling round and round so merrily
+within his wire wheel! Being condemned to the treadmill, he makes it
+an amusement. Admirable philosophy!
+
+Here comes a big, rough dog--a countryman's dog--in search of his
+master, smelling at everybody's heels and touching little Annie's hand
+with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have
+patted him.--Success to your search, Fidelity!--And there sits a great
+yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat,
+gazing at this transitory world with owl's eyes, and making pithy
+comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.--Oh,
+sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a pair of
+philosophers.
+
+Here we see something to remind us of the town-crier and his
+ding-dong-bell. Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air,
+pictured all over with wild beasts, as if they had met together to
+choose a king, according to their custom in the days of �sop. But they
+are choosing neither a king nor a President, else we should hear a
+most horrible snarling! They have come from the deep woods and the
+wild mountains and the desert sands and the polar snows only to do
+homage to my little Annie. As we enter among them the great elephant
+makes us a bow in the best style of elephantine courtesy, bending
+lowly down his mountain bulk, with trunk abased and leg thrust out
+behind. Annie returns the salute, much to the gratification of the
+elephant, who is certainly the best-bred monster in the caravan. The
+lion and the lioness are busy with two beef-bones. The royal tiger,
+the beautiful, the untamable, keeps pacing his narrow cage with a
+haughty step, unmindful of the spectators or recalling the fierce
+deeds of his former life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such
+inferior animals from the jungles of Bengal.
+
+Here we see the very same wolf--do not go near him, Annie!--the
+selfsame wolf that devoured little Red Riding-Hood and her
+grandmother. In the next cage a hyena from Egypt who has doubtless
+howled around the pyramids and a black bear from our own forests are
+fellow-prisoners and most excellent friends. Are there any two living
+creatures who have so few sympathies that they cannot possibly be
+friends? Here sits a great white bear whom common observers would call
+a very stupid beast, though I perceive him to be only absorbed in
+contemplation; he is thinking of his voyages on an iceberg, and of his
+comfortable home in the vicinity of the north pole, and of the little
+cubs whom he left rolling in the eternal snows. In fact, he is a bear
+of sentiment. But oh those unsentimental monkeys! The ugly, grinning,
+aping, chattering, ill-natured, mischievous and queer little brutes!
+Annie does not love the monkeys; their ugliness shocks her pure,
+instinctive delicacy of taste and makes her mind unquiet because it
+bears a wild and dark resemblance to humanity. But here is a little
+pony just big enough for Annie to ride, and round and round he gallops
+in a circle, keeping time with his trampling hoofs to a band of music.
+And here, with a laced coat and a cocked hat, and a riding-whip in his
+hand--here comes a little gentleman small enough to be king of the
+fairies and ugly enough to be king of the gnomes, and takes a flying
+leap into the saddle. Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily
+gallops the pony, and merrily rides the little old gentleman.--Come,
+Annie, into the street again; perchance we may see monkeys on
+horseback there.
+
+Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie
+ever read the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder
+man proclaim that his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes
+another, mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast
+from a tin horn, as much as to say, "Fresh fish!" And hark! a voice on
+high, like that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing
+that some chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome
+caverns into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But,
+well-a-day, we hear a shrill voice of affliction--the scream of a
+little child, rising louder with every repetition of that smart,
+sharp, slapping sound produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie
+sympathizes, though without experience of such direful woe.
+
+Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear.
+Will he tell us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of
+beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than
+any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in
+his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried
+motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the
+sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.
+
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+
+Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It
+drowns the buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man's mind from
+his own business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends
+to the hushed chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the
+cellar kitchen where the hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who
+of all that address the public ear, whether in church or court-house
+or hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town-crier!
+What saith the people's orator?
+
+"Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue
+silk frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel
+eyes. Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother--"
+
+Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.--Oh, my pretty Annie, we
+forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and
+has sent the town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting
+old and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go
+my hand? Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go forget not to
+thank Heaven, my Annie, that after wandering a little way into the
+world you may return at the first summons with an untainted and
+unwearied heart, and be a happy child again. But I have gone too far
+astray for the town-crier to call me back.
+
+Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my
+ramble with little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious
+moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of
+childish imaginations about topics unworthy of a grown man's notice.
+Has it been merely this? Not so--not so. They are not truly wise who
+would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of
+aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple
+thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for little cause or
+none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us
+is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
+forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as
+yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
+to call ourselves young any more,--then it is good to steal away from
+the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
+hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of
+still fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
+struggle onward and do our part in life--perhaps as fervently as ever,
+but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
+wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!
+
+
+
+
+WAKEFIELD.
+
+
+In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,
+of a man--let us call him Wakefield--who absented himself for a long
+time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very
+uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be
+condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
+from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record
+of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
+found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
+London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in
+the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
+friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
+dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home
+every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
+great a gap in his matrimonial felicity--when his death was reckoned
+certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his
+wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood--he entered the
+door one evening quietly as from a day's absence, and became a loving
+spouse till death.
+
+This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the
+purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is
+one, I think, which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We
+know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly,
+yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least,
+it has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that
+the story must be true and a conception of its hero's character.
+Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent
+in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own
+meditation; or if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years
+of Wakefield's vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be
+a pervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done
+up neatly and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always
+its efficacy and every striking incident its moral.
+
+What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own
+idea and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his
+matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm,
+habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most
+constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest
+wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so;
+his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that tended to no
+purpose or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
+energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper
+meaning of the term, made no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold
+but not depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with
+riotous thoughts nor perplexed with originality, who could have
+anticipated that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place
+among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked
+who was the man in London the surest to perform nothing to-day which
+should be remembered on the morrow, they would have thought of
+Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She,
+without having analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet
+selfishness that had rusted into his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort
+of vanity, the most uneasy attribute about him; of a disposition to
+craft which had seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping
+of petty secrets hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she
+called a little strangeness sometimes in the good man. This latter
+quality is indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
+
+Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk
+of an October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat
+covered with an oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a
+small portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he
+is to take the night-coach into the country. She would fain inquire
+the length of his journey, its object and the probable time of his
+return, but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates
+him only by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the
+return-coach nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days,
+but, at all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening.
+Wakefield, himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is
+before him. He holds out his hand; she gives her own and meets his
+parting kiss in the matter-of-course way of a ten years' matrimony,
+and forth goes the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to
+perplex his good lady by a whole week's absence. After the door has
+closed behind him, she perceives it thrust partly open and a vision of
+her husband's face through the aperture, smiling on her and gone in a
+moment. For the time this little incident is dismissed without a
+thought, but long afterward, when she has been more years a widow than
+a wife, that smile recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of
+Wakefield's visage. In her many musings she surrounds the original
+smile with a multitude of fantasies which make it strange and awful;
+as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look
+is frozen on his pale features; or if she dreams of him in heaven,
+still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its
+sake, when all others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts
+whether she is a widow.
+
+But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along
+the street ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass
+of London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us
+follow close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous
+turns and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the
+fireside of a small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next
+street to his own and at his journey's end. He can scarcely trust his
+good-fortune in having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at
+one time he was delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted
+lantern, and again there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind
+his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he
+heard a voice shouting afar and fancied that it called his name.
+Doubtless a dozen busybodies had been watching him and told his wife
+the whole affair.
+
+Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this
+great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy
+bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee
+home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself
+even for a little week from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she
+for a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided
+from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true
+wife for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human
+affections--not that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close
+again.
+
+Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed,
+Wakefield lies down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads
+forth his arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed
+bed, "No," thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him; "I will not
+sleep alone another night." In the morning he rises earlier than usual
+and sets himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his
+loose and rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very
+singular step with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without
+being able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The
+vagueness of the project and the convulsive effort with which he
+plunges into the execution of it are equally characteristic of a
+feeble-minded man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as
+he may, and finds himself curious to know the progress of matters at
+home--how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and,
+briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which
+he was a central object will be affected by his removal. A morbid
+vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But how is
+he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this
+comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next
+street to his home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach
+had been whirling him away all night. Yet should he reappear, the
+whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly
+puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving
+to cross the head of the street and send one hasty glance toward his
+forsaken domicile. Habit--for he is a man of habits--takes him by the
+hand and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at
+the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon
+the step.--Wakefield, whither are you going?
+
+At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of
+the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries
+away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn
+his head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of
+him? Will not the whole household--the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the
+smart maid-servant and the dirty little footboy--raise a hue-and-cry
+through London streets in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master?
+Wonderful escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but
+is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice such as
+affects us all when, after a separation of months or years, we again
+see some hill or lake or work of art with which we were friends of
+old. In ordinary cases this indescribable impression is caused by the
+comparison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the
+reality. In Wakefield the magic of a single night has wrought a
+similar transformation, because in that brief period a great moral
+change has been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before
+leaving the spot he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife
+passing athwart the front window with her face turned toward the head
+of the street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with
+the idea that among a thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must
+have detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be
+somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal-fire of his
+lodgings.
+
+So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial
+conception and the stirring up of the man's sluggish temperament to
+put it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural
+train. We may suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying
+a new wig of reddish hair and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion
+unlike his customary suit of brown, from a Jew's old-clothes bag. It
+is accomplished: Wakefield is another man. The new system being now
+established, a retrograde movement to the old would be almost as
+difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.
+Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionally
+incident to his temper and brought on at present by the inadequate
+sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of
+Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to
+death. Well, twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each
+time with a heavier step, a paler cheek and more anxious brow, and in
+the third week of his non-appearance he detects a portent of evil
+entering the house in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker
+is muffled. Toward nightfall comes the chariot of a physician and
+deposits its big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence
+after a quarter of an hour's visit he emerges, perchance the herald of
+a funeral. Dear woman! will she die?
+
+By this time Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling,
+but still lingers away from his wife's bedside, pleading with his
+conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught
+else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks
+she gradually recovers. The crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps,
+but quiet, and, let him return soon or late, it will never be feverish
+for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the mist of Wakefield's mind
+and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf
+divides his hired apartment from his former home. "It is but in the
+next street," he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world.
+Hitherto he has put off' his return from one particular day to
+another; henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined--not
+to-morrow; probably next week; pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have
+nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the
+self-banished Wakefield.
+
+Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen
+pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays
+its strong hand on every deed which we do and weaves its consequences
+into an iron tissue of necessity.
+
+Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for ten years or so to
+haunt around his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be
+faithful to his wife with all the affection of which his heart is
+capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be
+remarked, he has lost the perception of singularity in his conduct.
+
+Now for a scene. Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a
+man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless
+observers, yet bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no
+common fate for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his
+low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and
+lustreless, sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener
+seem to look inward. He bends his head and moves with an indescribable
+obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the
+world. Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you
+will allow that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men from
+Nature's ordinary handiwork--have produced one such here. Next,
+leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the
+opposite direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of
+life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church.
+She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either
+died away or have become so essential to her heart that they would be
+poorly exchanged for joy. Just as the lean man and well-conditioned
+woman are passing a slight obstruction occurs and brings these two
+figures directly in contact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the
+crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder; they stand face to face,
+staring into each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation thus
+Wakefield meets his wife. The throng eddies away and carries them
+asunder. The sober widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to
+church, but pauses in the portal and throws a perplexed glance along
+the street. She passes in, however, opening her prayer-book as she
+goes.
+
+And the man? With so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands
+to gaze after him he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and
+throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break out;
+his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength; all the
+miserable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance, and
+he cries out passionately, "Wakefield, Wakefield! You are mad!"
+Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so
+moulded him to itself that, considered in regard to his
+fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to
+possess his right mind. He had contrived--or, rather, he had
+happened--to dissever himself from the world, to vanish, to give up
+his place and privileges with living men without being admitted among
+the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in
+the bustle of the city as of old, but the crowd swept by and saw him
+not; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at
+his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the
+affection of the other. It was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to
+retain his original share of human sympathies and to be still involved
+in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on
+them. It would be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect
+of such circumstances on his heart and intellect separately and in
+unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be conscious of it,
+but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the truth, indeed,
+would come, but only for the moment, and still he would keep saying,
+"I shall soon go back," nor reflect that he had been saying so for
+twenty years.
+
+I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear in the
+retrospect scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at
+first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no more than
+an interlude in the main business of his life. When, after a little
+while more, he should deem it time to re-enter his parlor, his wife
+would clap her hands for joy on beholding the middle-aged Mr.
+Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close of our
+favorite follies, we should be young men--all of us--and till
+Doomsday.
+
+One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is
+taking his customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his
+own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter
+down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his
+umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the
+parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and
+fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque
+shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin and the
+broad waist form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with
+the up-flickering and down-sinking blaze almost too merrily for the
+shade of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall,
+and is driven by the unmannerly gust full into Wakefield's face and
+bosom. He is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand
+wet and shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm
+him and his own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes
+which doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their
+bedchamber? No; Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the
+steps--heavily, for twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came
+down, but he knows it not.--Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole
+home that is left you? Then step into your grave.--The door opens. As
+he passes in we have a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize
+the crafty smile which was the precursor of the little joke that he
+has ever since been playing off at his wife's expense. How
+unmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman! Well, a good night's rest
+to Wakefield!
+
+This happy event--supposing it to be such--could only have occurred at
+an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the
+threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which
+shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the
+seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely
+adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that
+by stepping aside for a moment a man exposes himself to a fearful risk
+of losing his place for ever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it
+were, the outcast of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP.
+
+
+(SCENE, _the corner of two principal streets_,[1] _the_ TOWN-PUMP
+_talking through its nose_.)
+
+
+Noon by the north clock! Noon by the east! High noon, too, by these
+hot sunbeams, which full, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almost
+make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly,
+we public characters have a tough time of it! And among all the
+town-officers chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains for a
+single year the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed in
+perpetuity upon the town-pump? The title of "town-treasurer" is
+rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has.
+The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I
+provide bountifully for the pauper without expense to him that pays
+taxes. I am at the head of the fire department and one of the
+physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace all
+water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some
+of the duties of the town-clerk by promulgating public notices when
+they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief
+person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable
+pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright
+and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I
+stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all
+day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market,
+stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, and at night I hold a
+lantern over my head both to show where I am and keep people out of
+the gutters. At this sultry noontide I am cupbearer to the parched
+populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist.
+Like a dramseller on the mall at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and
+sundry in my plainest accents and at the very tiptop of my voice.
+
+[Footnote 1: Essex and Washington streets, Salem.]
+
+Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up,
+gentlemen! Walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the
+unadulterated ale of Father Adam--better than Cognac, Hollands,
+Jamaica, strong beer or wine of any price; here it is by the hogshead
+or the single glass, and not a cent to pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk
+up, and help yourselves!
+
+It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they
+come.--A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff and away again, so as to keep
+yourselves in a nice cool sweat.--You, my friend, will need another
+cupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as
+it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score
+of miles to-day, and like a wise man have passed by the taverns and
+stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat
+without and fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder or
+melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink
+and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the
+fiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup of
+mine.--Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great strangers
+hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a
+closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent.
+Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot
+gullet and is converted quite to steam in the miniature Tophet which
+you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an
+honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a
+dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so
+delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the
+flavor of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, remember
+that I keep a constant supply at the old stand.--Who next?--Oh, my
+little friend, you are let loose from school and come hither to scrub
+your blooming face and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule,
+and other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the town-pump? Take
+it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your
+heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now!
+There, my dear child! put down the cup and yield your place to this
+elderly gentleman who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones that I
+suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so
+much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for
+people who have no wine-cellars.--Well, well, sir, no harm done, I
+hope? Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe
+shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen
+love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the
+town-pump. This thirsty dog with his red tongue lolling out does not
+scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs and laps eagerly out
+of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again!--Jowler, did your
+worship ever have the gout?
+
+Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends, and
+while my spout has a moment's leisure I will delight the town with a
+few historical remniscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome
+shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn
+earth in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement.
+The water was as bright and clear and deemed as precious as liquid
+diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial till
+the fatal deluge of the firewater burst upon the red men and swept
+their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his
+followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long
+beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark.
+Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here out
+of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm and
+laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it
+was the watering-place, and, as it were, the washbowl, of the
+vicinity, whither all decent folks resorted to purify their visages
+and gaze at them afterward--at least, the pretty maidens did--in the
+mirror which it made. On Sabbath-days, whenever a babe was to be
+baptized, the sexton filled his basin here and placed it on the
+communion-table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the
+site of yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after another
+was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and
+waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as
+if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally the
+fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides and cart-loads
+of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming
+a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its
+refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the
+forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the course
+of time a town-pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring;
+and when the first decayed, another took its place, and then another,
+and still another, till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve
+you with my iron goblet. Drink and be refreshed. The water is as pure
+and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red sagamore beneath
+the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured
+under these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick
+buildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as this wasted and
+long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues
+of cold water--too little valued since your fathers' days--be
+recognized by all.
+
+Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence and
+spout forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for this
+teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or
+somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than
+the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on
+the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened
+with a gallon or two apiece and they can afford time to breathe it in
+with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around
+the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.
+
+But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the
+remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of
+modesty if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own
+multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you
+think of me, the better men and women you will find yourselves. I
+shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days, though on
+that account alone I might call myself the household god of a hundred
+families. Far be it from me, also, to hint, my respectable friends, at
+the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to
+keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight
+bells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the
+town-pump and found me always at my post firm amid the confusion and
+ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth
+while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma as the
+physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the
+nauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so, since the
+days of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial
+influence on mankind.
+
+No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede
+to me--if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a
+class--of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such
+spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of
+the vast portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from the
+fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall
+be my great confederate. Milk and water--the TOWN-PUMP and the Cow!
+Such is the glorious copartnership that shall tear down the
+distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the
+cider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolize
+the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then
+Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched
+where her squalid form may shelter herself. Then Disease, for lack of
+other victims, shall gnaw its own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do
+not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now the frenzy of
+hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire
+to son and rekindled in every generation by fresh draughts of liquid
+flame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of
+passion cannot but grow cool, and war--the drunkenness of
+nations--perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war of
+households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy--a
+calm bliss of temperate affections--shall pass hand in hand through
+life and lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close. To them the
+past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of
+such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces
+shall express what their spirits were and are to be by a lingering
+smile of memory and hope.
+
+Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised
+orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers
+undergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to
+themselves.--Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to
+wet my whistle.--Thank you, sir!--My dear hearers, when the world
+shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect
+your useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make a
+bonfire in honor of the town-pump. And when I shall have decayed like
+my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain
+richly sculptured take my place upon this spot. Such monuments should
+be erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of the
+distinguished champions of my cause. Now, listen, for something very
+important is to come next.
+
+There are two or three honest friends of mine--and true friends I know
+they are--who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do
+put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow
+upon the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.--I pray
+you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to
+get tipsy with zeal for temperance and take up the honorable cause of
+the town-pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy-bottle?
+Or can the excellent qualities of cold water be no otherwise
+exemplified than by plunging slapdash into hot water and woefully
+scalding yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral
+warfare which you are to wage--and, indeed, in the whole conduct of
+your lives--you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have
+never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and
+manifold disquietudes, of the world around me to reach that deep, calm
+well of purity which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out
+that soul, it is to cool earth's fever or cleanse its stains.
+
+One o'clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as
+well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance
+with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband
+while drawing her water, as Rachel did of old!--Hold out your vessel,
+my dear! There it is, full to the brim; so now run home, peeping at
+your sweet image in the pitcher as you go, and forget not in a glass
+of my own liquor to drink "SUCCESS TO THE TOWN-PUMP."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE.[1]
+
+A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
+Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after
+a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
+thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
+one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing
+for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was
+strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a
+rude hut of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that
+had drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower
+bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their
+number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies
+by the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no
+satisfaction at the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary
+region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay
+between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above
+their heads was that bleak verge where the hills throw off their
+shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either robe themselves in clouds or
+tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been
+too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the
+mountain-stream talked with the wind.
+
+[Footnote 1: The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant
+tale is founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately
+wrought up in prose. Sullivan, in his history of Maine, written since
+the Revolution, remarks that even then the existence of the Great
+Carbuncle was not entirely discredited.]
+
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and
+welcomed one another to the hut where each man was the host and all
+were the guests of the whole company. They spread their individual
+supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a
+general repast; at the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship
+was perceptible among the party, though repressed by the idea that the
+renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again
+in the morning. Seven men and one young woman, they warmed themselves
+together at the fire, which extended its bright wall along the whole
+front of their wigwam. As they observed the various and contrasted
+figures that made up the assemblage, each man looking like a
+caricature of himself in the unsteady light that flickered over him,
+they came mutually to the conclusion that an odder society had never
+met in city or wilderness, on mountain or plain.
+
+The eldest of the group--a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man some sixty
+years of age--was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of
+dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the bear
+had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those
+ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom in their early
+youth the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the
+passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew
+him as "the Seeker," and by no other name. As none could remember when
+he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the
+Saco that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had
+been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time,
+still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at
+eve. Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing
+a high-crowned hat shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond
+the sea--a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a
+mummy by continually stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling
+unwholesome fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It
+was told of him--whether truly or not--that at the commencement of his
+studies he had drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted
+it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment,
+and had never been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was
+Master Ichabod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston,
+and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a
+ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole
+hour after prayer-time every morning and evening in wallowing naked
+among an immense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the
+earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall
+notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly
+distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by
+a prodigious pair of spectacles which were supposed to deform and
+discolor the whole face of nature to this gentleman's perception. The
+fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity,
+as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully
+pined away, which was no more than natural if, as some people
+affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning mist and a slice of the
+densest cloud within his reach, sauced with moonshine whenever he
+could get it. Certain it is that the poetry which flowed from him had
+a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of the party was a young man
+of haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his
+plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the
+rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely on the jewelled
+pommel of his sword. This was the lord De Vere, who when at home was
+said to spend much of his time in the burial-vault of his dead
+progenitors rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all the
+earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust; so
+that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his
+whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic
+garb, and by his side a blooming little person in whom a delicate
+shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young
+wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew--two
+homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair who seemed
+strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had
+been set agog by the Great Carbuncle.
+
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
+sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
+object that of whatever else they began to speak their closing words
+were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
+the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
+traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
+and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
+could only be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago
+as when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it
+blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years
+till now that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a
+hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains,
+awoke at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a
+meteor, so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They
+spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the
+spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success
+from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its
+source a light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun.
+It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every
+other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
+scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one.
+As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian
+traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those
+who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher
+hills or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it
+hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing
+to believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or
+perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might
+naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the
+intricacies of forest, valley and mountain.
+
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
+looked round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object
+of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+
+"So, fellow-pilgrims," said he, "here we are, seven wise men and one
+fair damsel, who doubtless is as wise as any graybeard of the company.
+Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
+now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
+with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch
+it.--What says our friend in the bearskin? How mean you, good sir, to
+enjoy the prize which you have been seeking the Lord knows how long
+among the Crystal Hills?"
+
+"How enjoy it!" exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. "I hope for no
+enjoyment from it: that folly has past long ago. I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth has become
+a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength, the energy
+of my soul, the warmth of my blood and the pith and marrow of my bones.
+Were I to turn my back upon it, I should fall down dead on the hither
+side of the notch which is the gateway of this mountain-region. Yet not
+to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of is
+deemed little better than a traffic with the evil one. Now, think ye
+that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, body, reputation
+and estate without a reasonable chance of profit?"
+
+
+At "Yet...profit?" the Seeker's dialogue is suddenly interpolated with
+that of Master Pigsnort, in the original story a few paragraphs later,
+making this exchange nonsensical. A good version of the story can be
+found here: http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/tgc.html , as well as on the
+Internet Archive and in print editions. Ideally, you would check this
+entire ebook with the other editions to make sure there are no more such
+textual errors. The above-quoted paragraph should be as follows,
+including the paragraphs missing from the text:
+
+
+"How enjoy it!" exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. "I hope for no
+enjoyment from it--that folly has past, long ago! I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has
+become a fate upon me, in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength--the
+energy of my soul--the warmth of my blood, and the pith and marrow of my
+bones! Were I to turn my back upon it, I should fall down dead, on the
+hither side of the Notch, which is the gate-way of this mountain region.
+Yet, not to have my wasted life time back again, would I give up my
+hopes of the Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I shall bear it to a
+certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie
+down and die, and keep it buried with me for ever."
+
+"Oh, wretch, regardless of the interests of science!" cried Doctor
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. "Thou art not worthy to
+behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
+ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose
+for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle.
+Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good people,
+that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I shall
+return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to its
+first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
+powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
+will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design to
+melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
+various methods, I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
+the result of my labours upon the world, in a folio volume."
+
+"Excellent!" quoth the man with the spectacles. "Nor need you hesitate,
+learned Sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
+the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to concoct
+a Great Carbuncle of his own."
+
+"But, verily," said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, "for mine own part, I
+object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to
+reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, Sirs, I
+have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular
+traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my
+credit to great hazard, and furthermore, have put myself to peril of
+death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all this without
+daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for the
+Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the evil
+one. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul,
+body, reputation and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?"
+
+"Not I, pious Master Pigsnort," said the man with the spectacles. "I
+never laid such a great folly to thy charge."
+
+"Truly, I hope not," said the merchant. "Now, as touching this Great
+Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it,
+but, be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will
+surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an
+incalculable sum; wherefore I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
+shipboard and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into
+heathendom if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
+dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the
+earth, that he may place it among his crown-jewels. If any of ye have
+a wiser plan, let him expound it."
+
+"That have I, thou sordid man!" exclaimed the poet. "Dost thou desire
+nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this
+ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For
+myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my
+attic-chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London. There night and
+day will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be
+diffused throughout my intellectual powers and gleam brightly in every
+line of poesy that I indite. Thus long ages after I am gone the
+splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name."
+
+"Well said, Master Poet!" cried he of the spectacles. "Hide it under
+thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes and make
+thee look like a jack-o'-lantern!"
+
+"To think," ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather to himself than his
+companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
+intercourse--"to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
+of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grubb street! Have not
+I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter
+ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it
+flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits
+of armor, the banners and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and
+keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other
+adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it and make
+it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never on the diadem
+of the White Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so
+honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres."
+
+"It is a noble thought," said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer.
+"Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral
+lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship's progenitors
+more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle-hall."
+
+"Nay, forsooth," observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in
+hand with his bride, "the gentleman has bethought himself of a
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
+for a like purpose."
+
+"How, fellow?" exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise. "What castle-hall
+hast thou to hang it in?"
+
+"No castle," replied Matthew, "but as neat a cottage as any within
+sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I,
+being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great
+Carbuncle because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings
+and it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they
+visit us! It will shine through the house, so that we may pick up a
+pin in any corner, and will set all the windows a-glowing as if there
+were a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant,
+when we awake in the night, to be able to see one another's faces!"
+
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of
+the young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable
+stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud
+to adorn his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had
+sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such
+an expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew asked him rather
+peevishly what he himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
+
+"The Great Carbuncle!" answered the cynic, with ineffable scorn. "Why,
+you blockhead, there is no such thing in _rerum natur�_. I have
+come three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every
+peak of these mountains and poke my head into every chasm for the sole
+purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less
+an ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug."
+
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
+adventurers to the Crystal Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so
+impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
+was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
+the darkness instead of heavenward, and who, could they but extinguish
+the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight
+gloom their chiefest glory.
+
+As the cynic spoke several of the party were startled by a gleam of
+red splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains
+and the rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with an illumination
+unlike that of their fire, on the trunks and black boughs of the
+forest-trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard
+nothing, and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The
+stars--those dial-points of heaven--now warned the adventurers to
+close their eyes on the blazing logs and open them in dreams to the
+glow of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
+corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
+a curtain of curiously-woven twigs such as might have hung in deep
+festoons around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
+wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking.
+She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke
+from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of
+one another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant and with one happy
+smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
+consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
+recollect where they were than the bride peeped through the
+interstices of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of the
+hut was deserted.
+
+"Up, dear Matthew!" cried she, in haste. "The strange folk are all
+gone. Up this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!"
+
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty
+prize which had lured them thither that they had slept peacefully all
+night and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine,
+while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish
+wakefulness or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize
+their dreams with the curliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah
+after their calm rest were as light as two young deer, and merely
+stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the
+Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food ere they turned their
+faces to the mountain-side. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal
+affection as they toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength
+from the mutual aid which they afforded.
+
+After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe and
+the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bough, they reached the upper
+verge of the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course.
+The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto
+shut in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of
+wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine that rose
+immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness
+which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths
+rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude.
+
+"Shall we go on?" said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist
+both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to
+it.
+
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels,
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
+world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+
+"Let us climb a little higher," whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
+turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+
+"Come, then," said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing
+her along with him; for she became timid again the moment that he grew
+bold.
+
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
+treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines
+which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
+reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments
+of naked rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn reared by giants
+in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
+breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentred in
+their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed
+no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them within the
+verge of the forest-trees, and sent a farewell glance after her
+children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never
+been. But soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark
+the mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the
+vast landscape and sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest
+mountain-peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally
+the vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the
+appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden,
+but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth
+which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth
+again--more intensely, alas! than beneath a clouded sky they had ever
+desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their
+desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain,
+concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated--at least, for
+them--the whole region of visible space. But they drew closer together
+with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud
+should snatch them from each other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would
+have been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and
+heaven as they could find foothold if Hannah's strength had not begun
+to fail, and with that her courage also. Her breath grew short. She
+refused to burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered
+against his side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort.
+At last she sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity.
+
+"We are lost, dear Matthew," said she, mournfully; "we shall never
+find our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been
+in our cottage!"
+
+"Dear heart, we will yet be happy there," answered Matthew. "Look! In
+this direction the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its aid I
+can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back,
+love, and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle."
+
+"The sun cannot be yonder," said Hannah, with despondence. "By this
+time it must be noon; if there could ever be any sunshine here, it
+would come from above our heads."
+
+"But look!" repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. "It is
+brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?"
+
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
+through the mist and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
+continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
+with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
+mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
+started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely
+the effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old
+chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on they
+saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on
+the very border of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly
+beautiful, spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been
+scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its
+surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed
+their eyes, with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid
+splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the
+enchanted lake.
+
+For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery and found the
+long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms
+around each other and trembled at their own success, for as the
+legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory they felt
+themselves marked out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful.
+Often from childhood upward they had seen it shining like a distant
+star, and now that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their
+hearts. They seemed changed to one another's eyes in the red
+brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire
+to the lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back
+before its power. But with their next glance they beheld an object
+that drew their attention even from the mighty stone. At the base of
+the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure
+of a man with his arms extended in the act of climbing and his face
+turned upward as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred
+not, no more than if changed to marble.
+
+"It is the Seeker," whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
+husband's arm. "Matthew, he is dead."
+
+"The joy of success has killed him," replied Matthew, trembling
+violently. "Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
+death."
+
+"'The Great Carbuncle'!" cried a peevish voice behind them. "The great
+humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me."
+
+They turned their heads, and there was the cynic with his prodigious
+spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
+the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
+Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all
+the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
+radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet
+as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be
+convinced that there was the least glimmer there.
+
+"Where is your great humbug?" he repeated. "I challenge you to make me
+see it."
+
+"There!" said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
+turning the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. "Take off those
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it."
+
+Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic's sight in
+at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people
+gaze at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them
+from his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the
+Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep,
+shuddering groan, he dropped his head and pressed both hands across
+his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was in very truth no light of
+the Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
+itself, for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects
+through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a
+single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
+vision, had blinded him for ever.
+
+"Matthew," said Hannah, clinging to him, "let us go hence."
+
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling down, supported her in
+his arms while he threw some of the thrillingly-cold water of the
+enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not
+renovate her courage.
+
+"Yes, dearest," cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
+breast; "we will go hence and return to our humble cottage. The
+blessed sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our
+window. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and
+be happy in its light. But never again will we desire more light than
+all the world may share with us."
+
+"No," said his bride, "for how could we live by day or sleep by night
+in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle?"
+
+Out of the hollow of their hands they drank each a draught from the
+lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly
+lip. Then, lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered
+not a word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched
+heart, they began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left the shore,
+till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell
+glance toward the cliff and beheld the vapors gathering in dense
+volumes, through which the gem burned duskily.
+
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
+on to tell that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up
+the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake
+himself again to his warehouse, near the town-dock, in Boston. But as
+he passed through the Notch of the mountains a war-party of Indians
+captured our unlucky merchant and carried him to Montreal, there
+holding him in bondage till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had
+woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long
+absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the
+rest of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a
+sixpence-worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned
+to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he
+ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible and burnt
+with the blowpipe, and published the result of his experiments in one
+of the heaviest folios of the day. And for all these purposes the gem
+itself could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a
+somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice which he
+found in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it
+corresponded in all points with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The
+critics say that, if his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it
+retained all the coldness of the ice. The lord De Vere went back to
+his ancestral hall, where he contented himself with a wax-lighted
+chandelier, and filled in due course of time another coffin in the
+ancestral vault. As the funeral torches gleamed within that dark
+receptacle, there was no need of the Great Carbuncle to show the
+vanity of earthly pomp.
+
+The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world
+a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light
+for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long he
+would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
+his face eastward at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a
+pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumination of Saint
+Peter's church, and finally perished in the Great Fire of London, into
+the midst of which he had thrust himself with the desperate idea of
+catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
+heaven.
+
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of
+telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward
+the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full
+credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the
+ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that from the hour when
+two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel
+which would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned. When
+our pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone with
+particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition
+that as the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the
+forehead of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake, and that at
+noontide the Seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its
+quenchless gleam.
+
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and
+say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
+lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that many
+a mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a wondrous light around their
+summits, and was lured by the faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim
+of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROPHETIC PICTURES.[1]
+
+
+"But this painter!" cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. "He not only
+excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all
+other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives
+lectures in anatomy to Dr. Boylston. In a word, he will meet the
+best-instructed man among us on his own ground. Moreover, he is a
+polished gentleman, a citizen of the world--yes, a true cosmopolite;
+for he will speak like a native of each clime and country on the
+globe, except our own forests, whither he is now going. Nor is all
+this what I most admire in him."
+
+[Footnote 1: This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart related
+in Dunlap's _History of the Arts of Designs_--a most entertaining
+book to the general reader, and a deeply-interesting one, we should
+think, to the artist.]
+
+"Indeed!" said Elinor, who had listened with a women's interest to the
+description of such a man. "Yet this is admirable enough."
+
+"Surely it is," replied her lover, "but far less so than his natural
+gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that
+all men--and all women too, Elinor--shall find a mirror of themselves
+in this wonderful painter. But the greatest wonder is yet to be told."
+
+"Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these," said Elinor,
+laughing, "Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are you
+telling me of a painter, or a wizard?"
+
+"In truth," answered he, "that question might be asked much more
+seriously than you suppose. They say that he paints not merely a man's
+features, but his mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments and
+passions and throws them upon the canvas like sunshine, or perhaps, in
+the portraits of dark-souled men, like a gleam of infernal fire. It is
+an awful gift," added Walter, lowering his voice from its tone of
+enthusiasm. "I shall be almost afraid to sit to him."
+
+"Walter, are you in earnest?" exclaimed Elinor.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look
+which you now wear," said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed.
+"There! it is passing away now; but when you spoke, you seemed
+frightened to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" answered Elinor, hastily. "You paint my face with
+your own fantasies. Well, come for me tomorrow, and we will visit this
+wonderful artist."
+
+But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a
+remarkable expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face
+of his mistress. It was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance
+with what should have been the feelings of a maiden on the eve of
+wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of her heart.
+
+"A look!" said Elinor to herself. "No wonder that it startled him if
+it expressed what I sometimes feel. I know by my own experience how
+frightful a look may be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of it
+at the time; I have seen nothing of it since; I did but dream it;" and
+she busied herself about the embroidery of a ruff in which she meant
+that her portrait should be taken.
+
+The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native
+artists who at a later period than this borrowed their colors from the
+Indians and manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts.
+Perhaps, if he could have revoked his life and prearranged his
+destiny, he might have chosen to belong to that school without a
+master in the hope of being at least original, since there were no
+works of art to imitate nor rules to follow. But he had been born and
+educated in Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or
+beauty of conception and every touch of the master-hand in all the
+most famous pictures in cabinets and galleries and on the walls of
+churches till there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn.
+Art could add nothing to its lessons, but Nature might. He had,
+therefore, visited a world whither none of his professional brethren
+had preceded him, to feast his eyes on visible images that were noble
+and picturesque, yet had never been transferred to canvas. America was
+too poor to afford other temptations to an artist of eminence, though
+many of the colonial gentry on the painter's arrival had expressed a
+wish to transmit their lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill.
+Whenever such proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the
+applicant and seemed to look him through and through. If he beheld
+only a sleek and comfortable visage, though there were a gold-laced
+coat to adorn the picture and golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly
+rejected the task and the reward; but if the face were the index of
+anything uncommon in thought, sentiment or experience, or if he met a
+beggar in the street with a white beard and a furrowed brow, or if
+sometimes a child happened to look up and smile, he would exhaust all
+the art on them that he denied to wealth.
+
+Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an
+object of general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the
+technical merit of his productions, yet there were points in regard to
+which the opinion of the crowd was as valuable as the refined judgment
+of the amateur. He watched the effect that each picture produced on
+such untutored beholders, and derived profit from their remarks, while
+they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature herself as him
+who seemed to rival her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was
+tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it
+an offence against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of
+the Creator, to bring into existence such lively images of his
+creatures. Others, frightened at the art which could raise phantoms at
+will and keep the form of the dead among the living, were inclined to
+consider the painter as a magician, or perhaps the famous Black Man of
+old witch-times plotting mischief in a new guise. These foolish
+fancies were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior
+circles his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising
+like smoke-wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused
+by the varied knowledge and talents which he made subservient to his
+profession.
+
+Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to
+obtain their portraits as the first of what, they doubtless hoped,
+would be a long series of family pictures. The day after the
+conversation above recorded they visited the painter's rooms. A
+servant ushered them into an apartment where, though the artist
+himself was not visible, there were personages whom they could hardly
+forbear greeting with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the whole
+assembly were but pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the
+idea of life and intellect from such striking counterfeits. Several of
+the portraits were known to them either as distinguished characters of
+the day or their private acquaintances. There was Governor Burnett,
+looking as if he had just received an undutiful communication from the
+House of Representatives and were inditing a most sharp response. Mr.
+Cooke hung beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy and somewhat
+puritanical, as befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir
+William Phipps eyed them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an
+imperious old dame not unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a
+very young man, wore the expression of warlike enterprise which long
+afterward made him a distinguished general. Their personal friends
+were recognized at a glance. In most of the pictures the whole mind
+and character were brought out on the countenance and concentrated
+into a single look; so that, to speak paradoxically, the originals
+hardly resembled themselves so strikingly as the portraits did.
+
+Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had
+almost vanished into the darkening canvas. There was also a pale but
+unfaded Madonna who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now
+regarded the lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to
+worship too.
+
+"How singular a thought," observed Walter Ludlow, "that this beautiful
+face has been beautiful for above two hundred years! Oh, if all beauty
+would endure so well! Do you not envy her, Elinor?"
+
+"If earth were heaven, I might," she replied. "But, where all things
+fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade!"
+
+"This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he
+be," continued Walter; "he troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly at
+us."
+
+"Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks," said Elinor.
+
+The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that
+had been recently commenced. After a little inspection they began to
+recognize the features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman,
+growing into shape and life, as it were, out of a cloud.
+
+"Kind old man!" exclaimed Elinor. "He gazes at me as if he were about
+to utter a word of paternal advice."
+
+"And at me," said Walter, "as if he were about to shake his head and
+rebuke me for some suspected iniquity. But so does the original. I
+shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before
+him to be married."
+
+They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the
+painter, who had been some moments in the room and had listened to a
+few of their remarks. He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well
+worthy of his own pencil. Indeed, by the picturesque though careless
+arrangement of his rich dress, and perhaps because his soul dwelt
+always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat like a portrait
+himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the artist
+and his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the
+canvas to salute them.
+
+Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the
+object of their visit. While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart
+his figure and Elinor's with so happy an effect that they also seemed
+living pictures of youth and beauty gladdened by bright fortune. The
+artist was evidently struck.
+
+"My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston
+must be brief," said he, thoughtfully; then, after an observant
+glance, he added, "But your wishes shall be gratified though I
+disappoint the chief-justice and Madame Oliver. I must not lose this
+opportunity for the sake of painting a few ells of broadcloth and
+brocade."
+
+The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into
+one picture and represent them engaged in some appropriate action.
+This plan would have delighted the lovers, but was necessarily
+rejected because so large a space of canvas would have been unfit for
+the room which it was intended to decorate. Two half-length portraits
+were therefore fixed upon. After they had taken leave, Walter Ludlow
+asked Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an influence over
+their fates the painter was about to acquire.
+
+"The old women of Boston affirm," continued he, "that after he has
+once got possession of a person's face and figure he may paint him in
+any act or situation whatever, and the picture will be prophetic. Do
+you believe it?"
+
+"Not quite," said Elinor, smiling. "Yet if he has such magic, there is
+something so gentle in his manner that I am sure he will use it well."
+
+It was the painter's choice to proceed with both the portraits at the
+same time, assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he
+sometimes used, that the faces threw light upon each other.
+Accordingly, he gave now a touch to Walter and now to Elinor, and the
+features of one and the other began to start forth so vividly that it
+appeared as if his triumphant art would actually disengage them from
+the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade they beheld their
+phantom selves, but, though the likeness promised to be perfect, they
+were not quite satisfied with the expression: it seemed more vague
+than in most of the painter's works. He, however, was satisfied with
+the prospect of success, and, being much interested in the lovers,
+employed his leisure moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon
+sketch of their two figures. During their sittings he engaged them in
+conversation and kindled up their faces with characteristic traits,
+which, though continually varying, it was his purpose to combine and
+fix. At length he announced that at their next visit both the
+portraits would be ready for delivery.
+
+"If my pencil will but be true to my conception in the few last
+touches which I meditate," observed he, "these two pictures will be my
+very best performances. Seldom indeed has an artist such subjects."
+While speaking he still bent his penetrative eye upon them, nor
+withdrew it till they had reached the bottom of the stairs.
+
+Nothing in the whole circle of human vanities takes stronger hold of
+the imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why
+should it be so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the
+andirons, the mirror-like water, and all other reflecting surfaces,
+continually present us with portraits--or, rather, ghosts--of
+ourselves which we glance at and straightway forget them. But we
+forget them only because they vanish. It is the idea of duration--of
+earthly immortality--that gives such a mysterious interest to our own
+portraits.
+
+Walter and Elinor were not insensible to this feeling, and hastened to
+the painter's room punctually at the appointed hour to meet those
+pictured shapes which were to be their representatives with posterity.
+The sunshine flashed after them into the apartment, but left it
+somewhat gloomy as they closed the door. Their eyes were immediately
+attracted to their portraits, which rested against the farthest wall
+of the room. At the first glance through the dim light and the
+distance, seeing themselves in precisely their natural attitudes and
+with all the air that they recognized so well, they uttered a
+simultaneous exclamation of delight.
+
+"There we stand," cried Walter, enthusiastically, "fixed in sunshine
+for ever. No dark passions can gather on our faces."
+
+"No," said Elinor, more calmly; "no dreary change can sadden us."
+
+This was said while they were approaching and had yet gained only an
+imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them,
+busied himself at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his
+visitors to form their own judgment as to his perfected labors. At
+intervals he sent a glance from beneath his deep eyebrows, watching
+their countenances in profile with his pencil suspended over the
+sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of the other's
+picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without
+uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward, then back, viewing
+Elinor's portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.
+
+"Is there not a change?" said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone.
+"Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid the longer I look. It is
+certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress, the
+features, all are the same, and yet something is altered."
+
+"Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?" inquired the
+painter, now drawing near with irrepressible interest.
+
+"The features are perfect Elinor," answered Walter, "and at the first
+glance the expression seemed also hers; but I could fancy that the
+portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it. The
+eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression.
+Nay, it is grief and terror. Is this like Elinor?"
+
+"Compare the living face with the pictured one," said the painter.
+
+Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and
+absorbed, fascinated, as it were, in contemplation of Walter's
+portrait, Elinor's face had assumed precisely the expression of which
+he had just been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before
+a mirror, she could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the
+picture itself been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her
+present aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared
+quite unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover.
+
+"Elinor," exclaimed Walter, in amazement, "what change has come over
+you?"
+
+She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her
+hand, and thus attracted her notice; then with a sudden tremor she
+looked from the picture to the face of the original.
+
+"Do you see no change in your portrait?" asked she.
+
+"In mine? None," replied Walter, examining it. "But let me see. Yes;
+there is a slight change--an improvement, I think, in the picture,
+though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than
+yesterday, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes and
+about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look, it
+becomes very decided."
+
+While he was intent on these observations Elinor turned to the
+painter. She regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid
+her with sympathy and commiseration, though wherefore she could but
+vaguely guess.
+
+"That look!" whispered she, and shuddered. "How came it there?"
+
+"Madam," said the painter, sadly, taking her hand and leading her
+apart, "in both these pictures I have painted what I saw. The
+artist--the true artist--must look beneath the exterior. It is his
+gift--his proudest, but often a melancholy one--to see the inmost
+soul, and by a power indefinable even to himself to make it glow or
+darken upon the canvas in glances that express the thought and
+sentiment of years. Would that I might convince myself of error in the
+present instance!"
+
+They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands
+almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched
+cottages, old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume,
+and all such picturesque vagaries of an artist's idle moments. Turning
+them over with seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures
+was disclosed.
+
+"If I have failed," continued he--"if your heart does not see itself
+reflected in your own portrait, if you have no secret cause to trust
+my delineation of the other--it is not yet too late to alter them. I
+might change the action of these figures too. But would it influence
+the event?" He directed her notice to the sketch.
+
+A thrill ran through Elinor's frame; a shriek was upon her lips, but
+she stifled it with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who
+hide thoughts of fear and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from
+the table, she perceived that Walter had advanced near enough to have
+seen the sketch, though she could not determine whether it had caught
+his eye.
+
+"We will not have the pictures altered," said she, hastily. "If mine
+is sad, I shall but look the gayer for the contrast."
+
+"Be it so," answered the painter, bowing. "May your griefs be such
+fanciful ones that only your pictures may mourn for them! For your
+joys, may they be true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely
+face till it quite belie my art!"
+
+After the marriage of Walter and Elinor the pictures formed the two
+most splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side,
+separated by a narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly,
+yet always returning the gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen
+who professed a knowledge of such subjects reckoned these among the
+most admirable specimens of modern portraiture, while common observers
+compared them with the originals, feature by feature, and were
+rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third
+class--neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people
+of natural sensibility--that the pictures wrought their strongest
+effect. Such persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming
+interested, would return day after day and study these painted faces
+like the pages of a mystic volume. Walter Ludlow's portrait attracted
+their earliest notice. In the absence of himself and his bride they
+sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter had intended
+to throw upon the features, all agreeing that there was a look of
+earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was less
+diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor's picture. They differed,
+indeed, in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the
+gloom that dwelt upon her face, but agreed that it was gloom and alien
+from the natural temperament of their youthful friend. A certain
+fanciful person announced as the result of much scrutiny that both
+these pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy
+strength of feeling in Elinor's countenance bore reference to the more
+vivid emotion--or, as he termed it, the wild passion--in that of
+Walter. Though unskilled in the art, he even began a sketch in which
+the action of the two figures was to correspond with their mutual
+expression.
+
+It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor's face was
+assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render
+her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the
+other hand, instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had
+given him on the canvas, became reserved and downcast, with no outward
+flashes of emotion, however it might be smouldering within. In course
+of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple silk wrought with
+flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the pictures,
+under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim
+them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the
+silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her
+presence.
+
+Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to
+the north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look
+over the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New
+England's loftiest mountain. But he did not profane that scene by the
+mockery of his art. He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake
+George, making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till
+not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He
+had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had
+flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as
+soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous
+cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery
+except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face,
+instinct with thought, passion or suffering. With store of such his
+adventurous ramble had enriched him. The stern dignity of Indian
+chiefs, the dusky loveliness of Indian girls, the domestic life of
+wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle beneath gloomy pine trees, the
+frontier fortress with its garrison, the anomaly of the old French
+partisan bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy deserts,--such were
+the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The glow of perilous
+moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles of fierce power, love,
+hate, grief, frenzy--in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old
+earth--had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was
+filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which
+genius would transmute into its own substance and imbue with
+immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had
+sought so far was found.
+
+But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its
+overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the
+companions of his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing
+purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of humankind.
+He had no aim, no pleasure, no sympathies, but what were ultimately
+connected with his art. Though gentle in manner and upright in intent
+and action, he did not possess kindly feelings; his heart was cold: no
+living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm. For
+these two beings, however, he had felt in its greatest intensity the
+sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his
+pencil. He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight and
+pictured the result upon their features with his utmost skill, so as
+barely to fall short of that standard which no genius ever reached,
+his own severe conception. He had caught from the duskiness of the
+future--at least, so he fancied--a fearful secret, and had obscurely
+revealed it on the portraits. So much of himself--of his imagination
+and all other powers--had been lavished on the study of Walter and
+Elinor that he almost regarded them as creations of his own, like the
+thousands with which he had peopled the realms of Picture. Therefore
+did they flit through the twilight of the woods, hover on the mist of
+waterfalls, look forth from the mirror of the lake, nor melt away in
+the noontide sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries
+of life nor pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits,
+each with an unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from
+the caverns of the soul. He could not recross the Atlantic till he had
+again beheld the originals of those airy pictures.
+
+"O glorious Art!" Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the
+street. "Thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable
+forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The
+dead live again; thou recallest them to their old scenes and givest
+their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and
+immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeting moments of history. With
+thee there is no past, for at thy touch all that is great becomes for
+ever present, and illustrious men live through long ages in the
+visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. O
+potent Art! as thou bringest the faintly-revealed past to stand in
+that narrow strip of sunlight which we call 'now,' canst thou summon
+the shrouded future to meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I
+not thy prophet?"
+
+Thus with a proud yet melancholy fervor did he almost cry aloud as he
+passed through the toilsome street among people that knew not of his
+reveries nor could understand nor care for them. It is not good for
+man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him
+by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires and
+hopes will become extravagant and he the semblance--perhaps the
+reality--of a madman. Reading other bosoms with an acuteness almost
+preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of his own.
+
+"And this should be the house," said he, looking up and down the front
+before he knocked. "Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it
+will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it
+is framed within them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest
+tints--the faces of the portraits, the figures and action of the
+sketch!"
+
+He knocked.
+
+"The portraits--are they within?" inquired he of the domestic; then,
+recollecting himself, "Your master and mistress--are they at home?"
+
+"They are, sir," said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
+picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,
+"and the portraits too."
+
+The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door
+with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was
+empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes
+were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured
+representatives, who had long been the objects of so singular an
+interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
+
+They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing
+before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich
+and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel
+with one hand, while the other grasped that of his bride. The
+pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished
+splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across the room rather
+than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been
+almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had
+successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of
+time into a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made
+it the very expression of the portrait. Walter's face was moody and
+dull or animated only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness
+for their momentary illumination. He looked from Elinor to her
+portrait, and thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he
+finally stood absorbed.
+
+The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him
+on its progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his
+mind. Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied
+itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which he had
+foreshadowed?
+
+Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as
+with his own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil
+influence that the painter had cast upon the features. Gradually his
+eyes kindled, while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of his
+face her own assumed a look of terror; and when, at last, he turned
+upon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was complete.
+
+"Our fate is upon us!" howled Walter. "Die!"
+
+Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground,
+and aimed it at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude
+of each the painter beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture,
+with all its tremendous coloring, was finished.
+
+"Hold, madman!" cried he, sternly.
+
+He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the
+wretched beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny
+as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician
+controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.
+
+"What!" muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce excitement
+into sullen gloom. "Does Fate impede its own decree?"
+
+"Wretched lady," said the painter, "did I not warn you?"
+
+"You did," replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the
+quiet grief which it had disturbed. "But I loved him."
+
+Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one or all
+our deeds be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate
+and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires,
+and none be turned aside by the prophetic pictures.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID SWAN.
+
+A FANTASY.
+
+
+We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually
+influence our course through life and our final destiny. There are
+innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close
+upon us, yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their
+near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our
+minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would
+be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford
+us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a
+page from the secret history of David Swan.
+
+We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of
+twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston,
+where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him
+behind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New
+Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary
+school education with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy.
+After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's
+day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down
+in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the
+stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a
+little tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst, and such
+a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any
+wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty
+lips and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon
+some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up in a striped cotton
+handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet
+rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday, and his grassy
+lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring
+murmured drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the
+blue sky overhead, and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within
+its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he
+did not dream of.
+
+While he lay sound asleep in the shade other people were wide awake,
+and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback and in all sorts of
+vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither
+to the right hand nor the left and knew not that he was there; some
+merely glanced that way without admitting the slumberer among their
+busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept, and several
+whose hearts were brimming full of scorn ejected their venomous
+superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was
+near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the
+young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw
+him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening's
+discourse as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside.
+
+But censure, praise, merriment, scorn and indifference were all
+one--or, rather, all nothing--to David Swan. He had slept only a few
+moments when a brown carriage drawn by a handsome pair of horses
+bowled easily along and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of
+David's resting-place. A linch-pin had fallen out and permitted one of
+the wheels to slide off. The damage was slight and occasioned merely a
+momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were
+returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant
+were replacing the wheel the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves
+beneath the maple trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain and
+David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest
+sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the
+gout would allow, and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk
+gown lest David should start up all of a sudden.
+
+"How soundly he sleeps!" whispered the old gentleman. "From what a
+depth he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on
+without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income, for
+it would suppose health and an untroubled mind."
+
+"And youth besides," said the lady. "Healthy and quiet age does not
+sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his than our wakefulness."
+
+The longer they looked, the more did this elderly couple feel
+interested in the unknown youth to whom the wayside and the maple
+shade were as a secret chamber with the rich gloom of damask curtains
+brooding over him. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon
+his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside so as to
+intercept it, and, having done this little act of kindness, she began
+to feel like a mother to him.
+
+"Providence seems to have laid him here," whispered she to her
+husband, "and to have brought us hither to find him, after our
+disappointment in our cousin's son. Methinks I can see a likeness to
+our departed Henry. Shall we waken him?"
+
+"To what purpose?" said the merchant, hesitating. "We know nothing of
+the youth's character."
+
+"That open countenance!" replied his wife, in the same hushed voice,
+yet earnestly. "This innocent sleep!"
+
+While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's heart did not throb,
+nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least
+token of interest. Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let
+fall a burden of gold. The old merchant had lost his only son, and had
+no heir to his wealth except a distant relative with whose conduct he
+was dissatisfied. In such cases people sometimes do stranger things
+than to act the magician and awaken a young man to splendor who fell
+asleep in poverty.
+
+"Shall we not waken him?" repeated the lady, persuasively.
+
+"The coach is ready, sir," said the servant, behind.
+
+The old couple started, reddened and hurried away, mutually wondering
+that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very
+ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage and
+occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for
+unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap.
+
+The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two when a pretty
+young girl came along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how
+her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry
+kind of motion that caused--is there any harm in saying it?--her
+garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth--if silk it
+were--was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the
+maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring.
+Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a
+gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose too, she was about to
+make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A
+monster of a bee had been wandering overhead--buzz, buzz, buzz--now
+among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now
+lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the
+eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As
+free-hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with
+her handkerchief, brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the
+maple shade. How sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with
+quickened breath and a deeper blush she stole a glance at the youthful
+stranger for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air.
+
+"He is handsome!" thought she, and blushed redder yet.
+
+How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him that,
+shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder and allow him
+to perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile
+of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul,
+according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his
+own, and whom in all his vague but passionate desires he yearned to
+meet. Her only could he love with a perfect love, him only could she
+receive into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly
+blushing in the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its happy
+lustre would never gleam upon his life again.
+
+"How sound he sleeps!" murmured the girl. She departed, but did not
+trip along the road so lightly as when she came.
+
+Now, this girl's father was a thriving country merchant in the
+neighborhood, and happened at that identical time to be looking out
+for just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside
+acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become the father's
+clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here, again, had good
+fortune--the best of fortunes--stolen so near that her garments
+brushed against him, and he knew nothing of the matter.
+
+The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the
+maple shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were
+drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had
+a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their
+living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of
+other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of
+villainy on a game of cards which was to have been decided here under
+the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues
+whispered to his fellow:
+
+"Hist! Do you see that bundle under his head?"
+
+The other villain nodded, winked and leered.
+
+"I'll bet you a horn of brandy," said the first, "that the chap has
+either a pocketbook or a snug little hoard of small change stowed away
+amongst his shirts. And if not there, we will find it in his
+pantaloons pocket."
+
+"But how if he wakes?" said the other.
+
+His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a
+dirk and nodded.
+
+"So be it!" muttered the second villain.
+
+They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the
+dagger toward his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath
+his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled and ghastly with guilt and
+fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken
+for fiends should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains glanced
+aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as
+reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect,
+even when asleep on his mother's breast.
+
+"I must take away the bundle," whispered one.
+
+"If he stirs, I'll strike," muttered the other.
+
+But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the
+maple trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then
+at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
+
+"Pshaw!" said one villain. "We can do nothing now. The dog's master
+must be close behind."
+
+"Let's take a drink and be off," said the other.
+
+The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew
+forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single
+discharge. It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed
+upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with
+so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness
+that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few
+hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the
+recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their
+souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
+slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung
+over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was
+withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's
+repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which
+many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred, now moved his lips
+without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres
+of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder
+along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David's
+slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his
+ideas about him.
+
+"Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?" shouted he.
+
+"Room on top!" answered the driver.
+
+Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so
+much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He
+knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its
+waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor
+that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all
+in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we
+hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.
+Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and
+unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path,
+there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render
+foresight even partially available?
+
+
+
+
+SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.
+
+
+So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with
+wearied knees--earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
+far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith,
+where man never breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal
+azure melts away from the eye and appears only a deepened shade of
+nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What
+clouds are gathering in the golden west with direful intent against
+the brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon? They are
+ponderous air-ships, black as death and freighted with the tempest,
+and at intervals their thunder--the signal-guns of that unearthly
+squadron--rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps
+of fleecy vapor--methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole
+day long--seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired
+pilgrims through the sky. Perhaps--for who can tell?--beautiful
+spirits are disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye
+with the brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light and
+laughing faces fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or where
+the floating mass so imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament
+a slender foot and fairy limb resting too heavily upon the frail
+support may be thrust through and suddenly withdrawn, while longing
+fancy follows them in vain. Yonder, again, is an airy archipelago
+where the sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space.
+Every one of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in
+radiance which the slightest pressure might disengage in silvery
+profusion like water wrung from a sea-maid's hair. Bright they are as
+a young man's visions, and, like them, would be realized in dullness,
+obscurity and tears. I will look on them no more.
+
+In three parts of the visible circle whose centre is this spire I
+discern cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving
+lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising
+ground that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the
+sea, stretching away toward a viewless boundary, blue and calm except
+where the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface and is
+gone. Hitherward a broad inlet penetrates far into the land; on the
+verge of the harbor formed by its extremity is a town, and over it am
+I, a watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. Oh that the multitude of
+chimneys could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray in smoky
+whispers the secrets of all who since their first foundation have
+assembled at the hearths within! Oh that the Limping Devil of Le Sage
+would perch beside me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of
+roofs, uncover every chamber and make me familiar with their
+inhabitants! The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a
+spiritualized Paul Pry hovering invisible round man and woman,
+witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing
+brightness from their felicity and shade from their sorrow, and
+retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of these things are
+possible; and if I would know the interior of brick walls or the
+mystery of human bosoms, I can but guess.
+
+Yonder is a fair street extending north and south. The stately
+mansions are placed each on its carpet of verdant grass, and a long
+flight of steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental
+trees--the broadleafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending,
+the graceful but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the
+names--grow thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the
+sun are intercepted by these green citizens and by the houses, so that
+one side of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole
+extent there is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper
+end, and he, unless distance and the medium of a pocket spyglass do
+him more than justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He saunters
+slowly forward, slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending
+his eyes upon the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a
+glance before him. Certainly he has a pensive air. Is he in doubt or
+in debt? Is he--if the question be allowable--in love? Does he strive
+to be melancholy and gentlemanlike, or is he merely overcome by the
+heat? But I bid him farewell for the present. The door of one of the
+houses--an aristocratic edifice with curtains of purple and gold
+waving from the windows--is now opened, and down the steps come two
+ladies swinging their parasols and lightly arrayed for a summer
+ramble. Both are young, both are pretty; but methinks the left-hand
+lass is the fairer of the twain, and, though she be so serious at this
+moment, I could swear that there is a treasure of gentle fun within
+her. They stand talking a little while upon the steps, and finally
+proceed up the street. Meantime, as their faces are now turned from
+me, I may look elsewhere.
+
+Upon that wharf and down the corresponding street is a busy contrast
+to the quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has
+its centre there, and many a man is wasting the summer afternoon in
+labor and anxiety, in losing riches or in gaining them, when he would
+be wiser to flee away to some pleasant country village or shaded lake
+in the forest or wild and cool sea-beach. I see vessels unlading at
+the wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground abundantly
+as at the bottom of the sea--that market whence no goods return, and
+where there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of
+sales. Here the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and
+sailors ply the block and tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying
+their toil with cries long-drawn and roughly melodious till the bales
+and puncheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance a group of
+gentlemen are assembled round the door of a warehouse. Grave seniors
+be they, and I would wager--if it were safe, in these times, to be
+responsible for any one--that the least eminent among them might vie
+with old Vincentio, that incomparable trafficker of Pisa. I can even
+select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly personage in
+somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair the superfluous whiteness of
+which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are
+wafted on some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and
+his name, I will venture to say, though I know it not, is a familiar
+sound among the far-separated merchants of Europe and the Indies.
+
+But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking
+again to the long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls
+have encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the
+recognition, he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my
+taste in regard to his companions by placing himself on the inner side
+of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a
+steeple-top the part of Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged the golden
+apple.
+
+In two streets converging at right angles toward my watch-tower I
+distinguish three different processions. One is a proud array of
+voluntary soldiers in bright uniform, resembling, from the height
+whence I look down, the painted veterans that garrison the windows of
+a toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart. Their regular advance, their
+nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets and musket-barrels,
+the roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon
+piercing through,--these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful
+though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
+ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping
+a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously
+aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as
+slight differences are scarcely perceptible from a church-spire, one
+might be tempted to ask, "Which are the boys?" or, rather, "Which the
+men?" But, leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which,
+though sadder in outward show, may excite identical reflections in the
+thoughtful mind. It is a funeral--a hearse drawn by a black and bony
+steed and covered by a dusty pall, two or three coaches rumbling over
+the stones, their drivers half asleep, a dozen couple of careless
+mourners in their every-day attire. Such was not the fashion of our
+fathers when they carried a friend to his grave. There is now no
+doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King
+of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and
+philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a
+proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the
+military boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full
+in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that
+regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to
+the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their
+ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive
+curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the
+steeple and pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the
+lightning glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the
+thunder rattles heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid.
+Verily, the shower is near, and I tremble for the young man and the
+girls, who have now disappeared from the long and shady street.
+
+How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
+beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment
+befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life
+and the recent dead are in the chambers of these many mansions. The
+full of hope, the happy, the miserable and the desperate dwell
+together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over
+which my eyes roam so coldly guilt is entering into hearts that are
+still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue; guilt is on the very
+edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is
+done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad
+thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them
+distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the
+raindrops are descending.
+
+The clouds within a little time have gathered over all the sky,
+hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the
+earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts,
+quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, travelling slowly
+after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through
+the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies to rebel
+against the approaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the funeral
+has already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry homeward--all
+that have a home--while a few lounge by the corners or trudge on
+desperately at their leisure. In a narrow lane which communicates with
+the shady street I discern the rich old merchant putting himself to
+the top of his speed lest the rain should convert his hair-powder to a
+paste. Unhappy gentleman! By the slow vehemence and painful moderation
+wherewith he journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its
+thrilling tenderness in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid
+pace, come three other of my acquaintance, the two pretty girls and
+the young man unseasonably interrupted in their walk. Their footsteps
+are supported by the risen dust, the wind lends them its velocity,
+they fly like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestuous
+breeze. The ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that
+any one were at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward,
+laughing in the angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has
+chanced. At the corner where the narrow lane enters into the street
+they come plump against the old merchant, whose tortoise-motion has
+just brought him to that point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the
+darkness of the whole air gathers speedily upon his visage, and there
+is a pause on both sides. Finally he thrusts aside the youth with
+little courtesy, seizes an arm of each of the two girls, and plods
+onward like a magician with a prize of captive fairies. All this is
+easy to be understood. How disconsolate the poor lover stands,
+regardless of the rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his
+well-fashioned habiliments, till he catches a backward glance of mirth
+from a bright eye, and turns away with whatever comfort it conveys!
+
+The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm
+lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the
+chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous
+shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops
+descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke.
+There is a rush and roar as of a river through the air, and muddy
+streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam
+into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa
+sink. I love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult
+which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning
+wrinkling on my brow and the thunder muttering its first awful
+syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to
+the sea, where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad
+expanse of blackness or boils up in far-distant points like snowy
+mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at
+the green plain and little hills of the country, over which the giant
+of the storm is striding in robes of mist, and at the town whose
+obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and,
+turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author's
+prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A
+little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams
+find a passage and go rejoicing through the tempest, and on yonder
+darkest cloud, born like hallowed hopes of the glory of another world
+and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS.
+
+
+In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen's reveries
+were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met
+together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful in
+form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an
+untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her
+years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of
+ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit that even
+the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary
+term of human existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortal
+could observe them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down
+in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically
+circular, two or three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that
+a stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines
+were numerous upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of the
+intermediate hollow, within which there was nothing but the brown
+grass of October and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen long
+ago and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One of
+these masses of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close
+beside a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin.
+Such scenes as this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of
+a power of evil and his plighted subjects, and here at midnight or on
+the dim verge of evening they were said to stand round the mantling
+pool disturbing its putrid waters in the performance of an impious
+baptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding
+the three hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their sides into
+the hollow.
+
+"Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone,
+"according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
+me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here."
+
+As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance
+like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast
+her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return
+with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.
+
+"I am stranger in this land, as you know," said she, at length.
+"Whence I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me with
+whom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for
+ever. There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I
+have come hither to inquire of their welfare."
+
+"And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the
+ends of the earth?" cried the old woman, peering into the lady's face.
+"Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold, and
+the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wish
+be granted."
+
+"I will do your bidding though I die," replied the lady, desperately.
+
+The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw
+aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companion
+to draw near.
+
+"Kneel down," she said, "and lay your forehead on my knees."
+
+She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling
+burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of her
+garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old
+woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, so
+that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer,
+in the midst of which she started and would have arisen.
+
+"Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon
+me!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself
+and was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar in
+infancy and unforgotten through many wanderings and in all the
+vicissitudes of her heart and fortune, were mingling with the accents
+of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct--not
+rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book
+which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening
+light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices
+strengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and the
+conversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed like
+himself became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those
+strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three
+hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a
+chamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular
+vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of the
+embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vivid
+as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old
+people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful,
+and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a
+wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her and
+leaving shame and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave.
+They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of
+their talk their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind
+sweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted
+her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.
+
+"A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked the
+old woman, smiling in the lady's face.
+
+"And did you also hear them?" exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
+humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
+
+"Yea, and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman, "wherefore
+cover thy face quickly."
+
+Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer
+that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pauses
+of her breath strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually
+increasing, so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew.
+Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound and were succeeded by
+the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a
+wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming
+altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.
+Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the
+scourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and
+became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish
+every soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly
+into funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed
+up like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the
+fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this
+wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken
+career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious
+voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his
+feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company
+whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought
+an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted
+their laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of
+woman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home
+and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the
+shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow,
+fitful and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine trees
+on those three lonely hills.
+
+The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her
+face.
+
+"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a
+mad-house?" inquired the latter.
+
+"True, true!" said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within its
+walls, but misery, misery without."
+
+"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.
+
+"There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied the
+lady, faintly.
+
+"Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get
+thee hence before the hour be past."
+
+The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep
+shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were
+rising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
+weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of
+a bell stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that had
+travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die
+in the air. The lady shook upon her companion's knees as she heard
+that boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into the
+tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower
+and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall
+and to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom
+appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly,
+slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on
+the ground, so that the ear could measure the length of their
+melancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading the
+burial-service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
+breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud, still
+there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women
+and from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged
+hearts of her parents, the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondness
+of her husband, the mother who had sinned against natural affection
+and left her child to die. The sweeping sound of the funeral train
+faded away like a thin vapor, and the wind, that just before had
+seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned sadly round the verge of the
+hollow between three hills. But when the old woman stirred the
+kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.
+
+"Here has been a sweet hour's sport!" said the withered crone,
+chuckling to herself.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY.
+
+A SKETCH OF TRANSITORY LIFE.
+
+
+Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the
+current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no
+undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged
+thoroughfare of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the
+observer to run about the earth, to leave the track of his footsteps
+far and wide, to mingle himself with the action of numberless
+vicissitudes, and, finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing
+spirit on all that he has seen and felt. But there are natures too
+indolent or too sensitive to endure the dust, the sunshine or the
+rain, the turmoil of moral and physical elements, to which all the
+wayfarers of the world expose themselves. For such a man how pleasant
+a miracle could life be made to roll its variegated length by the
+threshold of his own hermitage, and the great globe, as it were,
+perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before his eyes
+without whirling him onward in its course! If any mortal be favored
+with a lot analogous to this, it is the toll-gatherer. So, at least,
+have I often fancied while lounging on a bench at the door of a small
+square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a
+long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea,
+while above, like the life-blood through a great artery, the travel of
+the north and east is continually throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid
+bench, I amuse myself with a conception, illustrated by numerous
+pencil-sketches in the air, of the toll-gatherer's day.
+
+In the morning--dim, gray, dewy summer's morn--the distant roll of
+ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend's slumbers,
+creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and
+gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change
+from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing
+wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The
+timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman
+stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by
+the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is
+seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten
+miles long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels, and
+the huge hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but
+half awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing
+from the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused
+clatter of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried
+onward at the same headlong, restless rate all through the quiet
+night. The bridge resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on
+without a pause, merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the
+sleepy passengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a
+cordial in the briny air. The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and
+they forget how wearily the darkness toiled away. And behold now the
+fervid day in his bright chariot, glittering aslant over the waves,
+nor scorning to throw a tribute of his golden beams on the
+toll-gatherer's little hermitage. The old man looks eastward, and (for
+he is a moralizer) frames a simile of the stage-coach and the sun.
+
+While the world is rousing itself we may glance slightly at the scene
+of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood--a spot not
+of earth, but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound
+among the massive beams beneath. Over the door is a weatherbeaten
+board inscribed with the rates of toll in letters so nearly effaced
+that the gilding of the sunshine can hardly make them legible. Beneath
+the window is a wooden bench on which a long succession of weary
+wayfarers have reposed themselves. Peeping within-doors, we perceive
+the whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and
+advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a
+wandering caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer,
+glorified by the early sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may
+announce, of quiet soul and thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, who
+of the wisdom which the passing world scatters along the wayside has
+gathered a reasonable store.
+
+Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon
+the sky. Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer's
+practised ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number
+of its wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with
+their iron tramp. Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth
+betimes to take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his
+wife with their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between
+them. The bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes
+and carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty
+with yesterday's journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled
+with a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse
+and driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a
+whole summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the
+frolicsome maidens! Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged
+man who as he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to
+stick upon the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a
+manufacturer of pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a
+horseman clad in black, with a meditative brow, as of one who,
+whithersoever his steed might bear him, would still journey through a
+mist of brooding thought. He is a country preacher going to labor at a
+protracted meeting. The next object passing townward is a butcher's
+cart canopied with its arch of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a
+"sauceman" driving a wagon full of new potatoes, green ears of corn,
+beets, carrots, turnips and summer squashes, and next two wrinkled,
+withered witch-looking old gossips in an antediluvian chaise drawn by
+a horse of former generations and going to peddle out a lot of
+huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a wheelbarrow-load of
+lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly onward, covered with
+green canvas and conveying the contributions of a whole herd of cows,
+in large tin canisters.
+
+But let all these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that
+causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the
+travellers brought sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome
+influence all along the road. It is a barouche of the newest style,
+the varnished panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the
+landscape, and show a picture, likewise, of our friend with his visage
+broadened, so that his meditative smile is transformed to grotesque
+merriment. Within sits a youth fresh as the summer morn, and beside
+him a young lady in white with white gloves upon her slender hands and
+a white veil flowing down over her face. But methinks her blushing
+cheek burns through the snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in
+front. And who are these on whom, and on all that appertains to them,
+the dust of earth seems never to have settled? Two lovers whom the
+priest has blessed this blessed morn and sent them forth, with one of
+the bride-maids, on the matrimonial tour.--Take my blessing too, ye
+happy ones! May the sky not frown upon you nor clouds bedew you with
+their chill and sullen rain! May the hot sun kindle no fever in your
+hearts! May your whole life's pilgrimage be as blissful as this first
+day's journey, and its close be gladdened with even brighter
+anticipations than those which hallow your bridal-night! They pass,
+and ere the reflection of their joy has faded from his face another
+spectacle throws a melancholy shadow over the spirit of the observing
+man. In a close carriage sits a fragile figure muffled carefully and
+shrinking even from the mild breath of summer. She leans against a
+manly form, and his arm enfolds her as if to guard his treasure from
+some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when he shall strive to
+embrace that loved one, he will press only desolation to his heart.
+
+And now has Morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sun
+rolls blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his
+face with. The horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave
+their glistening sides in short quick pantings when the reins are
+tightened at the toll-house. Glisten, too, the faces of the
+travellers. Their garments are thickly bestrewn with dust; their
+whiskers and hair look hoary; their throats are choked with the dusty
+atmosphere which they have left behind them. No air is stirring on the
+road. Nature dares draw no breath lest she should inhale a stifling
+cloud of dust. "A hot and dusty day!" cry the poor pilgrims as they
+wipe their begrimed foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the
+river bears along with it.--"Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!" answers the
+sympathetic toll-gatherer. They start again to pass through the fiery
+furnace, while he re-enters his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with
+a pail of briny water from the stream beneath. He thinks within
+himself that the sun is not so fierce here as elsewhere, and that the
+gentle air doth not forget him in these sultry days. Yes, old friend,
+and a quiet heart will make a dog-day temperate. He hears a weary
+footstep, and perceives a traveller with pack and staff, who sits down
+upon the hospitable bench and removes the hat from his wet brow. The
+toll-gatherer administers a cup of cold water, and, discovering his
+guest to be a man of homely sense, he engages him in profitable talk,
+uttering the maxims of a philosophy which he has found in his own
+soul, but knows not how it came there. And as the wayfarer makes ready
+to resume his journey he tells him a sovereign remedy for blistered
+feet.
+
+Now comes the noontide hour--of all the hours, nearest akin to
+midnight, for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the
+world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest
+epoch of the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary
+things. The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner
+laden with wood from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably right
+athwart the bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a throng of
+impatient travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig with
+the top thrown back, both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of
+forecastle oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly-dressed
+gentleman and lady, he from a tailor's shop-board and she from a
+milliner's back room--the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what
+are the haughtiest of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's
+day? Here is a tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all
+beholders like a travelling meteor or opposition sun, and on the other
+side a seller of spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in
+several dozen of stone bottles. Here conic a party of ladies on
+horseback, in green ridings habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there
+a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a
+multitude nous clatter of their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a
+hand-organ on his shoulder, and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On
+this side, heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train
+of wagons conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a
+company of summer soldiers marching from village to village on a
+festival campaign, attended by the "brass band." Now look at the
+scene, and it presents an emblem of the mysterious confusion, the
+apparently insolvable riddle, in which individuals, or the great world
+itself, seem often to be involved. What miracle shall set all things
+right again?
+
+But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm;
+the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge
+vacant from end to end. "And thus," muses the toll-gatherer, "have I
+found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at
+a stand." The sage old man!
+
+Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor
+across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly
+among the timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff
+the freshening breeze. One or two let down long lines and haul up
+flapping flounders or cunners or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others,
+and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on
+their cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed
+floating upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily
+along the bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.--Rest,
+rest, thou weary world! for to-morrow's round of toil and pleasure
+will be as wearisome as to-day's has been, yet both shall bear thee
+onward a day's march of eternity.--Now the old toll-gatherer looks
+seaward and discerns the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the
+stars, too, kindling in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and,
+mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole
+procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has
+witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful
+soul to muse upon.
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN.
+
+
+At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a
+hundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival--a September
+morning, but warm and bright as any in July--I rambled into a wood of
+oaks with a few walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade
+above my head. The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and
+clumps of young saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track
+which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of
+grass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb
+of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played
+like a goldfish in the water.
+
+From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
+a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of
+which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated
+hue--reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse
+sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate
+the spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water
+violently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain or
+breaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living
+creature were about to emerge--the naiad of the spring, perhaps, in
+the shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss,
+a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How
+would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her
+sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples
+and throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her
+hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with
+morning dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful
+housewife, to clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy
+wood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left by
+cattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like
+a treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he
+would find only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spot
+where he had seen her.
+
+Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should have
+been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
+mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo!
+another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct
+in all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect
+of a fair young girl with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression
+laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance,
+till it seemed just what a fountain would be if, while dancing merrily
+into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through the
+dim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy
+twigs, the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was
+diffused among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness
+and became a glory round that head so beautiful.
+
+My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus
+tenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was
+the face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or
+faded into nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.
+
+My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend where
+that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,
+waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest
+motion, or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus
+have I often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in
+hopes to wile it back. Deep were my musings as to the race and
+attributes of that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the
+daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under
+the lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that
+one moment and then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain,
+or fairy or woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of
+some forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good
+truth, had a lovely girl with a warm heart and lips that would bear
+pressure stolen softly behind me and thrown her image into the spring?
+
+I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a
+spell upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the haunted
+spring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling and the
+sunbeam glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog,
+the hermit of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled
+snout and made himself invisible--all except a pair of long
+legs--beneath a stone. Methought he had a devilish look. I could have
+slain him as an enchanter who kept the mysterious beauty imprisoned in
+the fountain.
+
+Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and the
+church-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees
+insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of
+radiance hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadow
+falling to the east. The afternoon being far declined, the sunshine
+was almost pensive and the shade almost cheerful; glory and gloom were
+mingled in the placid light, as if the spirits of the Day and Evening
+had met in friendship under those trees and found themselves akin. I
+was admiring the picture when the shape of a young girl emerged from
+behind the clump of oaks. My heart knew her: it was the vision, but so
+distant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbued
+with the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that my
+spirit sunk within me, sadder than before. How could I ever reach her?
+
+While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves. In
+a moment the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching a
+portion of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearing
+like a mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance. A
+rainbow vivid as Niagara's was painted in the air. Its southern limb
+came down before the group of trees and enveloped the fair vision as
+if the hues of heaven were the only garment for her beauty. When the
+rainbow vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no longer there.
+Was her existence absorbed in nature's loveliest phenomenon, and did
+her pure frame dissolve away in the varied light? Yet I would not
+despair of her return, for, robed in the rainbow, she was the emblem
+of Hope.
+
+Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded to the
+parting moment. By the spring and in the wood and on the hill and
+through the village, at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magic
+hour of sunset, when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but
+in vain. Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared not
+in them. I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro or sat
+in solitude like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven and could
+take no more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner world where my
+thoughts lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of them.
+Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a
+romance, conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others
+and my own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy
+and despair had their end in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of my
+early youth with manhood's colder gift, the power of expression, your
+hearts, sweet ladies, should flutter at my tale.
+
+In the middle of January I was summoned home. The day before my
+departure, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the vision, I
+found that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and
+a glare of winter sunshine on the hill of the rainbow. "Let me hope,"
+thought I, "or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the whole
+world as desolate as this snowy hill." Most of the day was spent in
+preparing for the journey, which was to commence at four o'clock the
+next morning. About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, I
+descended from my chamber to the sitting-room to take leave of the old
+clergyman and his family with whom I had been an inmate. A gust of
+wind blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry.
+
+According to their invariable custom--so pleasant a one when the fire
+blazes cheerfully--the family were sitting in the parlor with no other
+light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman's scanty
+stipend compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation of
+his fires was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would
+smoulder away from morning till night with a dull warmth and no flame.
+This evening the heap of tan was newly put on and surmounted with
+three sticks of red oak full of moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine
+that had not yet kindled. There was no light except the little that
+came sullenly from two half-burnt brands, without even glimmering on
+the andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister's arm-chair,
+and also where his wife sat with her knitting-work, and how to avoid
+his two daughters--one a stout country lass, and the other a
+consumptive girl. Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next
+to that of the son, a learned collegian who had come home to keep
+school in the village during the winter vacation. I noticed that there
+was less room than usual to-night between the collegian's chair and
+mine.
+
+As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for
+some time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the
+regular click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times the fire
+threw out a brief and dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man's
+glasses and hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint
+to portray the individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts?
+Dreamy as the scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in which
+departed people who had known and loved each other here would hold
+communion in eternity? We were aware of each other's presence, not by
+sight nor sound nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it
+not be so among the dead?
+
+The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing a
+remark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous
+and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice
+that made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded.
+Had I ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so
+many old recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things
+familiar yet unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her
+features who had spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor?
+Whom had my heart recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened to catch
+her gentle breathing, and strove by the intensity of my gaze to
+picture forth a shape where none was visible.
+
+Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow,
+and where the darkness had been, there was she--the vision of the
+fountain. A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow
+and appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze
+and be gone. Yet her cheek was rosy and lifelike, and her features, in
+the bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my
+recollection of them. She knew me. The mirthful expression that had
+laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance when I beheld her
+faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and dimpling there now. One
+moment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the heap of tan upon
+the kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of the
+light, and gave her back to me no more!
+
+Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be
+revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire and
+had left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and
+returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an
+angel, it is what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein
+consists the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids,
+to make angels of yourselves.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY'S SHOW-BOX.
+
+A MORALITY.
+
+
+What is guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast
+interest whether the soul may contract such stains in all their depth
+and flagrancy from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved
+upon, but which physically have never had existence. Must the fleshly
+hand and visible frame of man set its seal to the evil designs of the
+soul, in order to give them their entire validity against the sinner?
+Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly
+tribunal, will guilty thoughts--of which guilty deeds are no more than
+shadows,--will these draw down the full weight of a condemning
+sentence in the supreme court of eternity? In the solitude of a
+midnight chamber or in a desert afar from men or in a church while the
+body is kneeling the soul may pollute itself even with those crimes
+which we are accustomed to deem altogether carnal. If this be true, it
+is a fearful truth.
+
+Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary example. A venerable
+gentleman--one Mr. Smith--who had long been regarded as a pattern of
+moral excellence was warming his aged blood with a glass or two of
+generous wine. His children being gone forth about their worldly
+business and his grandchildren at school, he sat alone in a deep
+luxurious arm-chair with his feet beneath a richly-carved mahogany
+table. Some old people have a dread of solitude, and when better
+company may not be had rejoice even to hear the quiet breathing of a
+babe asleep upon the carpet. But Mr. Smith, whose silver hair was the
+bright symbol of a life unstained except by such spots as are
+inseparable from human nature--he had no need of a babe to protect him
+by its purity, nor of a grown person to stand between him and his own
+soul. Nevertheless, either manhood must converse with age, or
+womanhood must soothe him with gentle cares, or infancy must sport
+around his chair, or his thoughts will stray into the misty region of
+the past and the old man be chill and sad. Wine will not always cheer
+him.
+
+Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the
+brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures
+entering the room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and
+aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back;
+and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an
+inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her
+arm; and lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in a dusky
+mantle which concealed both face and form. But Mr. Smith had a shrewd
+idea that it was Conscience. How kind of Fancy, Memory and Conscience
+to visit the old gentleman just as he was beginning to imagine that
+the wine had neither so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as
+when himself and the liquor were less aged! Through the dim length of
+the apartment, where crimson curtains muffled the glare of sunshine
+and created a rich obscurity, the three guests drew near the
+silver-haired old man. Memory, with a finger between the leaves of her
+huge volume, placed herself at his right hand; Conscience, with her
+face still hidden in the dusky mantle, took her station on the left,
+so as to be next his heart; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon
+the table with the magnifying-glass convenient to his eye.
+
+We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many
+pictures which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box
+with the semblances of living scenes. One was a moonlight picture, in
+the background a lowly dwelling, and in front, partly shadowed by a
+tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two youthful figures,
+male and female. The young man stood with folded arms, a haughty smile
+upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his eye as he glanced downward
+at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate at his feet, evidently
+sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly allowed her
+to lift her clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not
+lift. But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on which it was
+depicted, nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed,
+appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man. He was the
+personification of triumphant scorn.
+
+Now, strange to say, as old Mr. Smith peeped through the
+magnifying-glass, which made the objects start out from the canvas
+with magical deception, he began to recognize the farmhouse, the tree
+and both the figures of the picture. The young man in times long past
+had often met his gaze within the looking-glass; the girl was the very
+image of his first love--his cottage-love, his Martha Burroughs. Mr.
+Smith was scandalized. "Oh, vile and slanderous picture!" he exclaims.
+"When have I triumphed over ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded in
+her teens to David Tomkins, who won her girlish love and long enjoyed
+her affection as a wife? And ever since his death she has lived a
+reputable widow!"
+
+Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling
+them to and fro with uncertain fingers, until among the earlier pages
+she found one which had reference to this picture. She reads it close
+to the old gentleman's ear: it is a record merely of sinful thought
+which never was embodied in an act, but, while Memory is reading,
+Conscience unveils her face and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr.
+Smith. Though not a death-blow, the torture was extreme.
+
+The exhibition proceeded. One after another Fancy displayed her
+pictures, all of which appeared to have been painted by some malicious
+artist on purpose to vex Mr. Smith. Not a shadow of proof could have
+been adduced in any earthly court that he was guilty of the slightest
+of those sins which were thus made to stare him in the face. In one
+scene there was a table set out, with several bottles and glasses half
+filled with wine, which threw back the dull ray of an expiring lamp.
+There had been mirth and revelry until the hand of the clock stood
+just at midnight, when Murder stepped between the boon-companions. A
+young man had fallen on the floor, and lay stone dead with a ghastly
+wound crushed into his temple, while over him, with a delirium of
+mingled rage and horror in his countenance, stood the youthful
+likeness of Mr. Smith. The murdered youth wore the features of Edward
+Spencer. "What does this rascal of a painter mean?" cries Mr. Smith,
+provoked beyond all patience. "Edward Spencer was my earliest and
+dearest friend, true to me as I to him through more than half a
+century. Neither I nor any other ever murdered him. Was he not alive
+within five years, and did he not, in token of our long friendship,
+bequeath me his gold-headed cane and a mourning-ring?"
+
+Again had Memory been turning over her volume, and fixed at length
+upon so confused a page that she surely must have scribbled it when
+she was tipsy. The purport was, however, that while Mr. Smith and
+Edward Spencer were heating their young blood with wine a quarrel had
+flashed up between them, and Mr. Smith, in deadly wrath, had flung a
+bottle at Spencer's head. True, it missed its aim and merely smashed a
+looking-glass; and the next morning, when the incident was imperfectly
+remembered, they had shaken hands with a hearty laugh. Yet, again,
+while Memory was reading, Conscience unveiled her face, struck a
+dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith and quelled his remonstrance with her
+iron frown. The pain was quite excruciating.
+
+Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch, and
+in colors so faint and pale, that the subjects could barely be
+conjectured. A dull, semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the
+surface of the canvas, into which the figures seemed to vanish while
+the eye sought most earnestly to fix them. But in every scene, however
+dubiously portrayed, Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own
+lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror. After poring several
+minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable
+pictures, he began to see that the painter had intended to represent
+him, now in the decline of life, as stripping the clothes from the
+backs of three half-starved children. "Really, this puzzles me!" quoth
+Mr. Smith, with the irony of conscious rectitude. "Asking pardon of
+the painter, I pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave. A
+man of my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their
+clothes! Ridiculous!"
+
+But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a
+page which with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear. It was not
+altogether inapplicable to the misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had
+been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries, on the ground of
+a legal quibble, to commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children,
+joint-heirs to a considerable estate. Fortunately, before he was quite
+decided, his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice.
+As Memory ceased to read Conscience again thrust aside her mantle, and
+would have struck her victim with the envenomed dagger only that he
+struggled and clasped his hands before his heart. Even then, however,
+he sustained an ugly gash.
+
+Why should we follow Fancy through the whole series of those awful
+pictures? Painted by an artist of wondrous power and terrible
+acquaintance with the secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the
+never-perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr.
+Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to
+nothingness, give valid evidence against him at the day of judgment?
+Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly
+penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture and left
+the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too
+keen to be endured, bellowed aloud with impatient agony, and suddenly
+discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a
+silver-haired and highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the
+crimsoned-curtained room, with no box of pictures on the table, but
+only a decanter of most excellent Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed
+to fester with the venom of the dagger.
+
+Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might have argued the
+matter with Conscience and alleged many reasons wherefore she should
+not smite him so pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should
+be somewhat in the following fashion. A scheme of guilt, till it be
+put in execution, greatly resembles a train of incidents in a
+projected tale. The latter, in order to produce a sense of reality in
+the reader's mind, must be conceived with such proportionate strength
+by the author as to seem in the glow of fancy more like truth, past,
+present or to come, than purely fiction. The prospective sinner, on
+the other hand, weaves his plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a
+perfect certainty that it will be executed. There is a dreaminess
+diffused about his thoughts; in a dream, as it were, he strikes the
+death-blow into his victim's heart and starts to find an indelible
+blood-stain on his hand. Thus a novel-writer or a dramatist, in
+creating a villain of romance and fitting him with evil deeds, and the
+villain of actual life in projecting crimes that will be perpetrated,
+may almost meet each other halfway between reality and fancy. It is
+not until the crime is accomplished that Guilt clenches its gripe upon
+the guilty heart and claims it for his own. Then, and not before, sin
+is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance,
+grows a thousandfold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it
+considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil.
+At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon
+their notice and its results are dimly seen, they can bear to
+contemplate it. They may take the steps which lead to crime, impelled
+by the same sort of mental action as in working out a mathematical
+problem, yet be powerless with compunction at the final moment. They
+knew not what deed it was that they deemed themselves resolved to do.
+In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full
+resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very moment of
+execution. Let us hope, therefore, that all the dreadful consequences
+of sin will not be incurred unless the act have set its seal upon the
+thought.
+
+Yet, with the slight fancy-work which we have framed, some sad and
+awful truths are interwoven. Man must not disclaim his brotherhood
+even with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart
+has surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity. He must
+feel that when he shall knock at the gate of heaven no semblance of an
+unspotted life can entitle him to entrance there. Penitence must kneel
+and Mercy come from the footstool of the throne, or that golden gate
+will never open.
+
+
+
+
+DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT.
+
+
+That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable
+friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded
+gentlemen--Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne--and a
+withered gentlewoman whose name was the widow Wycherly. They were all
+melancholy old creatures who had been unfortunate in life, and whose
+greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their
+graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous
+merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now
+little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best
+years and his health and substance in the pursuit of sinful pleasures
+which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout and divers
+other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined
+politician, a man of evil fame--or, at least, had been so till time
+had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation and made
+him obscure instead of infamous. As for the widow Wycherly, tradition
+tells us that she was a great beauty in her day, but for a long while
+past she had lived in deep seclusion on account of certain scandalous
+stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is
+a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old
+gentlemen--Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne--were
+early lovers of the widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of
+cutting each other's throats for her sake. And before proceeding
+farther I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests
+were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves, as is not
+infrequently the case with old people when worried either by present
+troubles or woeful recollections.
+
+"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be
+seated, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little
+experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."
+
+If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very
+curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber festooned with
+cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood
+several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with
+rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with
+little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a
+bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities,
+Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult
+cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a
+tall and narrow oaken closet with its door ajar, within which
+doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a
+looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished
+gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it
+was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients
+dwelt within its verge and would stare him in the face whenever he
+looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented
+with the full-length portrait of a young lady arrayed in the faded
+magnificence of silk, satin and brocade, and with a visage as faded as
+her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the
+point of marriage with this young lady, but, being affected with some
+slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions
+and died on the bridal-evening. The greatest curiosity of the study
+remains to be mentioned: it was a ponderous folio volume bound in
+black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on
+the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well
+known to be a book of magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted
+it merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its
+closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the
+floor and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror,
+while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned and said, "Forbear!"
+
+Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a
+small round table as black as ebony stood in the centre of the room,
+sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate
+workmanship. The sunshine came through the window between the heavy
+festoons of two faded damask curtains and fell directly across this
+vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen
+visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne-glasses
+were also on the table.
+
+"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your
+aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"
+
+Now, Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman whose eccentricity
+had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these
+fables--to my shame be it spoken--might possibly be traced back to
+mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale
+should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the
+stigma of a fiction-monger.
+
+When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed
+experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of
+a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the
+microscope, or some similar nonsense with which he was constantly in
+the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply
+Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned with the same
+ponderous folio bound in black leather which common report affirmed to
+be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume
+and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a
+rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one
+brownish hue and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in
+the doctor's hands.
+
+"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh--"this same withered and
+crumbling flower--blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me
+by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to wear it in
+my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured
+between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible
+that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said the widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head.
+"You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever
+bloom again."
+
+"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase and threw the
+faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly
+on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture.
+Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and
+dried petals stirred and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if
+the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber, the slender stalk
+and twigs of foliage became green, and there was the rose of half a
+century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to
+her lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its delicate red
+leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or
+three dewdrops were sparkling.
+
+"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's
+friends--carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles
+at a conjurer's show. "Pray, how was it effected?"
+
+"Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth?" asked Dr. Heidegger,
+"which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or
+three centuries ago?"
+
+"But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?" said the widow Wycherly.
+
+"No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right
+place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is
+situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from
+Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias
+which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as
+violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of
+mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see
+in the vase."
+
+"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the
+doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human
+frame?"
+
+"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr.
+Heidegger.--"And all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
+much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
+For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
+hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
+merely watch the progress of the experiment."
+
+While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four
+champagne-glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was
+apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles
+were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses and bursting
+in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
+perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and
+comfortable properties, and, though utter sceptics as to its
+rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
+Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.
+
+"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be
+well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
+draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time
+through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be
+if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of
+virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"
+
+The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer except by a
+feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea that,
+knowing how closely Repentance treads behind the steps of Error, they
+should ever go astray again.
+
+"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing; "I rejoice that I have so well
+selected the subjects of my experiment."
+
+With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
+if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it,
+could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
+woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or
+pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and
+always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat
+stooping round the doctor's table without life enough in their souls
+or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again.
+They drank off the water and replaced their glasses on the table.
+
+Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
+the party--not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
+generous wine--together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
+brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
+suffusion on their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them
+look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some
+magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
+inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their
+brows. The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a
+woman again.
+
+"Give us more of this wondrous water," cried they, eagerly. "We are
+younger, but we are still too old. Quick! give us more!"
+
+"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the
+experiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time
+growing old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an
+hour. But the water is at your service." Again he filled their glasses
+with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase
+to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own
+grandchildren.
+
+While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor's four
+guests snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the
+contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was
+passing down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their
+whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened
+among their silvery locks: they sat around the table three gentlemen
+of middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.
+
+"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes
+had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting
+from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.
+
+The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were
+not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the
+mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet
+her gaze.
+
+Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that
+the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating
+qualities--unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a
+lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of
+years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but
+whether relating to the past, present or future could not easily be
+determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these
+fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about
+patriotism, national glory and the people's right; now he muttered
+some perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful whisper, so
+cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the
+secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a
+deeply-deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his
+well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling
+forth a jolly bottle-song and ringing his glass in symphony with the
+chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the widow
+Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved
+in a calculation of dollars and cents with which was strangely
+intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by
+harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the widow
+Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her
+own image and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all
+the world besides. She thrust her face close to the glass to see
+whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed
+vanished; she examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from
+her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last,
+turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the
+table.
+
+"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass."
+
+"Certainly, my dear madam--certainly," replied the complaisant doctor.
+"See! I have already filled the glasses."
+
+There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this wonderful
+water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the
+surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds.
+
+It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than
+ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase
+and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable
+figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair
+with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very
+Father Time whose power had never been disputed save by this fortunate
+company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of
+Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious
+visage. But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot
+through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age,
+with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was
+remembered only as the trouble of a dream from which they had joyously
+awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost and without which
+the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded
+pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They
+felt like new-created beings in a new-created universe.
+
+"We are young! We are young!" they cried, exultingly.
+
+Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
+characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all. They
+were a group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant
+frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their
+gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which
+they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their
+old-fashioned attire--the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of
+the young men and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One
+limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of
+spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the
+black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an
+arm-chair and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr.
+Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully and leaped about the room.
+
+The widow Wycherly--if so fresh a damsel could be called a
+widow--tripped up to the doctor's chair with a mischievous merriment
+in her rosy face.
+
+"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me;"
+and then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what
+a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.
+
+"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I am old and
+rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago. But either of these
+gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."
+
+"Dance with me, Clara," cried Colonel Killigrew.
+
+"No, no! I will be her partner," shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
+
+"She promised me her hand fifty years ago," exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.
+
+They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his
+passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third
+buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the
+widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her
+warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to
+disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never
+was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching
+beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the
+duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still
+wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the
+three old, gray, withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the
+skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their
+burning passions proved them so.
+
+Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither
+granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to
+interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize,
+they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to
+and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand
+fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream
+across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old
+in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect
+fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of
+Dr. Heidegger.
+
+"Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!" exclaimed the doctor.
+"I really must protest against this riot."
+
+They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were
+calling them back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and
+darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in
+his carved armchair holding the rose of half a century, which he had
+rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion
+of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats--the more readily
+because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they
+were.
+
+"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the
+light of the sunset clouds. "It appears to be fading again."
+
+And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower
+continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the
+doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops
+of moisture which clung to its petals.
+
+"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he,
+pressing the withered rose to his withered lips.
+
+While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy
+head and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange
+dullness--whether of the body or spirit they could not tell--was
+creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and
+fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a
+deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had
+the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were
+they now four aged people sitting with their old friend Dr. Heidegger?
+
+"Are we grown old again so soon?" cried they, dolefully.
+
+In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more
+transient than that of wine; the delirium which it created had
+effervesced away. Yes, they were old again. With a shuddering impulse
+that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands
+before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it
+could be no longer beautiful.
+
+"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, "and, lo! the
+Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not;
+for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to
+bathe my lips in it--no, though its delirium were for years instead of
+moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me."
+
+But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.
+They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida and quaff at
+morning, noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.
+
+
+
+
+LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE-HOUSE.
+
+  I.--HOWE'S MASQUERADE.
+ II.--EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT.
+III.--LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE.
+ IV.--OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+HOWE'S MASQUERADE.
+
+
+One afternoon last summer, while walking along Washington street, my
+eye was attracted by a sign-board protruding over a narrow archway
+nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign represented the front
+of a stately edifice which was designated as the "OLD PROVINCE HOUSE,
+kept by Thomas Waite." I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose,
+long entertained, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old
+royal governors of Massachusetts, and, entering the arched passage
+which penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few
+steps transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small
+and secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the
+square front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted
+by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with
+his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the
+weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this
+attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a
+cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's
+watch over the city.
+
+The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to
+have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red
+freestone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron
+ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a
+balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to
+that beneath. These letters and figures--"16 P.S. 79"--are wrought
+into the ironwork of the balcony, and probably express the date of the
+edifice, with the initials of its founder's name.
+
+A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on
+the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this
+apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levees
+with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the counsellors,
+the judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of
+the province thronged to do them honor. But the room in its present
+condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled
+wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from
+the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
+block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never
+visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches
+which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most
+venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with
+Dutch tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture,
+and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat
+beside this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue
+tile. A bar in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles,
+cigar-boxes and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump
+and a soda-fount, extends along one side of the room.
+
+At my entrance an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest
+which satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold
+good liquor, though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by
+the old governors. After sipping a glass of port-sangaree prepared by
+the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy
+successor and representative of so many historic personages to conduct
+me over their time-honored mansion. He readily complied, but, to
+confess the truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my
+imagination in order to find aught that was interesting in a house
+which, without its historic associations, would have seemed merely
+such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of decent city
+boarders and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers, which were
+probably spacious in former times, are now cut up by partitions and
+subdivided into little nooks, each affording scanty room for the
+narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger: The great
+staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature
+of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house
+by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square
+landing-place, whence the ascent is continued toward the cupola. A
+carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing
+dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted
+and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the
+military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have
+trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola which afforded them so
+wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The
+cupola is an octagon with several windows, and a door opening upon the
+roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may
+have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the
+tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of
+Washington's besieging army, although the buildings since erected in
+the vicinity have shut out almost every object save the steeple of the
+Old South, which seems almost within arm's length. Descending from the
+cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak
+framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and
+thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials
+of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the mansion,
+are still as sound as ever, but, the floors and other interior parts
+being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole and build a
+new house within the ancient frame-and brickwork. Among other
+inconveniences of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that any
+jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of the
+ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that beneath it.
+
+We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony where in
+old times it was doubtless the custom of the king's representative to
+show himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up
+hats with stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days the
+front of the Province House looked upon the street, and the whole site
+now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present
+court-yard, was laid out in grass-plats overshadowed by trees and
+bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic edifice
+hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one
+of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses sewing and
+chatting and laughing, with now and then a careless glance toward the
+balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the
+elderly gentleman above mentioned--the smack of whose lips had spoken
+so favorably for Mr. Waite's good liquor--was still lounging in his
+chair. He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor
+of the house who might be supposed to have his regular score at the
+bar, his summer seat at the open window and his prescriptive corner at
+the winter's fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to
+address him with a remark calculated to draw forth his historical
+reminiscences, if any such were in his mind, and it gratified me to
+discover that, between memory and tradition, the old gentleman was
+really possessed of some very pleasant gossip about the Province
+House. The portion of his talk which chiefly interested me was the
+outline of the following legend. He professed to have received it at
+one or two removes from an eye-witness, but this derivation, together
+with the lapse of time, must have afforded opportunities for many
+variations of the narrative; so that, despairing of literal and
+absolute truth, I have not scrupled to make such further changes as
+seemed conducive to the reader's profit and delight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At one of the entertainments given at the province-house during the
+latter part of the siege of Boston there passed a scene which has
+never yet been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the British
+army and the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected
+within the beleaguered town, had been invited to a masqued ball, for
+it was the policy for Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger
+of the period and the desperate aspect of the siege under an
+ostentation of festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest
+members of the provincial court circle might be believed, was the most
+gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the
+government. The brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with
+figures that seemed to have stepped from the dark canvas of historic
+portraits or to have flitted forth from the magic pages of romance, or
+at least to have flown hither from one of the London theatres without
+a change of garments. Steeled knights of the Conquest, bearded
+statesmen of Queen Elizabeth and high-ruffed ladies of her court were
+mingled with characters of comedy, such as a parti-colored Merry
+Andrew jingling his cap and bells, a Falstaff almost as provocative of
+laughter as his prototype, and a Don Quixote with a bean-pole for a
+lance and a pot-lid for a shield.
+
+But the broadest merriment was excited by a group of figures
+ridiculously dressed in old regimentals which seemed to have been
+purchased at a military rag-fair or pilfered from some receptacle of
+the cast-off clothes of both the French and British armies. Portions
+of their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and
+the coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by
+sword, ball or bayonet as long ago as Wolfe's victory. One of these
+worthies--a tall, lank figure brandishing a rusty sword of immense
+longitude--purported to be no less a personage than General George
+Washington, and the other principal officers of the American army,
+such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented
+by similar scarecrows. An interview in the mock-heroic style between
+the rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief was received
+with immense applause, which came loudest of all from the loyalists of
+the colony.
+
+There was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, eying these
+antics sternly and scornfully at once with a frown and a bitter smile.
+It was an old man formerly of high station and great repute in the
+province, and who had been a very famous soldier in his day. Some
+surprise had been expressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe's known
+Whig principles, though now too old to take an active part in the
+contest, should have remained in Boston during the siege, and
+especially that he should consent to show himself in the mansion of
+Sir William Howe. But thither he had come with a fair granddaughter
+under his arm, and there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood
+this stern old figure, the best-sustained character in the masquerade,
+because so well representing the antique spirit of his native land.
+The other guests affirmed that Colonel Joliffe's black puritanical
+scowl threw a shadow round about him, although, in spite of his sombre
+influence, their gayety continued to blaze higher, like--an ominous
+comparison--the flickering brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little
+while to burn.
+
+Eleven strokes full half an hour ago had pealed from the clock of the
+Old South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new
+spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited which should put a
+fitting close to the splendid festivities of the night.
+
+"What new jest has Your Excellency in hand?" asked the Reverend Mather
+Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had not kept him from the
+entertainment. "Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than
+beseems my cloth at your Homeric confabulation with yonder ragamuffin
+general of the rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must
+throw off my clerical wig and band."
+
+"Not so, good Dr. Byles," answered Sir William Howe; "if mirth were a
+crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new
+foolery, I know no more about it than yourself--perhaps not so much.
+Honestly, now, doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of
+some of your countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade?"
+
+"Perhaps," slyly remarked the granddaughter of Colonel Joliffe, whose
+high spirit had been stung by many taunts against New England--"perhaps
+we are to have a masque of allegorical figures--Victory with trophies
+from Lexington and Bunker Hill, Plenty with her overflowing horn to
+typify the present abundance in this good town, and Glory with a
+wreath for His Excellency's brow."
+
+Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one
+of his darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard.
+He was spared the necessity of a retort by a singular interruption. A
+sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a
+full band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing,
+not such a festal strain as was suited to the occasion, but a slow
+funeral-march. The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets
+poured forth a wailing breath which at once hushed the merriment of
+the auditors, filling all with wonder and some with apprehension. The
+idea occurred to many that either the funeral procession of some great
+personage had halted in front of the province-house, or that a corpse
+in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to be
+borne from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe
+called in a stern voice to the leader of the musicians, who had
+hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies.
+The man was drum-major to one of the British regiments.
+
+"Dighton," demanded the general, "what means this foolery? Bid your
+band silence that dead march, or, by my word, they shall have
+sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, sirrah!"
+
+"Please, Your Honor," answered the drum-major, whose rubicund visage
+had lost all its color, "the fault is none of mine. I and my band are
+all here together, and I question whether there be a man of us that
+could play that march without book. I never heard it but once before,
+and that was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King George II."
+
+"Well, well!" said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure; "it is
+the prelude to some masquerading antic. Let it pass."
+
+A figure now presented itself, but among the many fantastic masks that
+were dispersed through the apartments none could tell precisely from
+whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge
+and having the aspect of a steward or principal domestic in the
+household of a nobleman or great English landholder. This figure
+advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and, throwing both its
+leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side and looked back toward
+the grand staircase, as if expecting some person to descend. At the
+same time, the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful summons.
+The eyes of Sir William Howe and his guests being directed to the
+staircase, there appeared on the uppermost landing-place, that was
+discernible from the bottom, several personages descending toward the
+door. The foremost was a man of stern visage, wearing a
+steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap beneath it, a dark cloak and huge
+wrinkled boots that came halfway up his legs. Under his arm was a
+rolled-up banner which seemed to be the banner of England, but
+strangely rent and torn; he had a sword in his right hand and grasped
+a Bible in his left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of
+dignity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descended a beard, a gown of
+wrought velvet and a doublet and hose of black satin; he carried a
+roll of manuscript in his hand. Close behind these two came a young
+man of very striking countenance and demeanor with deep thought and
+contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his
+eye; his garb, like that of his predecessors, was of an antique
+fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon his ruff. In the same
+group with these were three or four others, all men of dignity and
+evident command, and bearing themselves like personages who were
+accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. It was the idea of the
+beholders that these figures went to join the mysterious funeral that
+had halted in front of the province-house, yet that supposition seemed
+to be contradicted by the air of triumph with which they waved their
+hands as they crossed the threshold and vanished through the portal.
+
+"In the devil's name, what is this?" muttered Sir William Howe to a
+gentleman beside him. "A procession of the regicide judges of King
+Charles the martyr?"
+
+"These," said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence almost for the first
+time that evening--"these, if I interpret them aright, are the
+Puritan governors, the rulers of the old original democracy of
+Massachusetts--Endicott with the banner from which he had torn the
+symbol of subjection, and Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane and Dudley,
+Haynes, Bellingham and Leverett."
+
+"Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his ruff?" asked Miss
+Joliffe.
+
+"Because in after-years," answered her grandfather, "he laid down the
+wisest head in England upon the block for the principles of liberty."
+
+"Will not Your Excellency order out the guard?" whispered Lord Percy,
+who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general.
+"There may be a plot under this mummery."
+
+"Tush! we have nothing to fear," carelessly replied Sir William Howe.
+"There can be no worse treason in the matter than a jest, and that
+somewhat of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best
+policy would be to laugh it off. See! here come more of these gentry."
+
+Another group of characters had now partly descended the staircase.
+The first was a venerable and white-bearded patriarch who cautiously
+felt his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and
+stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man's
+shoulder, came a tall soldier-like figure equipped with a plumed cap
+of steel, a bright breastplate and a long sword, which rattled against
+the stairs. Next was seen a stout man dressed in rich and courtly
+attire, but not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion
+of a seaman's walk, and, chancing to stumble on the staircase, he
+suddenly grew wrathful and was heard to mutter an oath. He was
+followed by a noble-looking personage in a curled wig such as are
+represented in the portraits of Queen Anne's time and earlier, and the
+breast of his coat was decorated with an embroidered star. While
+advancing to the door he bowed to the right hand and to the left in a
+very gracious and insinuating style, but as he crossed the threshold,
+unlike the early Puritan governors, he seemed to wring his hands with
+sorrow.
+
+"Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. Byles," said Sir William
+Howe. "What worthies are these?"
+
+"If it please Your Excellency, they lived somewhat before my day,"
+answered the doctor; "but doubtless our friend the colonel has been
+hand and glove with them."
+
+"Their living faces I never looked upon," said Colonel Joliffe,
+gravely; "although I have spoken face to face with many rulers of this
+land, and shall greet yet another with an old man's blessing ere I
+die. But we talk of these figures. I take the venerable patriarch to
+be Bradstreet, the last of the Puritans, who was governor at ninety or
+thereabouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, as any New
+England schoolboy will tell you, and therefore the people cast him
+down from his high seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William Phipps,
+shepherd, cooper, sea-captain and governor. May many of his countrymen
+rise as high from as low an origin! Lastly, you saw the gracious earl
+of Bellamont, who ruled us under King William."
+
+"But what is the meaning of it all?" asked Lord Percy.
+
+"Now, were I a rebel," said Miss Joliffe, half aloud, "I might fancy
+that the ghosts of these ancient governors had been summoned to form
+the funeral procession of royal authority in New England."
+
+Several other figures were now seen at the turn of the staircase. The
+one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty
+expression of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was
+evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long
+continuance in high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a
+greater than himself. A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet
+and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn
+by the duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubicund tinge, which,
+together with the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover
+of the wine-cup and good-fellowship; notwithstanding which tokens, he
+appeared ill at ease, and often glanced around him as if apprehensive
+of some secret mischief. Next came a portly gentleman wearing a coat
+of shaggy cloth lined with silken velvet; he had sense, shrewdness and
+humor in his face and a folio volume under his arm, but his aspect was
+that of a man vexed and tormented beyond all patience and harassed
+almost to death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a dignified
+person dressed in a purple velvet suit with very rich embroidery; his
+demeanor would have possessed much stateliness, only that a grievous
+fit of the gout compelled him to hobble from stair to stair with
+contortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the
+staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him
+steadfastly until the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, made
+a gesture of anguish and despair and vanished into the outer gloom,
+whither the funeral music summoned him.
+
+"Governor Belcher--my old patron--in his very shape and dress!" gasped
+Dr. Byles. "This is an awful mockery."
+
+"A tedious foolery, rather," said Sir William Howe, with an air of
+indifference. "But who were the three that preceded him?"
+
+"Governor Dudley, a cunning politician; yet his craft once brought him
+to a prison," replied Colonel Joliffe. "Governor Shute, formerly a
+colonel under Marlborough, and whom the people frightened out of the
+province, and learned Governor Burnett, whom the legislature tormented
+into a mortal fever."
+
+"Methinks they were miserable men--these royal governors of
+Massachusetts," observed Miss Joliffe. "Heavens! how dim the light
+grows!"
+
+It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which illuminated the
+staircase now burned dim and duskily; so that several figures which
+passed hastily down the stairs and went forth from the porch appeared
+rather like shadows than persons of fleshly substance.
+
+Sir William Howe and his guests stood at the doors of the contiguous
+apartments watching the progress of this singular pageant with various
+emotions of anger, contempt or half-acknowledged fear, but still with
+an anxious curiosity. The shapes which now seemed hastening to join
+the mysterious procession were recognized rather by striking
+peculiarities of dress or broad characteristics of manner than by any
+perceptible resemblance of features to their prototypes. Their faces,
+indeed, were invariably kept in deep shadow, but Dr. Byles and other
+gentlemen who had long been familiar with the successive rulers of the
+province were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, of Pownall, of
+Sir Francis Bernard and of the well-remembered Hutchinson, thereby
+confessing that the actors, whoever they might be, in this spectral
+march of governors had succeeded in putting on some distant
+portraiture of the real personages. As they vanished from the door,
+still did these shadows toss their arms into the gloom of night with a
+dread expression of woe. Following the mimic representative of
+Hutchinson came a military figure holding before his face the cocked
+hat which he had taken from his powdered head, but his epaulettes and
+other insignia of rank were those of a general officer, and something
+in his mien reminded the beholders of one who had recently been master
+of the province-house and chief of all the land.
+
+"The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking-glass!" exclaimed Lord
+Percy, turning pale.
+
+"No, surely," cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysterically; "it could not
+be Gage, or Sir William would have greeted his old comrade in arms.
+Perhaps he will not suffer the next to pass unchallenged."
+
+"Of that be assured, young lady," answered Sir William Howe, fixing
+his eyes with a very marked expression upon the immovable visage of
+her grandfather. "I have long enough delayed to pay the ceremonies of
+a host to these departing guests; the next that takes his leave shall
+receive due courtesy."
+
+A wild and dreary burst of music came through the open door. It seemed
+as it the procession, which had been gradually filling up its ranks,
+were now about to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing
+trumpets and roll of the muffled drums were a call to some loiterer to
+make haste. Many eyes, by an irresistible impulse, were turned upon
+Sir William Howe, as if it were he whom the dreary music summoned to
+the funeral of departed power.
+
+"See! here comes the last," whispered Miss Joliffe, pointing her
+tremulous finger to the staircase.
+
+A figure had come into view as if descending the stairs, although so
+dusky was the region whence it emerged some of the spectators fancied
+that they had seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself amid the
+gloom. Downward the figure came with a stately and martial tread, and,
+reaching the lowest stair, was observed to be a tall man booted and
+wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn up around the face so as
+to meet the napped brim of a laced hat; the features, therefore, were
+completely hidden. But the British officers deemed that they had seen
+that military cloak before, and even recognized the frayed embroidery
+on the collar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which
+protruded from the folds of the cloak and glittered in a vivid gleam
+of light. Apart from these trifling particulars there were
+characteristics of gait and bearing which impelled the wondering
+guests to glance from the shrouded figure to Sir William Howe, as if
+to satisfy themselves that their host had not suddenly vanished from
+the midst of them. With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they saw
+the general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak
+before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor.
+
+"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" cried he. "You pass no farther."
+
+The figure, without blenching a hair's-breadth from the sword which
+was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of
+the cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators
+to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen
+enough. The sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild
+amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the
+figure and let fall his sword upon the floor. The martial shape again
+drew the cloak about his features and passed on, but, reaching the
+threshold with his back toward the spectators, he was seen to stamp
+his foot and shake his clenched hands in the air. It was afterward
+affirmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that selfsame gesture of
+rage and sorrow when for the last time, and as the last royal
+governor, he passed through the portal of the province-house.
+
+"Hark! The procession moves," said Miss Joliffe.
+
+The music was dying away along the street, and its dismal strains were
+mingled with the knell of midnight from the steeple of the Old South
+and with the roar of artillery which announced that the beleaguered
+army of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height than
+before. As the deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear Colonel
+Joliffe raised himself to the full height of his aged form and smiled
+sternly on the British general.
+
+"Would Your Excellency inquire further into the mystery of the
+pageant?" said he.
+
+"Take care of your gray head!" cried Sir William Howe, fiercely,
+though with a quivering lip. "It has stood too long on a traitor's
+shoulders."
+
+"You must make haste to chop it off, then," calmly replied the
+colonel, "for a few hours longer, and not all the power of Sir William
+Howe, nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall.
+The empire of Britain in this ancient province is at its last gasp
+to-night; almost while I speak it is a dead corpse, and methinks the
+shadows of the old governors are fit mourners at its funeral."
+
+With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak, and, drawing his
+granddaughter's arm within his own, retired from the last festival
+that a British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts
+Bay. It was supposed that the colonel and the young lady possessed
+some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that
+night. However this might be, such knowledge has never become general.
+The actors in the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even
+that wild Indian hand who scattered the cargoes of the tea-ships on
+the waves and gained a place in history, yet left no names. But
+superstition, among other legends of this mansion, repeats the
+wondrous tale that on the anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture
+the ghosts of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide
+through the portal of the Province House. And last of all comes a
+figure shrouded in a military cloak, tossing his clenched hands into
+the air and stamping his iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone
+steps with a semblance of feverish despair, but without the sound of a
+foot-tramp.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentleman were hushed, I
+drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving with the best
+energy of my imagination to throw a tinge of romance and historic
+grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a
+scent of cigar-smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way
+of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale.
+Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were woefully disturbed by the
+rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch which Mr. Thomas
+Waite was mingling for a customer. Nor did it add to the picturesque
+appearance of the panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline stage
+was suspended against them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some
+far-descended governor. A stage-driver sat at one of the windows
+reading a penny paper of the day--the Boston _Times_--and presenting a
+figure which could nowise be brought into any picture of "Times in
+Boston" seventy or a hundred years ago. On the window-seat lay a
+bundle neatly done up in brown paper, the direction of which I had the
+idle curiosity to read: "MISS SUSAN HUGGINS, at the PROVINCE HOUSE." A
+pretty chambermaid, no doubt. In truth, it is desperately hard work
+when we attempt to throw the spell of hoar antiquity over localities
+with which the living world and the day that is passing over us have
+aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the stately staircase down which the
+procession of the old governors had descended, and as I emerged
+through the venerable portal whence their figures had preceded me, it
+gladdened me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. Then, diving through
+the narrow archway, a few strides transported me into the densest
+throng of Washington street.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT.
+
+
+The old legendary guest of the Province House abode in my remembrance
+from midsummer till January. One idle evening last winter, confident
+that he would be found in the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I
+resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to deserve well of my
+country by snatching from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of
+history. The night was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by
+almost a gale of wind which whistled along Washington street, causing
+the gaslights to flare and flicker within the lamps.
+
+As I hurried onward my fancy was busy with a comparison between the
+present aspect of the street and that which it probably wore when the
+British governors inhabited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick
+edifices in those times were few till a succession of destructive
+fires had swept, and swept again, the wooden dwellings and warehouses
+from the most populous quarters of the town. The buildings stood
+insulated and independent, not, as now, merging their separate
+existences into connected ranges with a front of tiresome identity,
+but each possessing features of its own, as if the owner's individual
+taste had shaped it, and the whole presenting a picturesque
+irregularity the absence of which is hardly compensated by any
+beauties of our modern architecture. Such a scene, dimly vanishing
+from the eye by the ray of here and there a tallow candle glimmering
+through the small panes of scattered windows, would form a sombre
+contrast to the street as I beheld it with the gaslights blazing from
+corner to corner, flaming within the shops and throwing a noonday
+brightness through the huge plates of glass. But the black, lowering
+sky, as I turned my eyes upward, wore, doubtless, the same visage as
+when it frowned upon the ante-Revolutionary New Englanders. The wintry
+blast had the same shriek that was familiar to their ears. The Old
+South Church, too, still pointed its antique spire into the darkness
+and was lost between earth and heaven, and, as I passed, its clock,
+which had warned so many generations how transitory was their
+lifetime, spoke heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to myself.
+"Only seven o'clock!" thought I. "My old friend's legends will
+scarcely kill the hours 'twixt this and bedtime."
+
+Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the courtyard, the confined
+precincts of which were made visible by a lantern over the portal of
+the Province House. On entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected,
+the old tradition-monger seated by a special good fire of anthracite,
+compelling clouds of smoke from a corpulent cigar. He recognized me
+with evident pleasure, for my rare properties as a patient listener
+invariably make me a favorite with elderly gentlemen and ladies of
+narrative propensites. Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired mine
+host to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey-punch, which was
+speedily prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom,
+a dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of
+nutmeg strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together, my
+legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I
+rejoiced at the oddity of the name, because it gave his image and
+character a sort of individuality in my conception. The old
+gentleman's draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it
+overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead people and
+traits of ancient manners, some of which were childish as a nurse's
+lullaby, while others might have been worth the notice of the grave
+historian. Nothing impressed me more than a story of a black
+mysterious picture which used to hang in one of the chambers of the
+Province House, directly above the room where we were now sitting. The
+following is as correct a version of the fact as the reader would be
+likely to obtain from any other source, although, assuredly, it has a
+tinge of romance approaching to the marvellous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In one of the apartments of the province-house there was long
+preserved an ancient picture the frame of which was as black as ebony,
+and the canvas itself so dark with age, damp and smoke that not a
+touch of the painter's art could be discerned. Time had thrown an
+impenetrable veil over it and left to tradition and fable and
+conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed. During the rule
+of many successive governors it had hung, by prescriptive and
+undisputed right, over the mantel piece of the same chamber, and it
+still kept its place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the
+administration of the province on the departure of Sir Francis
+Bernard.
+
+The lieutenant-governor sat one afternoon resting his head against the
+carved back of his stately arm-chair and gazing up thoughtfully at the
+void blackness of the picture. It was scarcely a time for such
+inactive musing, when affairs of the deepest moment required the
+ruler's decision; for within that very hour Hutchinson had received
+intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet bringing three
+regiments from Halifax to overawe the insubordination of the people.
+These troops awaited his permission to occupy the fortress of Castle
+William and the town itself, yet, instead of affixing his signature to
+an official order, there sat the lieutenant-governor so carefully
+scrutinizing the black waste of canvas that his demeanor attracted the
+notice of two young persons who attended him. One, wearing a military
+dress of buff, was his kinsman, Francis Lincoln, the provincial
+captain of Castle William; the other, who sat on a low stool beside
+his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece. She was clad entirely
+in white--a pale, ethereal creature who, though a native of New
+England, had been educated abroad and seemed not merely a stranger
+from another clime, but almost a being from another world. For several
+years, until left an orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny
+Italy, and there had acquired a taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and
+painting which she found few opportunities of gratifying in the
+undecorated dwellings of the colonial gentry. It was said that the
+early productions of her own pencil exhibited no inferior genius,
+though perhaps the rude atmosphere of New England had cramped her hand
+and dimmed the glowing colors of her fancy. But, observing her uncle's
+steadfast gaze, which appeared to search through the mist of years to
+discover the subject of the picture, her curiosity was excited.
+
+"Is it known, my dear uncle," inquired she, "what this old picture
+once represented? Possibly, could it be made visible, it might prove a
+masterpiece of some great artist; else why has it so long held such a
+conspicuous place?"
+
+As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom--for he was as attentive to
+all the humors and caprices of Alice as if she had been his own
+best-beloved child--did not immediately reply, the young captain of
+Castle William took that office upon himself.
+
+"This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin," said he, "has been
+an heirloom in the province-house from time immemorial. As to the
+painter, I can tell you nothing; but if half the stories told of it be
+true, not one of the great Italian masters has ever produced so
+marvellous a piece of work as that before you."
+
+Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and
+fantasies which, as it was impossible to refute them by ocular
+demonstration, had grown to be articles of popular belief in reference
+to this old picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the
+best-accredited, accounts stated it to be an original and authentic
+portrait of the evil one, taken at a witch-meeting near Salem, and
+that its strong and terrible resemblance had been confirmed by several
+of the confessing wizards and witches at their trial in open court. It
+was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the
+blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public
+calamity to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for
+instance, had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of General
+Abercrombie's shameful and bloody defeat under the walls of
+Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the province-house had caught
+glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at morning or evening
+twilight, or in the depths of night while raking up the fire that
+glimmered on the hearth beneath, although, if any were, bold enough to
+hold a torch before the picture, it would appear as black and
+undistinguishable as ever. The oldest inhabitant of Boston recollected
+that his father--in whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out
+of sight--had once looked upon it, but would never suffer himself to
+be questioned as to the face which was there represented. In
+connection with such stories, it was remarkable that over the top of
+the frame there were some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating
+that a veil had formerly hung down before the picture until the
+duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it. But, after all, it
+was the most singular part of the affair that so many of the pompous
+governors of Massachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to
+remain in the state-chamber of the province-house.
+
+"Some of these fables are really awful," observed Alice Vane, who had
+occasionally shuddered as well as smiled while her cousin spoke. "It
+would be almost worth while to wipe away the black surface of the
+canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so formidable as
+those which fancy paints instead of it."
+
+"But would it be possible," inquired her cousin," to restore this dark
+picture to its pristine hues?"
+
+"Such arts are known in Italy," said Alice.
+
+The lieutenant-governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood,
+and listened with a smile to the conversation of his young relatives.
+Yet his voice had something peculiar in its tones when he undertook
+the explanation of the mystery.
+
+"I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you
+are so fond," remarked he, "but my antiquarian researches have long
+since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture--if picture
+it can be called--which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the
+face of the long-buried man whom it once represented. It was the
+portrait of Edward Randolph, the founder of this house, a person
+famous in the history of New England."
+
+"Of that Edward Randolph," exclaimed Captain Lincoln, "who obtained the
+repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our forefathers
+had enjoyed almost democratic privileges--he that was styled the
+arch-enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation
+as the destroyer of our liberties?"
+
+"It was the same Randolph," answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in
+his chair. "It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium."
+
+"Our annals tell us," continued the captain of Castle William, "that
+the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went and
+wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its
+effect was seen, likewise, in the manner of his death. They say, too,
+that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward and was
+visible on the wretched man's countenance, making it too horrible to
+be looked upon. If so, and if this picture truly represented his
+aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over
+it."
+
+"These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how little
+of historic truth lies at the bottom," said the lieutenant-governor.
+"As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too implicit
+credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who--I must say it,
+though some of his blood runs in my veins--has filled our early
+history with old women's tales as fanciful and extravagant as those of
+Greece or Rome."
+
+"And yet," whispered Alice Vane, "may not such fables have a moral?
+And methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not
+without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the
+province-house. When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were
+well that they should be reminded of the awful weight of a people's
+curse."
+
+The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a moment at his niece,
+as if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own
+breast which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue.
+He knew, indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education,
+retained the native sympathies of a New England girl.
+
+"Peace, silly child!" cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever
+before addressed the gentle Alice. "The rebuke of a king; is more to
+be dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude.--Captain
+Lincoln, it is decided: the fortress of Castle William must be
+occupied by the royal troops. The two remaining regiments shall be
+billeted in the town or encamped upon the Common. It is time, after
+years of tumult, and almost rebellion, that His Majesty's government
+should have a wall of strength about it."
+
+"Trust, sir--trust yet a while to the loyalty of the people," said
+Captain Lincoln, "nor teach them that they can ever be on other terms
+with British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as when they fought
+side by side through the French war. Do not convert the streets of
+your native town into a camp. Think twice before you give up old
+Castle William, the key of the province, into other keeping than that
+of true-born New Englanders."
+
+"Young man, it is decided," repeated Hutchinson, rising from his
+chair. "A British officer will be in attendance this evening to
+receive the necessary instructions for the disposal of the troops.
+Your presence also will be required. Till then, farewell."
+
+With these words the lieutenant-governor hastily left the room, while
+Alice and her cousin more slowly followed, whispering together, and
+once pausing to glance back at the mysterious picture. The captain of
+Castle William fancied that the girl's air and mien were such as might
+have belonged to one of those spirits of fable--fairies or creatures
+of a more antique mythology--who sometimes mingled their agency with
+mortal affairs, half in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal
+or woe. As he held the door for her to pass Alice beckoned to the
+picture and smiled.
+
+"Come forth, dark and evil shape!" cried she. "It is thine hour."
+
+In the evening Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson sat in the same chamber
+where the foregoing scene had occurred, surrounded by several persons
+whose various interests had summoned them together. There were the
+selectmen of Boston--plain patriarchal fathers of the people,
+excellent representatives of the old puritanical founders whose sombre
+strength had stamped so deep an impress upon the New England
+character. Contrasting with these were one or two members of council,
+richly dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered waistcoats and other
+magnificence of the time, and making a somewhat ostentatious display
+of courtier-like ceremonial. In attendance, likewise, was a major of
+the British army, awaiting the lieutenant-governor's orders for the
+landing of the troops, which still remained on board the transports.
+The captain of Castle William stood beside Hutchinson's chair, with
+folded arms, glancing rather haughtily at the British officer by whom
+he was soon to be superseded in his command. On a table in the centre
+of the chamber stood a branched silver candlestick, throwing down the
+glow of half a dozen waxlights upon a paper apparently ready for the
+lieutenant-governor's signature.
+
+Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one of the window-curtains,
+which fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen the white drapery
+of a lady's robe. It may appear strange that Alice Vane should have
+been there at such a time, but there was something so childlike, so
+wayward, in her singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, that
+her presence did not surprise the few who noticed it. Meantime, the
+chairman of the selectmen was addressing to the lieutenant-governor a
+long and solemn protest against the reception of the British troops
+into the town.
+
+"And if Your Honor," concluded this excellent but somewhat prosy old
+gentleman, "shall see fit to persist in bringing these mercenary
+sworders and musketeers into our quiet streets, not on our heads be
+the responsibility. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one
+drop of blood be shed, that blood shall be an eternal stain upon Your
+Honor's memory. You, sir, have written with an able pen the deeds of
+our forefathers; the more to be desired is it, therefore, that
+yourself should deserve honorable mention as a true patriot and
+upright ruler when your own doings shall be written down in history."
+
+"I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural desire to stand well
+in the annals of my country," replied Hutchinson, controlling his
+impatience into courtesy, "nor know I any better method of attaining
+that end than by withstanding the merely temporary spirit of mischief
+which, with your pardon, seems to have infected older men than myself.
+Would you have me wait till the mob shall sack the province-house as
+they did my private mansion? Trust me, sir, the time may come when you
+will be glad to flee for protection to the king's banner, the raising
+of which is now so distasteful to you."
+
+"Yes," said the British major, who was impatiently expecting the
+lieutenant-governor's orders. "The demagogues of this province have
+raised the devil, and cannot lay him again. We will exorcise him in
+God's name and the king's."
+
+"If you meddle with the devil, take care of his claws," answered the
+captain of Castle William, stirred by the taunt against his
+countrymen.
+
+"Craving your pardon, young sir," said the venerable selectman, "let
+not an evil spirit enter into your words. We will strive against the
+oppressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers would have done.
+Like them, moreover, we will submit to whatever lot a wise Providence
+may send us--always after our own best exertions to amend it."
+
+"And there peep forth the devil's claws!" muttered Hutchinson, who
+well understood the nature of Puritan submission. "This matter shall
+be expedited forthwith. When there shall be a sentinel at every corner
+and a court of guard before the town-house, a loyal gentleman may
+venture to walk abroad. What to me is the outcry of a mob in this
+remote province of the realm? The king is my master, and England is my
+country; upheld by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the rabble
+and defy them."
+
+He snatched a pen and was about to affix his signature to the paper
+that lay on the table, when the captain of Castle William placed his
+hand upon his shoulder. The freedom of the action, so contrary to the
+ceremonious respect which was then considered due to rank and dignity,
+awakened general surprise, and in none more than in the
+lieutenant-governor himself. Looking angrily up, he perceived that his
+young relative was pointing his finger to the opposite wall.
+Hutchinson's eye followed the signal, and he saw what had hitherto
+been unobserved--that a black silk curtain was suspended before the
+mysterious picture, so as completely to conceal it. His thoughts
+immediately recurred to the scene of the preceding afternoon, and in
+his surprise, confused by indistinct emotions, yet sensible that his
+niece must have had an agency in this phenomenon, he called loudly
+upon her:
+
+"Alice! Come hither, Alice!"
+
+No sooner had he spoken than Alice Vane glided from her station, and,
+pressing one hand across her eyes, with the other snatched away the
+sable curtain that concealed the portrait. An exclamation of surprise
+burst from every beholder, but the lieutenant-governor's voice had a
+tone of horror.
+
+"By Heaven!" said he, in a low inward murmur, speaking rather to
+himself than to those around him; "if the spirit of Edward Randolph
+were to appear among us from the place of torment, he could not wear
+more of the terrors of hell upon his face."
+
+"For some wise end," said the aged selectman, solemnly, "hath
+Providence scattered away the mist of years that had so long hid this
+dreadful effigy. Until this hour no living man hath seen what we
+behold."
+
+Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste
+of canvas now appeared a visible picture-still dark, indeed, in its
+hues and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief. It was a
+half-length figure of a gentleman in a rich but very old-fashioned
+dress of embroidered velvet, with a broad ruff and a beard, and
+wearing a hat the brim of which overshadowed his forehead. Beneath
+this cloud the eyes had a peculiar glare which was almost lifelike.
+The whole portrait started so distinctly out of the background that it
+had the effect of a person looking down from the wall at the
+astonished and awe-stricken spectators. The expression of the face, if
+any words can convey an idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in
+some hideous guilt and exposed to the bitter hatred and laughter and
+withering scorn of a vast surrounding multitude. There was the
+struggle of defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by the crushing
+weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had come forth upon the
+countenance. It seemed as if the picture, while hidden behind the
+cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time acquiring an intenser
+depth and darkness of expression, till now it gloomed forth again and
+threw its evil omen over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend
+may be credited, was the portrait of Edward Randolph as he appeared
+when a people's curse had wrought its influence upon his nature.
+
+"'Twould drive me mad, that awful face," said Hutchinson, who seemed
+fascinated by the contemplation of it.
+
+"Be warned, then," whispered Alice. "He trampled on a people's rights.
+Behold his punishment, and avoid a crime like his."
+
+The lieutenant-governor actually trembled for an instant, but,
+exerting his energy--which was not, however, his most characteristic
+feature--he strove to shake off the spell of Randolph's countenance.
+
+"Girl," cried he, laughing bitterly, as he turned to Alice, "have you
+brought hither your painter's art, your Italian spirit of intrigue,
+your tricks of stage-effect, and think to influence the councils of
+rulers and the affairs of nations by such shallow contrivances? See
+here!"
+
+"Stay yet a while," said the selectman as Hutchinson again snatched
+the pen; "for if ever mortal man received a warning from a tormented
+soul, Your Honor is that man."
+
+"Away!" answered Hutchinson, fiercely. "Though yonder senseless
+picture cried 'Forbear!' it should not move me!"
+
+Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face--which seemed at that
+moment to intensify the horror of its miserable and wicked look--he
+scrawled on the paper, in characters that betokened it a deed of
+desperation, the name of Thomas Hutchinson. Then, it is said, he
+shuddered, as if that signature had granted away his salvation.
+
+"It is done," said he, and placed his hand upon his brow.
+
+"May Heaven forgive the deed!" said the soft, sad accents of Alice
+Vane, like the voice of a good spirit flitting away.
+
+When morning came, there was a stifled whisper through the household, and
+spreading thence about the town, that the dark mysterious picture had
+started from the wall and spoken face to face with Lieutenant-governor
+Hutchinson. If such a miracle had been wrought, however, no traces of
+it remained behind; for within the antique frame nothing could be
+discerned save the impenetrable cloud which had covered the canvas
+since the memory of man. If the figure had, indeed, stepped forth, it
+had fled back, spirit-like, at the day-dawn, and hidden itself behind
+a century's obscurity. The truth probably was that Alice Vane's secret
+for restoring the hues of the picture had merely effected a temporary
+renovation. But those who in that brief interval had beheld the awful
+visage of Edward Randolph desired no second glance, and ever afterward
+trembled at the recollection of the scene, as if an evil spirit had
+appeared visibly among them. And, as for Hutchinson, when, far over
+the ocean, his dying-hour drew on, he gasped for breath and complained
+that he was choking with the blood of the Boston Massacre, and Francis
+Lincoln, the former captain of Castle William, who was standing at his
+bedside, perceived a likeness in his frenzied look to that of Edward
+Randolph. Did his broken spirit feel at that dread hour the tremendous
+burden of a people's curse?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the conclusion of this miraculous legend I inquired of mine host
+whether the picture still remained in the chamber over our heads, but
+Mr. Tiffany informed me that it had long since been removed, and was
+supposed to be hidden in some out-of-the-way corner of the New England
+Museum. Perchance some curious antiquary may light upon it there, and,
+with the assistance of Mr. Howorth, the picture-cleaner, may supply a
+not unnecessary proof of the authenticity of the facts here set down.
+
+During the progress of the story a storm had been gathering abroad and
+raging and rattling so loudly in the upper regions of the Province
+House that it seemed as if all the old governors and great men were
+running riot above stairs while Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them
+below. In the course of generations, when many people have lived and
+died in an ancient house, the whistling of the wind through its
+crannies and the creaking of its beams and rafters become strangely
+like the tones of the human voice, or thundering laughter, or heavy
+footsteps treading the deserted chambers. It is as if the echoes of
+half a century were revived. Such were the ghostly sounds that roared
+and murmured in our ears when I took leave of the circle round the
+fireside of the Province House and, plunging down the doorsteps,
+fought my way homeward against a drifting snow-storm.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE.
+
+
+Mine excellent friend the landlord of the Province House was pleased
+the other evening to invite Mr. Tiffany and myself to an
+oyster-supper. This slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he
+handsomely observed, was far less than the ingenious tale-teller, and
+I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had fairly earned by the
+public notice which our joint lucubrations had attracted to his
+establishment. Many a cigar had been smoked within his premises, many
+a glass of wine or more potent _aqua vit�_ had been quaffed, many
+a dinner had been eaten, by curious strangers who, save for the
+fortunate conjunction of Mr. Tiffany and me, would never have ventured
+through that darksome avenue which gives access to the historic
+precincts of the Province House. In short, if any credit be due to the
+courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas Waite, we had brought his forgotten
+mansion almost as effectually into public view as if we had thrown
+down the vulgar range of shoe-shops and dry-good stores which hides
+its aristocratic front from Washington street. It may be unadvisable,
+however, to speak too loudly of the increased custom of the house,
+lest Mr. Waite should find it difficult to renew the lease on so
+favorable terms as heretofore.
+
+Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. Tiffany nor myself
+felt any scruple in doing full justice to the good things that were
+set before us. If the feast were less magnificent than those same
+panelled walls had witnessed in a bygone century; if mine host
+presided with somewhat less of state than might have befitted a
+successor of the royal governors; if the guests made a less imposing
+show than the bewigged and powdered and embroidered dignitaries who
+erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table and now sleep within their
+armorial tombs on Copp's Hill or round King's Chapel,--yet never, I
+may boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the
+province-house from Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. The occasion
+was rendered more interesting by the presence of a venerable personage
+whose own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and
+Howe, and even supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two of
+Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and now all but extinguished,
+class whose attachment to royalty, and to the colonial institutions
+and customs that were connected with it, had never yielded to the
+democratic heresies of after-times. The young queen of Britain has not
+a more loyal subject in her realm--perhaps not one who would kneel
+before her throne with such reverential love--as this old grandsire
+whose head has whitened beneath the mild sway of the republic which
+still in his mellower moments he terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices so
+obstinate have not made him an ungentle or impracticable companion. If
+the truth must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has been of such
+a scrambling and unsettled character--he has had so little choice of
+friends and been so often destitute of any--that I doubt whether he
+would refuse a cup of kindness with either Oliver Cromwell or John
+Hancock, to say nothing of any democrat now upon the stage. In another
+paper of this series I may perhaps give the reader a closer glimpse of
+his portrait.
+
+Our host in due season uncorked a bottle of Madeira of such exquisite
+perfume and admirable flavor that he surely must have discovered it in
+an ancient bin down deep beneath the deepest cellar where some jolly
+old butler stored away the governor's choicest wine and forgot to
+reveal the secret on his death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost and a
+libation to his memory! This precious liquor was imbibed by Mr.
+Tiffany with peculiar zest, and after sipping the third glass it was
+his pleasure to give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet
+raked from the storehouse where he keeps such matters. With some
+suitable adornments from my own fancy, it ran pretty much as follows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government of
+Massachusetts Bay--now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago--a young
+lady of rank and fortune arrived from England to claim his protection
+as her guardian. He was her distant relative, but the nearest who had
+survived the gradual extinction of her family; so that no more
+eligible shelter could be found for the rich and high-born Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe than within the province-house of a Transatlantic
+colony. The consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as a mother
+to her childhood, and was now anxious to receive her in the hope that
+a beautiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril from
+the primitive society of New England than amid the artifices and
+corruptions of a court. If either the governor or his lady had
+especially consulted their own comfort, they would probably have
+sought to devolve the responsibility on other hands, since with some
+noble and splendid traits of character Lady Eleanore was remarkable
+for a harsh, unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her
+hereditary and personal advantages, which made her almost incapable of
+control. Judging from many traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar
+temper was hardly less than a monomania; or if the acts which it
+inspired were those of a sane person, it seemed due from Providence
+that pride so sinful should be followed by as severe a retribution.
+That tinge of the marvellous which is thrown over so many of these
+half-forgotten legends has probably imparted an additional wildness to
+the strange story of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe.
+
+The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at Newport, whence
+Lady Eleanore was conveyed to Boston in the governor's coach, attended
+by a small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage,
+with its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled
+through Cornhill surrounded by the prancing steeds of half a dozen
+cavaliers with swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their
+holsters. Through the large glass windows of the coach, as it rolled
+along, the people could discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely
+combining an almost queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty of a
+maiden in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the ladies
+of the province that their fair rival was indebted for much of the
+irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress--an
+embroidered mantle--which had been wrought by the most skilful artist
+in London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the
+present occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress,
+being clad in a riding-habit of velvet which would have appeared stiff
+and ungraceful on any other form.
+
+The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade
+came to a pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced
+the province-house from the public street. It was an awkward
+coincidence that the bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a
+funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome peal with which it was
+customary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers, Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if calamity had
+come embodied in her beautiful person.
+
+"A very great disrespect!" exclaimed Captain Langford, an English
+officer who had recently brought despatches to Governor Shute. "The
+funeral should have been deferred lest Lady Eleanore's spirits be
+affected by such a dismal welcome."
+
+"With your pardon, sir," replied Dr. Clarke, a physician and a famous
+champion of the popular party, "whatever the heralds may pretend, a
+dead beggar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers
+high privileges."
+
+These remarks-were interchanged while the speakers waited a passage
+through the crowd which had gathered on each side of the gateway,
+leaving an open avenue to the portal of the province-house. A black
+slave in livery now leaped from behind the coach and threw open the
+door, while at the same moment Governor Shute descended the flight of
+steps from his mansion to assist Lady Eleanore in alighting. But the
+governor's stately approach was anticipated in a manner that excited
+general astonishment. A pale young man with his black hair all in
+disorder rushed from the throng and prostrated himself beside the
+coach, thus offering his person as a footstool for Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe to tread upon. She held back an instant, yet with an
+expression as if doubting whether the young man were worthy to bear
+the weight of her footstep rather than dissatisfied to receive such
+awful reverence from a fellow-mortal.
+
+"Up, sir!" said the governor, sternly, at the same time lifting his
+cane over the intruder. "What means the Bedlamite by this freak?"
+
+"Nay," answered Lady Eleanore, playfully, but with more scorn than
+pity in her tone; "Your Excellency shall not strike him. When men seek
+only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so
+easily granted--and so well deserved!" Then, though as lightly as a
+sunbeam on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form and
+extended her hand to meet that of the governor.
+
+There was a brief interval during which Lady Eleanore retained this
+attitude, and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of aristocracy
+and hereditary pride trampling on human sympathies and the kindred of
+nature than these two figures presented at that moment. Yet the
+spectators were so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did pride
+seem to the existence of such a creature, that they gave a
+simultaneous acclamation of applause.
+
+"Who is this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who
+still remained beside Dr. Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his
+impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be
+secured from further inconvenience by his confinement."
+
+"His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the doctor--"a youth of no
+birth or fortune, or other advantages save the mind and soul that
+nature gave him; and, being secretary to our colonial agent in London,
+it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved
+her, and her scorn has driven him mad."
+
+"He was mad so to aspire," observed the English officer.
+
+"It may be so," said Dr. Clarke, frowning as he spoke; "but I tell
+you, sir, I could wellnigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if
+no signal humiliation overtake this lady who now treads so haughtily
+into yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies
+of our common nature, which envelops all human souls; see if that
+nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring
+her level with the lowest."
+
+"Never!" cried Captain Langford, indignantly--"neither in life nor
+when they lay her with her ancestors."
+
+Not many days afterward the governor gave a ball in honor of Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony received
+invitations, which were distributed to their residences far and near
+by messengers on horseback bearing missives sealed with all the
+formality of official despatches. In obedience to the summons, there
+was a general gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the wide door
+of the province-house had seldom given admittance to more numerous and
+honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's ball. Without
+much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed
+splendid, for, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone
+in rich silks and satins outspread over wide-projecting hoops, and the
+gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery laid unsparingly upon the
+purple or scarlet or sky-blue velvet which was the material of their
+coats and waistcoats. The latter article of dress was of great
+importance, since it enveloped the wearer's body nearly to the knees
+and was perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole year's income
+in golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste of the present day--a
+taste symbolic of a deep change in the whole system of society--would
+look upon almost any of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous, although
+that evening the guests sought their reflections in the pier-glasses
+and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd.
+What a pity that one of the stately mirrors has not preserved a
+picture of the scene which by the very traits that were so transitory
+might have taught us much that would be worth knowing and remembering!
+
+Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us some
+faint idea of a garment already noticed in this legend--the Lady
+Eleanore's embroidered mantle, which the gossips whispered was
+invested with magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace
+to her figure each time that she put it on! Idle fancy as it is, this
+mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around my image of her, partly
+from its fabled virtues and partly because it was the handiwork of a
+dying woman, and perchance owed the fantastic grace of its conception
+to the delirium of approaching death.
+
+After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe
+stood apart from the mob of guests, insulating herself within a small
+and distinguished circle to whom she accorded a more cordial favor
+than to the general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance
+vividly over the scene, bringing out its brilliant points in strong
+relief, but she gazed carelessly, and with now and then an expression
+of weariness or scorn tempered with such feminine grace that her
+auditors scarcely perceived the moral deformity of which it was the
+utterance. She beheld the spectacle not with vulgar ridicule, as
+disdaining to be pleased with the provincial mockery of a
+court-festival, but with the deeper scorn of one whose spirit held
+itself too high to participate in the enjoyment of other human souls.
+Whether or no the recollections of those who saw her that evening were
+influenced by the strange events with which she was subsequently
+connected, so it was that her figure ever after recurred to them as
+marked by something wild and unnatural, although at the time the
+general whisper was of her exceeding beauty and of the indescribable
+charm which her mantle threw around her. Some close observers, indeed,
+detected a feverish flush and alternate paleness of countenance, with
+a corresponding flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or twice a
+painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude, as if she were on the
+point of sinking to the ground. Then, with a nervous shudder, she
+seemed to arouse her energies, and threw some bright and playful yet
+half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation. There was so strange a
+characteristic in her manners and sentiments that it astonished every
+right-minded listener, till, looking in her face, a lurking and
+incomprehensible glance and smile perplexed them with doubts both as
+to her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe's
+circle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen remained in it. These
+were Captain Langford, the English officer before mentioned; a
+Virginian planter who had come to Massachusetts on some political
+errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a British earl;
+and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor Shute, whose
+obsequiousness had won a sort of tolerance from Lady Eleanore.
+
+At different periods of the evening the liveried servants of the
+province-house passed among the guests bearing huge trays of
+refreshments and French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe,
+who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of champagne,
+had sunk back into a large damask chair, apparently overwearied either
+with the excitement of the scene or its tedium; and while, for an
+instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter and music, a young
+man stole forward and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his
+hand on which was a chased silver goblet filled to the brim with wine,
+which he offered as reverentially as to a crowned queen--or, rather,
+with the awful devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol.
+Conscious that some one touched her robe, Lady Eleanore started, and
+unclosed her eyes upon the pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of
+Jervase Helwyse.
+
+"Why do you haunt me thus?" said she, in a languid tone, but with a
+kindlier feeling than she ordinarily permitted herself to express.
+"They tell me that I have done you harm."
+
+"Heaven knows if that be so," replied the young man, solemnly. "But,
+Lady Eleanore, in requital of that harm, if such there be, and for
+your own earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of
+this holy wine and then to pass the goblet round among the guests. And
+this shall be a symbol that you have not sought to withdraw yourself
+from the chain of human sympathies, which whoso would shake off must
+keep company with fallen angels."
+
+"Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental vessel?" exclaimed
+the Episcopal clergyman.
+
+This question drew the notice of the guests to the silver cup, which
+was recognized as appertaining to the communion-plate of the Old South
+Church, and, for aught that could be known, it was brimming over with
+the consecrated wine.
+
+"Perhaps it is poisoned," half whispered the governor's secretary.
+
+"Pour it down the villain's throat!" cried the Virginian, fiercely.
+
+"Turn him out of the house!" cried Captain Langford, seizing Jervase
+Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder that the sacramental cup was
+overturned and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore's mantle.
+"Whether knave, fool or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the fellow
+should go at large."
+
+"Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm," said Lady Eleanore,
+with a faint and weary smile. "Take him out of my sight, if such be
+your pleasure, for I can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at
+him, whereas, in all decency and conscience, it would become me to
+weep for the mischief I have wrought."
+
+But while the bystanders were attempting to lead away the unfortunate
+young man he broke from them and with a wild, impassioned earnestness
+offered a new and equally strange petition to Lady Eleanore. It was no
+other than that she should throw off the mantle, which while he
+pressed the silver cup of wine upon her she had drawn more closely
+around her form, so as almost to shroud herself within it.
+
+"Cast it from you," exclaimed Jervase Helwyse, clasping his hands in
+an agony of entreaty. "It may not yet be too late. Give the accursed
+garment to the flames."
+
+But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the rich folds of the
+embroidered mantle over her head in such a fashion as to give a
+completely new aspect to her beautiful face, which, half hidden, half
+revealed, seemed to belong to some being of mysterious character and
+purposes.
+
+"Farewell, Jervase Helwyse!" said she. "Keep my image in your
+remembrance as you behold it now."
+
+"Alas, lady!" he replied, in a tone no longer wild, but sad as a
+funeral-bell; "we must meet shortly when your face may wear another
+aspect, and that shall be the image that must abide within me." He
+made no more resistance to the violent efforts of the gentlemen and
+servants who almost dragged him out of the apartment and dismissed him
+roughly from the iron gate of the province-house.
+
+Captain Langford, who had been very active in this affair, was
+returning to the presence of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he
+encountered the physician, Dr. Clarke, with whom he had held some
+casual talk on the day of her arrival. The doctor stood apart,
+separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the room, but eying her
+with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him
+credit for the discovery of some deep secret.
+
+"You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly
+maiden," said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician's hidden
+knowledge.
+
+"God forbid!" answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave smile; "and if you be
+wise, you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who
+shall be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder stands
+the governor, and I have a word or two for his private ear.
+Good-night!" He accordingly advanced to Governor Shute and addressed
+him in so low a tone that none of the bystanders could catch a word of
+what he said, although the sudden change of His Excellency's hitherto
+cheerful visage betokened that the communication could be of no
+agreeable import. A very few moments afterward it was announced to the
+guests that an unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to put a
+premature close to the festival.
+
+The ball at the province-house supplied a topic of conversation for
+the colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might
+still longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of
+all-engrossing interest thrust it for a time from the public
+recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic which in
+that age, and long before and afterward, was wont to slay its hundreds
+and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which
+we speak it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that
+it has left its traces--its pitmarks, to use an appropriate figure--on
+the history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown into
+confusion by its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the
+disease seemed to confine itself to the higher circles of society,
+selecting its victims from among the proud, the well-born and the
+wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers and lying down with
+the slumberers in silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests
+of the province-house--even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her favor--were stricken by this
+fatal scourge. It was noticed with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling
+that the four gentlemen--the Virginian, the British officer, the young
+clergyman and the governor's secretary--who had been her most devoted
+attendants on the evening of the ball were the foremost on whom the
+plague-stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress,
+soon ceased to be exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red
+brand was no longer conferred like a noble's star or an order of
+knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow and crooked
+streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome dwellings and laid its
+hand of death upon the artisans and laboring classes of the town. It
+compelled rich and poor to feel themselves brethren then, and stalking
+to and fro across the Three Hills with a fierceness which made it
+almost a new pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror--that scourge
+and horror of our forefathers--the small-pox.
+
+We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore by
+contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must
+remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of
+the Asiatic cholera striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic and
+marching like Destiny upon cities far remote which flight had already
+half depopulated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing
+as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven's vital air lest it be
+poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the grip of
+the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now
+followed in the track of the disease or ran before it throughout the
+town. Graves were hastily dug and the pestilential relics as hastily
+covered, because the dead were enemies of the living and strove to
+draw them headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public
+councils were suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its
+devices now that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the
+ruler's mansion. Had an enemy's fleet been hovering on the coast or
+his armies trampling on our soil, the people would probably have
+committed their defence to that same direful conqueror who had wrought
+their own calamity and would permit no interference with his sway.
+This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs: it was a blood-red flag
+that fluttered in the tainted air over the door of every dwelling into
+which the small-pox had entered.
+
+Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the
+province-house, for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps
+back, had all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back
+to a lady's luxurious chamber, to the proudest of the proud, to her
+that was so delicate and hardly owned herself of earthly mould, to the
+haughty one who took her stand above human sympathies--to Lady
+Eleanore. There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had
+lurked in that gorgeous mantle which threw so strange a grace around
+her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the
+delirious brain of a woman on her death-bed and was the last toil of
+her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its
+golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited
+far and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore and cried out
+that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that between them
+both this monstrous evil had been born. At times their rage and
+despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red
+flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another and yet another door,
+they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets in bitter
+mockery: "Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!"
+
+One day in the midst of these dismal times a wild figure approached
+the portal of the province-house, and, folding his arms, stood
+contemplating the scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook
+fitfully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At
+length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade,
+he took down the flag, and entered the mansion waving it above his
+head. At the foot of the staircase he met the governor, booted and
+spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of
+setting forth upon a journey.
+
+"Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?" exclaimed Shute, extending
+his cane to guard himself from contact. "There is nothing here but
+Death; back, or you will meet him."
+
+"Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence," cried
+Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. "Death and the
+pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk
+through the streets to-night, and I must march before them with this
+banner."
+
+"Why do I waste words on the fellow?" muttered the governor, drawing
+his cloak across his mouth. "What matters his miserable life, when
+none of us are sure of twelve hours' breath?--On, fool, to your own
+destruction!"
+
+He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the
+staircase, but on the first landing-place was arrested by the firm
+grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up with a madman's
+impulse to struggle with and rend asunder his opponent, he found
+himself powerless beneath a calm, stern eye which possessed the
+mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height. The person whom
+he had now encountered was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties of
+whose sad profession had led him to the province-house, where he was
+an infrequent guest in more prosperous times.
+
+"Young man, what is your purpose?" demanded he.
+
+"I seek the Lady Eleanore," answered Jervase Helwyse, submissively.
+
+"All have fled from her," said the physician. "Why do you seek her
+now? I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold
+of that fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such a curse to our
+shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore, that her breath has filled the
+air with poison, that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the
+land from the folds of her accursed mantle?"
+
+"Let me look upon her," rejoined the mad youth, more wildly. "Let me
+behold her in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the
+pestilence. She and Death sit on a throne together; let me kneel down
+before them."
+
+"Poor youth!" said Dr. Clarke, and, moved by a deep sense of human
+weakness, a smile of caustic humor curled his lip even then. "Wilt
+thou still worship the destroyer and surround her image with fantasies
+the more magnificent the more evil she has wrought? Thus man doth ever
+to his tyrants. Approach, then. Madness, as I have noted, has that
+good efficacy that it will guard you from contagion, and perhaps its
+own cure may be found in yonder chamber." Ascending another flight of
+stairs, he threw open a door and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he
+should enter.
+
+The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cherished a delusion that his
+haughty mistress sat in state, unharmed herself by the pestilential
+influence which as by enchantment she scattered round about her. He
+dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into
+superhuman splendor. With such anticipations he stole reverentially to
+the door at which the physician stood, but paused upon the threshold,
+gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened chamber.
+
+"Where is the Lady Eleanore?" whispered he.
+
+"Call her," replied the physician.
+
+"Lady Eleanore! princess! queen of Death!" cried Jervase Helwyse,
+advancing three steps into the chamber. "She is not here. There, on
+yonder table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore
+upon her bosom. There"--and he shuddered--"there hangs her mantle, on
+which a dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where
+is the Lady Eleanore?"
+
+Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed and a
+low moan was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began
+to distinguish as a woman's voice complaining dolefully of thirst. He
+fancied, even, that he recognized its tones.
+
+"My throat! My throat is scorched," murmured the voice. "A drop of
+water!"
+
+"What thing art thou?" said the brain-stricken youth, drawing near the
+bed and tearing asunder its curtains. "Whose voice hast thou stolen
+for thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore could be
+conscious of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap of diseased mortality, why
+lurkest thou in my lady's chamber?"
+
+"Oh, Jervase Helwyse," said the voice--and as it spoke the figure
+contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face--"look not now
+on the woman you once loved. The curse of Heaven hath stricken me
+because I would not call man my brother nor woman sister. I wrapped
+myself in pride as in a mantle and scorned the sympathies of nature,
+and therefore has Nature made this wretched body the medium of a
+dreadful sympathy. You are avenged, they are all avenged, Nature is
+avenged; for I am Eleanore Rochcliffe."
+
+The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom
+of his heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined life and love
+that had been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of
+Jervase Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched girl, and the
+chamber echoed, the curtains of the bed were shaken, with his outburst
+of insane merriment.
+
+"Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!" he cried. "All have been her
+victims; who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?" Impelled by
+some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched the fatal mantle
+and rushed from the chamber and the house.
+
+That night a procession passed by torchlight through the streets,
+bearing in the midst the figure of a woman enveloped with a
+richly-embroidered mantle, while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse
+waving the red flag of the pestilence. Arriving opposite the
+province-house, the mob burned the effigy, and a strong wind came and
+swept away the ashes. It was said that from that very hour the
+pestilence abated, as if its sway had some mysterious connection, from
+the first plague-stroke to the last, with Lady Elcanore's mantle. A
+remarkable uncertainty broods over that unhappy lady's fate. There is
+a belief, however, that in a certain chamber of this mansion a female
+form may sometimes be duskily discerned shrinking into the darkest
+corner and muffling her face within an embroidered mantle. Supposing
+the legend true, can this be other than the once proud Lady Eleanore?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no little Warmth of
+applause upon this narrative, in which we had all been deeply
+interested; for the reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the
+effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in the present case, we
+may repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who tells it. For
+my own part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the
+foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the
+more faithfully had he professed himself an eyewitness of the doings
+and sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might
+demand documentary evidence, or even require him to produce the
+embroidered mantle, forgetting that--Heaven be praised!--it was
+consumed to ashes.
+
+But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer,
+began to talk, in his turn, about the traditions of the Province
+House, and hinted that he, if it were agreeable, might add a few
+reminiscences to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to
+dread a rival, immediately besought him to favor us with a specimen;
+my own entreaties, of course, were urged to the same effect; and our
+venerable guest, well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited only
+the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth to provide
+accommodations for several new arrivals. Perchance the public--but be
+this as its own caprice and ours shall settle the matter--may read the
+result in another tale of the Province House.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.
+
+
+Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as Mr. Tiffany and
+myself expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story
+to which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw
+lit to moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then,
+turning his face toward our coal-fire, looked steadfastly for a few
+moments into the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally he poured forth
+a great fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had imbibed,
+while it warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill
+from his heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel
+which we could hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of
+fourscore winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable
+than those of a younger man--or, at least, the same degree of feeling
+manifested itself by more visible effects than if his judgment and
+will had possessed the potency of meridian life. At the pathetic
+passages of his narrative he readily melted into tears. When a breath
+of indignation swept across his spirit, the blood flushed his withered
+visage even to the roots of his white hair, and he shook his clinched
+fist at the trio of peaceful auditors, seeming to fancy enemies in
+those who felt very kindly toward the desolate old soul. But ever and
+anon, sometimes in the midst of his most earnest talk, this ancient
+person's intellect would wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter
+in hand and groping for it amid misty shadows. Then would he cackle
+forth a feeble laugh and express a doubt whether his wits--for by that
+phrase it pleased our ancient friend to signify his mental
+powers--were not getting a little the worse for wear.
+
+Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist's story required more
+revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series
+which have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment
+and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight--or perchance
+more than slight--metamorphosis in its transmission to the reader
+through the medium of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a
+mere sketch with no involution of plot nor any great interest of
+events, yet possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive
+influence over the mind which the shadow of the old Province House
+flings upon the loiterer in its court-yard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hour had come--the hour of defeat and humiliation--when Sir
+William Howe was to pass over the threshold of the province-house and
+embark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself,
+on board the British fleet. He bade his servants and military
+attendants go before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of
+the mansion to quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom
+as with a death-throb. Preferable then would he have deemed his fate
+had a warrior's death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a
+grave within the soil which the king had given him to defend. With an
+ominous perception that as his departing footsteps echoed adown the
+staircase the sway of Britain was passing for ever from New England,
+he smote his clenched hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had
+flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him.
+
+"Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, "that
+the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the floor
+should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
+his trust."
+
+The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.
+
+"Heaven's cause and the king's are one," it said. "Go forth, Sir
+William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in
+triumph."
+
+Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith
+that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an
+aged woman leaning on a gold-headed staff was standing betwixt him and
+the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial
+years in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from
+it as the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an
+ancient and once eminent family which had fallen into poverty and
+decay and left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the
+king, nor any shelter except within the walls of the province-house.
+An office in the household with merely nominal duties had been
+assigned to her as a pretext for the payment of a small pension, the
+greater part of which she expended in adorning herself with an antique
+magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther Dudley's gentle blood
+were acknowledged by all the successive governors, and they treated
+her with the punctilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand,
+not always with success, from a neglectful world. The only actual
+share which she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide
+through its passages and public chambers late at night to see that the
+servants had dropped no fire from their flaring torches nor left
+embers crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this
+invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that
+caused the superstition of the times to invest the old woman with
+attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that she had entered the portal
+of the province-house--none knew whence--in the train of the first
+royal governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last
+should have departed.
+
+But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.
+
+"Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?" asked he, with some
+severity of tone. "It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of
+the king."
+
+"Not so, if it please Your Excellency," answered the time-stricken
+woman. "This roof has sheltered me long; I will not pass from it until
+they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is
+there for old Esther Dudley save the province-house or the grave?"
+
+"Now, Heaven forgive me!" said Sir William Howe to himself. "I was
+about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg.--Take
+this, good Mistress Dudley," he added, putting a purse into her hands.
+"King George's head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will
+continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock
+their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the
+province-house can now afford."
+
+"While the burden of life remains upon me I will have no other shelter
+than this roof," persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the
+floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve; "and when Your
+Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome
+you."
+
+"My poor old friend!" answered the British general, and all his manly
+and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears.
+"This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king
+entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune--perchance in
+disgrace--to return no more. And you, whose present being is
+incorporated with the past, who have seen governor after governor in
+stately pageantry ascend these steps, whose whole life has been an
+observance of majestic ceremonies and a worship of the king,--how will
+you endure the change? Come with us; bid farewell to a land that has
+shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government at
+Halifax."
+
+"Never! never!" said the pertinacious old dame. "Here will I abide,
+and King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal
+province."
+
+"Beshrew the old fool!" muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient
+of her obstinacy and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been
+betrayed. "She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could
+exist nowhere but in this musty edifice.--Well, then, Mistress Dudley,
+since you will needs tarry, I give the province-house in charge to
+you. Take this key, and keep it safe until myself or some other royal
+governor shall demand it of you." Smiling bitterly at himself and her,
+he took the heavy key of the province-house, and, delivering it into
+the old lady's hands, drew his cloak around him for departure.
+
+As the general glanced back at Esther Dudley's antique figure he
+deemed her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a
+representative of the decayed past--of an age gone by, with its
+manners, opinions, faith and feelings all fallen into oblivion or
+scorn, of what had once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of
+faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his
+clenched hands together in the fierce anguish of his spirit, and old
+Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely province-house,
+dwelling there with Memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around
+her, still it was Memory in disguise.
+
+The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the
+British troops did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold.
+There was not for many years afterward a governor of Massachusetts,
+and the magistrates who had charge of such matters saw no objection to
+Esther Dudley's residence in the province-house, especially as they
+must otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises,
+which with her was a labor of love; and so they left her the
+undisturbed mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange
+were the fables which the gossips whispered about her in all the
+chimney-corners of the town.
+
+Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left in the
+mansion, there was a tall antique mirror which was well worthy of a
+tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one. The
+gold of its heavily-wrought frame was tarnished, and its surface so
+blurred that the old woman's figure, whenever she paused before it,
+looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the general belief that
+Esther could cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty, with the
+beautiful ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the Indian
+chiefs who had come up to the province-house to hold council or swear
+allegiance, the grim provincial warriors, the severe clergymen--in
+short, all the pageantry of gone days, all the figures that ever swept
+across the broad-plate of glass in former times,--she could cause the
+whole to reappear and people the inner world of the mirror with
+shadows of old life. Such legends as these, together with the
+singularity of her isolated existence, her age and the infirmity that
+each added winter flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley the object both
+of fear and pity, and it was partly the result of either sentiment
+that, amid all the angry license of the times, neither wrong nor
+insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much
+haughtiness in her demeanor toward intruders--among whom she reckoned
+all persons acting under the new authorities--that it was really an
+affair of no small nerve to look her in the face. And, to do the
+people justice, stern republicans as they had now become, they were
+well content that the old gentlewoman, in her hoop-petticoat and faded
+embroidery, should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and
+overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying a history
+in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt year after year in the
+province-house, still reverencing all that others had flung aside,
+still faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable dame yet
+held her post, might be said to retain one true subject in New England
+and one spot of the empire that had been wrested from him.
+
+And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, "Not so."
+Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to
+summon a black slave of Governor Shirley's from the blurred mirror and
+send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those
+deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight
+or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the
+burial-grounds, knocking at the iron doors of tombs or upon the marble
+slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within, "My mistress,
+old Esther Dudley, bids you to the province-house at midnight;" and
+punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows
+of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys--all the grandees of a
+bygone generation--gliding beneath the portal into the well-known
+mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a
+shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is
+certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch
+though crestfallen old Tories who had lingered in the rebel town
+during those days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle
+containing liquor that a royal governor might have smacked his lips
+over they quaffed healths to the king and babbled treason to the
+republic, feeling as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still
+flung around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they
+stole timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob
+reviled them in the street.
+
+Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests were the children
+of the town. Toward them she was never stern. A kindly and loving
+nature hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky
+prejudices lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of
+gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted
+their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the
+province-house, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day
+there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop-petticoat,
+greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these
+little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious
+mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people
+had long ago forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as
+if they had gone astray into ancient times and become children of the
+past. At home, when their parents asked where they had loitered such a
+weary while and with whom they had been at play, the children would
+talk of all the departed worthies of the province as far back as
+Governor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would
+seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous
+personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had
+toyed with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats or roguishly pulled
+the long curls of their flowing wigs. "But Governor Belcher has been
+dead this many a year," would the mother say to her little boy. "And
+did you really see him at the province-house?"--"Oh yes, dear
+mother--yes!" the half-dreaming child would answer. "But when old
+Esther had done speaking about him, he faded away out of his chair."
+Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand
+into the chambers of her own desolate heart and made childhood's fancy
+discern the ghosts that haunted there.
+
+Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating
+her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley
+appears to have grown partially crazed. It was found that she had no
+right sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary war,
+but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious
+on every field and destined to be ultimately triumphant. Whenever the
+town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington or Gates or Morgan or
+Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the province-house as
+through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange
+tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton or Cornwallis. Sooner or later,
+it was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the
+footstool of the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that
+such was already the case. On one occasion she startled the
+townspeople by a brilliant illumination of the province-house with
+candles at every pane of glass and a transparency of the king's
+initials and a crown of light in the great balcony-window. The figure
+of the aged woman in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and
+brocades was seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused
+before the balcony and flourished a huge key above her head. Her
+wrinkled visage actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within
+her were a festal lamp.
+
+"What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther's joy portend?"
+whispered a spectator. "It is frightful to see her gliding about the
+chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company."
+
+"It is as if she were making merry in a tomb," said another.
+
+"Pshaw! It is no such mystery," observed an old man, after some brief
+exercise of memory. "Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the king
+of England's birthday."
+
+Then the people laughed aloud, and would have thrown mud against the
+blazing transparency of the king's crown and initials, only that they
+pitied the poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck
+and ruin of the system to which she appertained.
+
+Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound
+upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward
+and countryward, watching for a British fleet or for the march of a
+grand procession with the king's banner floating over it. The
+passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage and
+send up a shout: "When the golden Indian on the province-house shall
+shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow,
+then look for a royal governor again!" for this had grown a by-word
+through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther
+Dudley knew--or perchance she only dreamed--that a royal governor was
+on the eve of returning to the province-house to receive the heavy key
+which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now, it was the
+fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther's version
+of it was current among the townspeople. She set the mansion in the
+best order that her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks and
+tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred mirror to admire her own
+magnificence. As she gazed the gray and withered lady moved her ashen
+lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within the
+mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the household friends of
+memory, and bidding them rejoice with her and come forth to meet the
+governor. And while absorbed in this communion Mistress Dudley heard
+the tramp of many footsteps in the street, and, looking out at the
+window, beheld what she construed as the royal governor's arrival.
+
+"Oh, happy day! Oh, blessed, blessed hour!" she exclaimed. "Let me but
+bid him welcome within the portal, and my task in the province-house
+and on earth is done." Then, with tottering feet which age and
+tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand
+staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went; so that the
+sound was as if a train of special courtiers were thronging from the
+dim mirror.
+
+And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the wide door should be
+flung open all the pomp and splendor of bygone times would pace
+majestically into the province-house and the gilded tapestry of the
+past would be brightened by the sunshine of the present. She turned
+the key, withdrew it from the lock, unclosed the door and stepped
+across the threshold. Advancing up the court-yard appeared a person of
+most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther interpreted them, of
+gentle blood, high rank and long-accustomed authority even in his walk
+and every gesture. He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe,
+which, however, did not lessen the stateliness of his gait. Around and
+behind him were people in plain civic dresses and two or three
+war-worn veterans--evidently officers of rank--arrayed in a uniform of
+blue and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened
+its roots about her heart, beheld only the principal personage, and
+never doubted that this was the long-looked-for governor to whom she
+was to surrender up her charge. As he approached she involuntarily
+sank down on her knees and tremblingly held forth the heavy key.
+
+"Receive my trust! Take it quickly," cried she, "for methinks Death is
+striving to snatch away my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank
+Heaven for this blessed hour! God save King George!"
+
+"That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment,"
+replied the unknown guest of the province-house, and, courteously
+removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. "Yet, in
+reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that
+any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge
+his sceptre, God save King George!"
+
+Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the
+key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger, and dimly and
+doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes
+half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry
+of the province, but the ban of the king had fallen upon him. How,
+then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from mercy,
+the monarch's most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant
+had stood triumphantly against a kingdom's strength, and his foot now
+trod upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps of the
+province-house, the people's chosen governor of Massachusetts.
+
+"Wretch, wretch that I am!" muttered the old woman, with such a
+heartbroken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger's eyes.
+"Have I bidden a traitor welcome?--Come, Death! come quickly!"
+
+"Alas, venerable lady!" said Governor Hancock, lending her his support
+with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen,
+"your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you.
+You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless--the
+principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting which another
+generation has flung aside--and you are a symbol of the past. And I
+and these around me--we represent a new race of men, living no longer
+in the past, scarcely in the present, but projecting our lives forward
+into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions,
+it is our faith and principle to press onward--onward.--Yet," continued
+he, turning to his attendants, "let us reverence for the last time the
+stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering past."
+
+While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the
+helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his
+arm, but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient
+woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of
+the province-house fell from her grasp and clanked against the stone.
+
+"I have been faithful unto death," murmured she. "God save the king!"
+
+"She hath done her office," said Hancock, solemnly. "We will follow her
+reverently to the tomb of her ancestors, and then, my fellow-citizens,
+onward--onward. We are no longer children of the past."
+
+
+
+As the old loyalist concluded his narrative the enthusiasm which had
+been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his
+wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul
+were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw
+out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward,
+compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim
+glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a
+dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the
+province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight.
+And now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on
+the breeze, knolling the hourly knell of the past, crying out far and
+wide through the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as we sat
+in the dusky chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In that
+same mansion--in that very chamber--what a volume of history had been
+told off into hours by the same voice that was now trembling in the
+air! Many a governor had heard those midnight accents and longed to
+exchange his stately cares for slumber. And, as for mine host and Mr.
+Bela Tiffany and the old loyalist and me, we had babbled about dreams
+of the past until we almost fancied that the clock was still striking
+in a bygone century. Neither of us would have wondered had a
+hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber,
+walking her rounds in the hush of midnight as of yore, and motioned us
+to quench the fading embers of the fire and leave the historic
+precincts to herself and her kindred shades. But, as no such vision
+was vouchsafed, I retired unbidden, and would advise Mr. Tiffany to
+lay hold of another auditor, being resolved not to show my face in the
+Province House for a good while hence--if ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED MIND.
+
+
+What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
+recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
+your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of
+your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad
+glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the
+metaphor, you find yourself for a single instant wide awake in that
+realm of illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its
+ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their
+strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed.
+The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You
+question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your
+waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of
+your dream. While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang
+over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a
+long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must
+proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the
+strokes--one, two; and there they cease with a booming sound like the
+gathering of a third stroke within the bell.
+
+If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
+would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
+enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue, while before
+you, till the sun comes from "Far Cathay" to brighten your window,
+there is almost the space of a summer night--one hour to be spent in
+thought with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and
+two in that strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and
+woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and
+appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty
+air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already
+vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged
+from the future. You have found an intermediate space where the
+business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers
+and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he
+thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take
+breath. Oh that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without
+growing older!
+
+Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion
+would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably
+awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe
+that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frost-work, and
+that each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be
+time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to
+breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass where the
+silvery mountain-peaks of the frost-scenery do not ascend, the most
+conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs
+you to the wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish
+the figures on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty
+sky and the snow-covered roofs and the long vista of the frozen
+street, all white, and the distant water hardened into rock, might
+make you shiver even under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet
+look at that one glorious star! Its beams are distinguishable from all
+the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with
+a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an
+outline.
+
+You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the
+while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar
+atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.
+You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed
+like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of
+inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such
+as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its
+train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and
+narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot
+persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow
+is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls
+against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a
+gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.
+
+In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
+lights, the music and revelry, above may cause us to forget their
+existence and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But
+sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung
+wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive
+sensibility, but no active strength--when the imagination is a mirror
+imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or
+controlling them--then pray that your griefs may slumber and the
+brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late. A
+funeral train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling
+assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the
+eye. There is your earliest sorrow, a pale young mourner wearing a
+sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed
+sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her
+sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness with dust among
+her golden hair and her bright garments all faded and defaced,
+stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach:
+she was your fondest hope, but a delusive one; so call her
+Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles,
+a look and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unless
+it be Fatality--an emblem of the evil influence that rules your
+fortunes, a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the
+outset of life, and were bound his slave for ever by once obeying him.
+See those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip
+of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger touching
+the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous
+folly at which you would blush even in the remotest cavern of the
+earth? Then recognize your shame.
+
+Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable,
+a fiercer tribe do not surround him--the devils of a guilty heart that
+holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the
+features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in
+woman's garments with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie
+down by your side? What if he should stand at your bed's foot in the
+likeness of a corpse with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient
+without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul, this heavy, heavy
+sinking of the spirits, this wintry gloom about the heart, this
+indistinct horror of the mind blending itself with the darkness of the
+chamber.
+
+By a desperate effort you start upright, breaking from a sort of
+conscious sleep and gazing wildly round the bed, as if the fiends were
+anywhere but in your haunted mind. At the same moment the slumbering
+embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates the
+whole outer room and flickers through the door of the bedchamber, but
+cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches for whatever may
+remind you of the living world. With eager minuteness you take note of
+the table near the fireplace, the book with an ivory knife between its
+leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat and the fallen glove. Soon the
+flame vanishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though its image
+remains an instant in your mind's eye when darkness has swallowed the
+reality. Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before,
+but not the same gloom within your breast.
+
+As your head falls back upon the pillow you think--in a whisper be it
+spoken--how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and
+fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a
+tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its
+peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were
+involving you in her dream. Her influence is over you, though she have
+no existence but in that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery
+spot on the borders of sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise
+before you in pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a
+pervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons
+that glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children
+round the door of a schoolhouse beneath the glimmering shadow of old
+trees at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a
+summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood,
+and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows overarching the
+unbroken sheet of snow on the American side of Niagara. Your mind
+struggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the hearth of
+a young man and his recent bride and the twittering flight of birds in
+spring about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bounding of a
+ship before the breeze, and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls as
+they twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid ball-room, and
+find yourself in the brilliant circle of a crowded theatre as the
+curtain falls over a light and airy scene.
+
+With an involuntary start you seize hold on consciousness, and prove
+yourself but half awake by running a doubtful parallel between human
+life and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from
+mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly
+control, and are borne onward to another mystery. Now comes the peal
+of the distant clock with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge
+farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary
+death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen among
+the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without
+wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change--so
+undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to
+its eternal home.
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE UNCLE.
+
+AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT.
+
+
+Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
+comfortable, especially here where the old man sits in his old
+arm-chair; but on Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up
+the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss
+on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relicts of the Mermaid's
+knee-timbers--the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and
+clearer, be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in
+the village and the light of our household mirth flash far across the
+bay to Nahant.
+
+And now come, Susan; come, my children. Draw your chairs round me, all
+of you. There is a dimness over your figures. You sit quivering
+indistinctly with each motion of the blaze, which eddies about you
+like a flood; so that you all have the look of visions or people that
+dwell only in the firelight, and will vanish from existence as
+completely as your own shadows when the flame shall sink among the
+embers.
+
+Hark! let me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a
+mile inland on a night like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but
+only an uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach, though
+by the almanac it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must
+now be dashing within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man's ears
+are failing him, and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind, else
+you would not all be so shadowy in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire.
+
+How strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present!
+To judge by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in
+another room. Yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old
+chest of drawers, nor Susan's profile and mine in that gilt
+frame--nothing, in short, except this same fire, which glimmered on
+books, papers and a picture, and half discovered my solitary figure in
+a looking-glass. But it was paler than my rugged old self, and
+younger, too, by almost half a century.
+
+Speak to me, Susan; speak, my beloved ones; for the scene is
+glimmering on my sight again, and as it brightens you fade away. Oh, I
+should be loth to lose my treasure of past happiness and become once
+more what I was then--a hermit in the depths of my own mind,
+sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes and anon a scribbler of wearier
+trash than what I read; a man who had wandered out of the real world
+and got into its shadow, where his troubles, joys and vicissitudes
+were of such slight stuff that he hardly knew whether he lived or only
+dreamed of living. Thank Heaven I am an old man now and have done with
+all such vanities!
+
+Still this dimness of mine eyes!--Come nearer, Susan, and stand before
+the fullest blaze of the hearth. Now I behold you illuminated from
+head to foot, in your clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of
+gray hair across your forehead and a quiet smile about your mouth,
+while the eyes alone are concealed by the red gleam of the fire upon
+your spectacles. There! you made me tremble again. When the flame
+quivered, my sweet Susan, you quivered with it and grew indistinct, as
+if melting into the warm light, that my last glimpse of you might be
+as visionary as the first was, full many a year since. Do you remember
+it? You stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs across
+King's Beach into the sea. It was twilight, the waves rolling in, the
+wind sweeping by, the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver
+moon brightening above the hill; and on the bridge were you,
+fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your
+pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind, a creature of
+the ocean-foam and the crimson light, whose merry life was spent in
+dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to
+support your footsteps. As I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the
+race of mermaids, and thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with
+you among the quiet coves in the shadow of the cliffs, and to roam
+along secluded beaches of the purest sand, and, when our Northern
+shores grew bleak, to haunt the islands, green and lonely, far amid
+summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, after all this nonsense, to find
+you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly perplexed with the rude
+behavior of the wind about your petticoats. Thus I did with Susan as
+with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my
+mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see
+her as she really was.
+
+Now, Susan, for a sober picture of our village. It was a small
+collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea
+with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm, or
+to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber which had
+been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner. There was just space
+for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a
+precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a
+waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The
+village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all
+were rude. Here stood a little old hovel, built, perhaps, of
+driftwood, there a row of boat-houses, and beyond them a two-story
+dwelling of dark and weatherbeaten aspect, the whole intermixed with
+one or two snug cottages painted white, a sufficiency of pig-styes and
+a shoemaker's shop. Two grocery stores stood opposite each other in
+the centre of the village. These were the places of resort at their
+idle hours of a hardy throng of fishermen in red baize shirts,
+oilcloth trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole
+leg--true seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk
+the earth. The wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out
+of salt water to sun themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to
+see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish such
+as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and
+flows. When their fleet of boats was weather-bound, the butchers
+raised their price, and the spit was busier than the frying-pan; for
+this was a place of fish, and known as such to all the country round
+about. The very air was fishy, being perfumed with dead sculpins,
+hard-heads and dogfish strewn plentifully on the beach.--You see,
+children, the village is but little changed since your mother and I
+were young.
+
+How like a dream it was when I bent over a pool of water one pleasant
+morning and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made
+me a fisherman! There was the tarpaulin, the baize shirt, the oilcloth
+trousers and seven-league boots, and there my own features, but so
+reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes that methought I had another
+face, and on other shoulders too. The seagulls and the loons and I had
+now all one trade: we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey
+beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds. Always when
+the east grew purple I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed
+skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or
+perhaps beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge--a
+spot of peril to ships unpiloted--and sometimes spread an adventurous
+sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in
+sight of Scituate. Ere nightfall I hauled my skiff high and dry on the
+beach, laden with red rock-cod or the white-bellied ones of deep
+water, haddock bearing the black marks of St. Peter's fingers near the
+gills, the long-bearded hake whose liver holds oil enough for a
+midnight lamp, and now and then a mighty halibut with a back broad as
+my boat. In the autumn I toled and caught those lovely fish the
+mackerel. When the wind was high, when the whale-boats anchored off
+the Point nodded their slender masts at each other and the dories
+pitched and tossed in the surf, when Nahant Beach was thundering three
+miles off and the spray broke a hundred feet in the air round the
+distant base of Egg Rock, when the brimful and boisterous sea
+threatened to tumble over the street of our village,--then I made a
+holiday on shore.
+
+Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive to
+the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of
+seniority, but of Southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His
+figure is before me now enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel--a lean old
+man of great height, but bent with years and twisted into an uncouth
+shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weatherworn, as if
+every gale for the better part of a century had caught him somewhere
+on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest--a shipmate of the
+Flying Dutchman. After innumerable voyages aboard men-of-war and
+merchantmen, fishing-schooners and chebacco-boats, the old salt had
+become master of a hand-cart, which he daily trundled about the
+vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the streets of
+Salem. One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with gunpowder,
+and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it upward as he
+spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French and
+battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be
+seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down by a spike-nail
+through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he
+expatiated on the delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and
+goose-like fowl which the sailors catch with hook and line on the
+Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the
+Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened himself amid polar snows with
+the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And
+wrathfully did he shake his fist as he related how a party of Cape Cod
+men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoils and
+sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to
+drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood
+who are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails to mislead the mariner
+along the dangerous shores of the Cape.
+
+Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen with that old salt in
+the midst. One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an
+oil-barrel, a third lolls at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines,
+and another has planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of
+salt which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They are a
+likely set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the
+Pacific, and most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to
+Newfoundland; a few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and
+one or two have always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker
+used to say, they have all been christened in salt water and know more
+than men ever learn in the bushes. A curious figure, by way of
+contrast, is a fish-dealer from far up-country listening with eyes
+wide open to narratives that might startle Sinbad the Sailor.--Be it
+well with you, my brethren! Ye are all gone--some to your graves
+ashore and others to the depths of ocean--but my faith is strong that
+ye are happy; for whenever I behold your forms, whether in dream or
+vision, each departed friend is puffing his long nine, and a mug of
+the right blackstrap goes round from lip to lip.
+
+But where was the mermaid in those delightful times? At a certain
+window near the centre of the village appeared a pretty display of
+gingerbread men and horses, picture-books and ballads, small
+fish-hooks, pins, needles, sugarplums and brass thimbles--articles on
+which the young fishermen used to expend their money from pure
+gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the counter! A slender
+maiden, though the child of rugged parents, she had the slimmest of
+all waists, brown hair curling on her neck, and a complexion rather
+pale except when the sea-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became
+beauty-spots beneath her eyelids.--How was it, Susan, that you talked
+and acted so carelessly, yet always for the best, doing whatever was
+right in your own eyes, and never once doing wrong in mine, nor
+shocked a taste that had been morbidly sensitive till now? And whence
+had you that happiest gift of brightening every topic with an unsought
+gayety, quiet but irresistible, so that even gloomy spirits felt your
+sunshine and did not shrink from it? Nature wrought the charm. She
+made you a frank, simple, kind-hearted, sensible and mirthful girl.
+Obeying Nature, you did free things without indelicacy, displayed a
+maiden's thoughts to every eye, and proved yourself as innocent as
+naked Eve.--It was beautiful to observe how her simple and happy
+nature mingled itself with mine. She kindled a domestic fire within my
+heart and took up her dwelling there, even in that chill and lonesome
+cavern hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth
+of feeling, while the influence of my mind made her contemplative. I
+taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the
+encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent
+shadow, while beyond Nahant the wind rippled the dim ocean into a
+dreamy brightness which grew faint afar off without becoming gloomier.
+I held her hand and pointed to the long surf-wave as it rolled calmly
+on the beach in an unbroken line of silver; we were silent together
+till its deep and peaceful murmur had swept by us. When the Sabbath
+sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs, I led the mermaid
+thither and told her that those huge gray, shattered rocks, and her
+native sea that raged for ever like a storm against them, and her own
+slender beauty in so stern a scene, were all combined into a strain of
+poetry. But on the Sabbath-eve, when her mother had gone early to bed
+and her gentle sister had smiled and left us, as we sat alone by the
+quiet hearth with household things around, it was her turn to make me
+feel that here was a deeper poetry, and that this was the dearest hour
+of all. Thus went on our wooing, till I had shot wild-fowl enough to
+feather our bridal-bed, and the daughter of the sea was mine.
+
+I built a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a gateway in the form
+of a Gothic arch by setting up a whale's jaw-bones. We bought a heifer
+with her first calf, and had a little garden on the hillside to supply
+us with potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor, small and
+neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame, and with
+shells and pretty pebbles on the mantelpiece, selected from the sea's
+treasury of such things on Nahant Beach. On the desk, beneath the
+looking-glass, lay the Bible, which I had begun to read aloud at the
+book of Genesis, and the singing-book that Susan used for her evening
+psalm. Except the almanac, we had no other literature. All that I
+heard of books was when an Indian history or tale of shipwreck was
+sold by a pedler or wandering subscription-man to some one in the
+village, and read through its owner's nose to a slumbrous auditory.
+
+Like my brother-fishermen, I grew into the belief that all human
+erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and
+solemn phiz as he passed to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of
+sand might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England.
+In truth, I dreaded him.--When our children were old enough to claim
+his care, you remember, Susan, how I frowned, though you were pleased
+at this learned man's encomiums on their proficiency. I feared to
+trust them even with the alphabet: it was the key to a fatal treasure.
+But I loved to lead them by their little hands along the beach and
+point to nature in the vast and the minute--the sky, the sea, the
+green earth, the pebbles and the shells. Then did I discourse of the
+mighty works and coextensive goodness of the Deity with the simple
+wisdom of a man whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep
+and his heart by the strong and pure affections of his evening home.
+Sometimes my voice lost itself in a tremulous depth, for I felt his
+eye upon me as I spoke. Once, while my wife and all of us were gazing
+at ourselves in the mirror left by the tide in a hollow of the sand, I
+pointed to the pictured heaven below and bade her observe how religion
+was strewn everywhere in our path, since even a casual pool of water
+recalled the idea of that home whither we were travelling to rest for
+ever with our children. Suddenly your image, Susan, and all the little
+faces made up of yours and mine, seemed to fade away and vanish around
+me, leaving a pale visage like my own of former days within the frame
+of a large looking-glass. Strange illusion!
+
+My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with the present and
+absorb the future, till the whole lies before me at a glance. My
+manhood has long been waning with a stanch decay; my earlier
+contemporaries, after lives of unbroken health, are all at rest
+without having known the weariness of later age; and now with a
+wrinkled forehead and thin white hair as badges of my dignity I have
+become the patriarch--the uncle--of the village. I love that name: it
+widens the circle of my sympathies; it joins all the youthful to my
+household in the kindred of affection.
+
+Like Uncle Parker, whose rheumatic bones were dashed against Egg Rock
+full forty years ago, I am a spinner of long yarns. Seated on the
+gunnel of a dory or on the sunny side of a boat-house, where the
+warmth is grateful to my limbs, or by my own hearth when a friend or
+two are there, I overflow with talk, and yet am never tedious. With a
+broken voice I give utterance to much wisdom. Such, Heaven be praised!
+is the vigor of my faculties that many a forgotten usage, and
+traditions ancient in my youth, and early adventures of myself or
+others hitherto effaced by things more recent, acquire new
+distinctness in my memory. I remember the happy days when the haddock
+were more numerous on all the fishing-grounds than sculpins in the
+surf--when the deep-water cod swam close in-shore, and the dogfish,
+with his poisonous horn, had not learnt to take the hook. I can number
+every equinoctial storm in which the sea has overwhelmed the street,
+flooded the cellars of the village and hissed upon our kitchen hearth.
+I give the history of the great whale that was landed on Whale Beach,
+and whose jaws, being now my gateway, will last for ages after my
+coffin shall have passed beneath them. Thence it is an easy digression
+to the halibut--scarcely smaller than the whale--which ran out six
+codlines and hauled my dory to the mouth of Boston harbor before I
+could touch him with the gaff.
+
+If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation, I tell how a
+friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark, and the
+sad, true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage who had been nine
+days missing, when his drowned body floated into the very pathway on
+Marble-head Neck that had often led him to the dwelling of his bride,
+as if the dripping corpse would have come where the mourner was. With
+such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil his vows! Another
+favorite story is of a crazy maiden who conversed with angels and had
+the gift of prophecy, and whom all the village loved and pitied,
+though she went from door to door accusing us of sin, exhorting to
+repentance and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake. If
+the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I
+speak of pilots who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its
+taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and
+Mount Desert guided only by the rote of the shore--the peculiar sound
+of the surf on each island, beach and line of rocks along the coast.
+Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise while they deem it
+pastime.
+
+I recollect no happier portion of my life than this my calm old age.
+It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley where late in the
+autumn the grass is greener than in August, and intermixed with golden
+dandelions that had not been seen till now since the first warmth of
+the year. But with me the verdure and the flowers are not frost-bitten
+in the midst of winter. A playfulness has revisited my mind--a
+sympathy with the young and gay, an unpainful interest in the business
+of others, a light and wandering curiosity--arising, perhaps, from the
+sense that my toil on earth is ended and the brief hour till bedtime
+may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied that there is a depth of
+feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one
+who has lived long and is soon to die.
+
+Show me anything that would make an infant smile, and you shall behold
+a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a
+pleasant hour in the sun watching the sports of the village children
+on the edge of the surf. Now they chase the retreating wave far down
+over the wet sand; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet;
+now it comes onward with threatening front, and roars after the
+laughing crew as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not an old
+man be merry too, when the great sea is at play with those little
+children? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party
+of young men and girls strolling along the beach after an early supper
+at the Point. Here, with handkerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap
+of eel-grass entangled in which is a dead skate so oddly accoutred
+with two legs and a long tail that they mistake him for a drowned
+animal. A few steps farther the ladies scream, and the gentlemen make
+ready to protect them against a young shark of the dogfish kind
+rolling with a lifelike motion in the tide that has thrown him up.
+Next they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of
+live lobsters packed in rock-weed for the country-market. And when
+they reach the fleet of dories just hauled ashore after the day's
+fishing, how do I laugh in my sleeve, and sometimes roar outright, at
+the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the
+fishermen! In winter, when our village is thrown into a bustle by the
+arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers bargaining for frozen
+fish to be transported hundreds of miles and eaten fresh in Vermont or
+Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng. For I launch
+my boat no more.
+
+When the shore was solitary, I have found a pleasure that seemed even
+to exalt my mind in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls
+as they wheeled and hovered about each other with hoarse screams, one
+moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft till
+their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the
+summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of
+activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There
+I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from
+afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern steamboat;
+there, too, is the sun, going down, but not in gloom, and there the
+illimitable ocean mingling with the sky, to remind me of eternity.
+
+But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk
+that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing
+fireside. And never, even on the first Thanksgiving-night, when Susan
+and I sat alone with our hopes, nor the second, when a stranger had
+been sent to gladden us and be the visible image of our affection, did
+I feel such joy as now. All that belongs to me are here: Death has
+taken none, nor Disease kept them away, nor Strife divided them from
+their parents or each other; with neither poverty nor riches to
+disturb them, nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have
+kept New England's festival round the patriarch's board. For I am a
+patriarch. Here I sit among my descendants, in my old arm-chair and
+immemorial corner, while the firelight throws an appropriate glory
+round my venerable frame.--Susan! My children! Something whispers me
+that this happiest hour must be the final one, and that nothing
+remains but to bless you all and depart with a treasure of recollected
+joys to heaven. Will you meet me there? Alas! your figures grow
+indistinct, fading into pictures on the air, and now to fainter
+outlines, while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar
+room, and shows the book that I flung down and the sheet that I left
+half written some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the
+looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless those be the
+mermaid's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a
+tender and melancholy smile.
+
+Ah! One feels a chilliness--not bodily, but about the heart--and,
+moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes.
+I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and
+terror after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or
+distant people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which
+had changed it to a palace.
+
+And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can
+create so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from
+youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real?
+Oh, the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the
+stern reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the
+wintry blast. Be this the moral, then: In chaste and warm affections,
+humble wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is health for
+the mind and quiet for the heart, the prospect of a happy life and the
+fairest hope of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.
+
+
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled
+it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the
+pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
+down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
+room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
+sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the
+image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat
+knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old.
+They had found the "herb heart's-ease" in the bleakest spot of all New
+England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills,
+where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in
+the winter, giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it
+descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a
+dangerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that
+the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at
+midnight.
+
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all
+with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
+before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and
+lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
+them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
+were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
+traveller whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
+heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went moaning
+away from the door.
+
+Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
+with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery
+through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
+throbbing between Maine on one side and the Green Mountains and the
+shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew
+up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but
+his staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
+might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of
+the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
+teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night,
+and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and
+steal a kiss from the mountain-maid at parting. It was one of those
+primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging,
+but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps
+were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the
+whole family rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if about to
+welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with
+theirs.
+
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
+melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild
+and bleak road at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he
+saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring
+forward to meet them all, from the old woman who wiped a chair with
+her apron to the little child that held out its arms to him. One
+glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent
+familiarity with the eldest daughter.
+
+"Ah! this fire is the right thing," cried he, "especially when there
+is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed, for the Notch
+is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a
+terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett."
+
+"Then you are going toward Vermont?" said the master of the house as
+he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
+
+"Yes, to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. "I meant to
+have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night, but a pedestrian lingers along
+such a road as this. It is no matter; for when I saw this good fire
+and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on
+purpose for me and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among
+you and make myself at home."
+
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
+something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the
+steep side of the mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking
+such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite
+precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the sound,
+and their guest held his by instinct.
+
+"The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget
+him," said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods his
+head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree
+together pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of
+refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest."
+
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's
+meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on
+a footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as
+freely together as if he belonged to their mountain-brood. He was of a
+proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and
+great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door and
+be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the
+household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the
+pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth
+which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the
+mountain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic
+and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life,
+indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his
+nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have
+been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable,
+had that consciousness of unity among themselves and separation from
+the world at large which in every domestic circle should still keep a
+holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic
+sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart
+before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him
+with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not
+the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+
+The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
+to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to
+hope, and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty that,
+obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,
+though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity
+should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they
+would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner
+glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his
+cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him.
+
+"As yet," cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
+with enthusiasm--"as yet I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from
+the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you--that a
+nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and
+opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch
+by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 'Who was he?
+Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have achieved my
+destiny. Then let Death come: I shall have built my monument."
+
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid
+abstracted reverie which enabled the family to understand this young
+man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
+sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he
+had been betrayed.
+
+"You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and
+laughing himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were
+to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that
+people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that
+would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue."
+
+"It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl, blushing,
+"and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us."
+
+"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there is
+something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
+turned that way, I might have felt just the same.--It is strange,
+wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty
+certain never to come to pass."
+
+"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he
+will do when he is a widower?"
+
+"No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness.
+"When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine too. But I was
+wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton, or
+some other township round the White Mountains, but not where they
+could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my
+neighbors and be called squire and sent to General Court for a term or
+two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer.
+And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so
+as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave
+you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as
+a marble one, with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and
+something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a
+Christian."
+
+"There, now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature to desire a
+monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+memory in the universal heart of man."
+
+"We're in a strange way to-night," said the wife, with tears in her
+eyes. "They say it's a sign of something when folks' minds go
+a-wandering so. Hark to the children!"
+
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
+another room, but with an open door between; so that they could be
+heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have
+caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each
+other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when
+they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of
+addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
+
+"I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he: "I want you and father
+and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right
+away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume."
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm bed
+and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the
+Flume--a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch.
+
+The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along the road and
+stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
+men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song
+which resounded in broken notes between the cliffs, while the singers
+hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
+night.
+
+"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."
+
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
+unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
+patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door, and, the
+lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
+singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
+from the heart of the mountain.
+
+"There, mother!" cried the boy, again; "they'd have given us a ride to
+the Flume."
+
+Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a
+night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the
+daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath
+that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little
+struggle to repress it. Then, starting and blushing, she looked
+quickly around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her
+bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
+
+"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile; "only I felt lonesome
+just then."
+
+"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's
+hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
+For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth
+and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
+feelings into words?"
+
+"They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put
+into words," replied the mountain-nymph, laughing, but avoiding his
+eye.
+
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
+hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not
+be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his, and
+the proud, contemplative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by
+simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
+the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings, of a
+maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
+sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral
+strain of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their
+dwelling among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a
+sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were
+passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on
+their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose,
+discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The
+light hovered about them fondly and caressed them all. There were the
+little faces of the children peeping from their bed apart, and here
+the father's frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien,
+the high-browed youth, the budding girl and the good old grandam,
+still knitting in the warmest place.
+
+The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy was
+the next to speak.
+
+"Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young ones.
+You've been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one
+thing and another till you've set my mind a-wandering too. Now, what
+should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before
+she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till
+I tell you."
+
+"What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife at once.
+
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle
+closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her
+grave-clothes some years before--a nice linen shroud, a cap with a
+muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since
+her wedding-day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely
+recurred to her. It used to be said in her younger days that if
+anything were amiss with a corpse--if only the ruff were not smooth or
+the cap did not set right--the corpse, in the coffin and beneath the
+clods, would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare
+thought made her nervous.
+
+"Don't talk so, grandmother," said the girl, shuddering.
+
+"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
+strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children, when your
+mother is dressed and in the coffin,--I want one of you to hold a
+looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
+myself and see whether all's right?"
+
+"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the
+stranger-youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking
+and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in
+the ocean, that wide and nameless sepulchre?"
+
+For a moment the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
+of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
+of a blast, had grown broad, deep and terrible before the fated group
+were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
+foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
+were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
+glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without utterance or
+power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all
+their lips:
+
+"The slide! The slide!"
+
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
+horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and
+sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in
+contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared.
+Alas! they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway
+of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract
+of ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke into two
+branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
+vicinity, blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its
+dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of that great slide had ceased
+to roar among the mountains the mortal agony had been endured and the
+victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.
+
+The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
+chimney up the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
+the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
+had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would
+shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
+left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made
+to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has
+been told far and wide, and will for ever be a legend of these
+mountains. Poets have sung their fate.
+
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
+been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
+catastrophe of all its inmates; others denied that there were
+sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled
+youth with his dream of earthly immortality! His name and person
+utterly unknown, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery
+never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a
+doubt,--whose was the agony of that death-moment?
+
+
+
+
+THE SISTER-YEARS.
+
+
+Last night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, when the Old Year was
+leaving her final footprints on the borders of Time's empire, she
+found herself in possession of a few spare moments, and sat down--of
+all places in the world--on the steps of our new city-hall. The wintry
+moonlight showed that she looked weary of body and sad of heart, like
+many another wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been exposed to
+much foul weather and rough usage, were in very ill condition, and, as
+the hurry of her journey had never before allowed her to take an
+instant's rest, her shoes were so worn as to be scarcely worth the
+mending. But after trudging only a little distance farther this poor
+Old Year was destined to enjoy a long, long sleep. I forgot to mention
+that when she seated herself on the steps she deposited by her side a
+very capacious bandbox in which, as is the custom among travellers of
+her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this
+luggage, there was a folio book under her arm very much resembling the
+annual volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees and
+resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary,
+bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh and appeared to be
+taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence.
+
+While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to summon her to
+the innumerable sisterhood of departed years, there came a young
+maiden treading lightsomely on tip-toe along the street from the
+direction of the railroad d�p�t. She was evidently a stranger, and
+perhaps had come to town by the evening train of cars. There was a
+smiling cheerfulness in this fair maiden's face which bespoke her
+fully confident of a kind reception from the multitude of people with
+whom she was soon to form acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy
+for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons and other
+vanities which were likely soon to be rent away by the fierce storms
+or to fade in the hot sunshine amid which she was to pursue her
+changeful course. But still she was a wonderfully pleasant-looking
+figure, and had so much promise and such an indescribable hopefulness
+in her aspect that hardly anybody could meet her without anticipating
+some very desirable thing--the consummation of some long-sought
+good--from her kind offices. A few dismal characters there may be here
+and there about the world who have so often been trifled with by young
+maidens as promising as she that they have now ceased to pin any faith
+upon the skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have great
+faith in her, and, should I live to see fifty more such, still from
+each of those successive sisters I shall reckon upon receiving
+something that will be worth living for.
+
+The New Year--for this young maiden was no less a personage--carried
+all her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight,
+which hung upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with
+great affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the
+city-hall, waiting for the signal to begin her rambles through the
+world. The two were own sisters, being both granddaughters of Time,
+and, though one looked so much older than the other, it was rather
+owing to hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but a
+twelvemonth's difference between them.
+
+"Well, my dear sister," said the New Year, after the first
+salutations, "you look almost tired to death. What have you been about
+during your sojourn in this part of infinite space?"
+
+"Oh, I have it all recorded here in my book of chronicles," answered
+the Old Year, in a heavy tone. "There is nothing that would amuse you,
+and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your
+own personal experience. It is but tiresome reading."
+
+Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio and glanced at
+them by the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of
+interest in her own biography, although its incidents were remembered
+without pleasure. The volume, though she termed it her book of
+chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the Salem
+_Gazette_ for 1838; in the accuracy of which journal this sagacious
+Old Year had so much confidence that she deemed it needless to record
+her history with her own pen.
+
+"What have you been doing in the political way?" asked the New Year.
+
+"Why, my course here in the United States," said the Old Year--"though
+perhaps I ought to blush at the confession--my political course, I
+must acknowledge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes inclining
+toward the Whigs, then causing the administration party to shout for
+triumph, and now again uplifting what seemed the almost prostrate
+banner of the opposition; so that historians will hardly know what to
+make of me in this respect. But the Loco-Focos--"
+
+"I do not like these party nicknames," interrupted her sister, who
+seemed remarkably touchy about some points. "Perhaps we shall part in
+better humor if we avoid any political discussion."
+
+"With all my heart," replied the Old Year, who had already been
+tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind. "I care not if
+the name of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about banks
+and the sub-treasury, abolition, Texas, the Florida war, and a million
+of other topics which you will learn soon enough for your own
+comfort,--I care not, I say, if no whisper of these matters ever
+reaches my ears again. Yet they have occupied so large a share of my
+attention that I scarcely know what else to tell you. There has,
+indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where blood
+has streamed in the names of liberty and patriotism; but it must
+remain for some future, perhaps far-distant, year to tell whether or
+no those holy names have been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much
+depresses me in my view of mortal affairs as to see high energies
+wasted and human life and happiness thrown away for ends that appear
+oftentimes unwise, and still oftener remain unaccomplished. But the
+wisest people and the best keep a steadfast faith that the progress of
+mankind is onward and upward, and that the toil and anguish of the
+path serve to wear away the imperfections of the immortal pilgrim, and
+will be felt no more when they have done their office."
+
+"Perhaps," cried the hopeful New Year--"perhaps I shall see that happy
+day."
+
+"I doubt whether it be so close at hand," answered the Old Year,
+gravely smiling. "You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed
+consummation, and will turn for amusement--as has frequently been my
+own practice--to the affairs of some sober little city like this of
+Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the new city-hall which has been
+completed under my administration, and it would make you laugh to see
+how the game of politics of which the Capitol at Washington is the
+great chess-board is here played in miniature. Burning Ambition finds
+its fuel here; here patriotism speaks boldly in the people's behalf
+and virtuous economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a
+lamplighter; here the aldermen range their senatorial dignity around
+the mayor's chair of state and the common council feel that they have
+liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and
+policy, man's tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his
+individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied
+almost as well here as on the theatre of nations, and with this great
+advantage--that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian
+scope still makes the beholder smile."
+
+"Have you done much for the improvement of the city?" asked the New
+Year. "Judging from what little I have seen, it appears to be ancient
+and time-worn."
+
+"I have opened the railroad," said the elder Year, "and half a dozen
+times a day you will hear the bell which once summoned the monks of a
+Spanish convent to their devotions announcing the arrival or departure
+of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when
+I first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a
+time. New faces throng in Essex street. Railroad-hacks and omnibuses
+rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of
+oyster-shops and other establishments for the accommodation of a
+transitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change awaits the
+venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be
+carried off by the free circulation of society. A peculiarity of
+character of which the inhabitants themselves are hardly sensible will
+be rubbed down and worn away by the attrition of foreign substances.
+Much of the result will be good; there will likewise be a few things
+not so good. Whether for better or worse, there will be a probable
+diminution of the moral influence of wealth, and the sway of an
+aristocratic class which from an era far beyond my memory has held
+firmer dominion here than in any other New England town."
+
+The Old Year, having talked away nearly all of her little remaining
+breath, now closed her book of chronicles, and was about to take her
+departure, but her sister detained her a while longer by inquiring the
+contents of the huge bandbox which she was so painfully lugging along
+with her.
+
+"These are merely a few trifles," replied the Old Year, "which I have
+picked up in my rambles and am going to deposit in the receptacle of
+things past and forgotten. We sisterhood of years never carry anything
+really valuable out of the world with us. Here are patterns of most of
+the fashions which I brought into vogue, and which have already lived
+out their allotted term; you will supply their place with others
+equally ephemeral. Here, put up in little china pots, like rouge, is a
+considerable lot of beautiful women's bloom which the disconsolate
+fair ones owe me a bitter grudge for stealing. I have likewise a
+quantity of men's dark hair, instead of which I have left gray locks
+or none at all. The tears of widows and other afflicted mortals who
+have received comfort during the last twelve months are preserved in
+some dozens of essence-bottles well corked and sealed. I have several
+bundles of love-letters eloquently breathing an eternity of burning
+passion which grew cold and perished almost before the ink was dry.
+Moreover, here is an assortment of many thousand broken promises and
+other broken ware, all very light and packed into little space. The
+heaviest articles in my possession are a large parcel of disappointed
+hopes which a little while ago were buoyant enough to have inflated
+Mr. Lauriat's balloon."
+
+"I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year.
+"They are a sweet-smelling flower--a species of rose."
+
+"They soon lose their perfume," replied the sombre Old Year. "What
+else have you brought to insure a welcome from the discontented race
+of mortals?"
+
+"Why, to say the truth, little or nothing else," said her sister, with
+a smile, "save a few new _Annuals_ and almanacs, and some New Year's
+gifts for the children. But I heartily wish well to poor mortals, and
+mean to do all I can for their improvement and happiness."
+
+"It is a good resolution," rejoined the Old Year. "And, by the way, I
+have a plentiful assortment of good resolutions which have now grown
+so stale and musty that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only
+for fear that the city authorities would send Constable Mansfield with
+a warrant after me, I should toss them into the street at once. Many
+other matters go to make up the contents of my bandbox, but the whole
+lot would not fetch a single bid even at an auction of worn-out
+furniture; and as they are worth nothing either to you or anybody
+else, I need not trouble you with a longer catalogue."
+
+"And must I also pick up such worthless luggage in my travels?" asked
+the New Year.
+
+"Most certainly, and well if you have no heavier load to bear,"
+replied the other. "And now, my dear sister, I must bid you farewell,
+earnestly advising and exhorting you to expect no gratitude nor
+good-will from this peevish, unreasonable, inconsiderate,
+ill-intending and worse-behaving world. However warmly its inhabitants
+may seem to welcome you, yet, do what you may and lavish on them what
+means of happiness you please, they will still be complaining, still
+craving what it is not in your power to give, still looking forward to
+some other year for the accomplishment of projects which ought never
+to have been formed, and which, if successful, would only provide new
+occasions of discontent. If these ridiculous people ever see anything
+tolerable in you, it will be after you are gone for ever."
+
+"But I," cried the fresh-hearted New Year--"I shall try to leave men
+wiser than I find them. I will offer them freely whatever good gifts
+Providence permits me to distribute, and will tell them to be thankful
+for what they have and humbly hopeful for more; and surely, if they
+are not absolute fools, they will condescend to be happy, and will
+allow me to be a happy year. For my happiness must depend on them."
+
+"Alas for you, then, my poor sister!" said the Old Year, sighing, as
+she uplifted her burden. "We grandchildren of Time are born to
+trouble. Happiness, they say, dwells in the mansions of eternity, but
+we can only lead mortals thither step by step with reluctant
+murmurings, and ourselves must perish on the threshold. But hark! my
+task is done."
+
+The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson's church struck twelve;
+there was a response from Dr. Flint's, in the opposite quarter of the
+city; and while the strokes were yet dropping into the air the Old
+Year either flitted or faded away, and not the wisdom and might of
+angels, to say nothing of the remorseful yearnings of the millions who
+had used her ill, could have prevailed with that departed year to
+return one step. But she, in the company of Time and all her kindred,
+must hereafter hold a reckoning with mankind. So shall it be,
+likewise, with the maidenly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to
+strike, arose from the steps of the city-hall and set out rather
+timorously on her earthly course.
+
+"A happy New Year!" cried a watchman, eying her figure very
+questionably, but without the least suspicion that he was addressing
+the New Year in person.
+
+"Thank you kindly," said the New Year; and she gave the watchman one
+of the roses of hope from her basket. "May this flower keep a sweet
+smell long after I have bidden you good-bye!"
+
+Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets, and such
+as were awake at the moment heard her footfall and said, "The New Year
+is come!" Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they
+quaffed her health. She sighed, however, to perceive that the air was
+tainted--as the atmosphere of this world must continually be--with the
+dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to
+bury them. But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her
+coming, and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing
+emblematic flowers on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which
+some persons will gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others will
+trample under foot. The carrier-boy can only say further that early
+this morning she filled his basket with New Year's addresses, assuring
+him that the whole city, with our new mayor and the aldermen and
+common council at its head, would make a general rush to secure
+copies. Kind patrons, will not you redeem the pledge of the New Year?
+
+
+
+
+SNOWFLAKES.
+
+
+There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through the
+partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning
+of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the
+air and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on
+the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the
+atmosphere. These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture which
+melt as they touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain. It
+is to be in good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three people
+visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed,
+frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a
+comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall--or, at least, before the
+sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us--the street and our little
+garden will be heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, already
+frozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be
+laid upon it, and to a Northern eye the landscape will lose its
+melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own when Mother
+Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her
+winter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.
+As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar-frost over the brown
+surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still
+discernible, and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look
+gray instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within the
+circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly
+equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually by silent and stealthy
+influences are great changes wrought. These little snow-particles
+which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air will bury
+the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold
+her sister Sky again for dreary months. We likewise shall lose sight
+of our mother's familiar visage, and must content ourselves with
+looking heavenward the oftener.
+
+Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down,
+pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an
+influence productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative
+thought in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a Southern
+clime may woo the Muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage
+reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing-birds and
+warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our brief
+summer I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a
+dream. My hour of inspiration--if that hour ever comes--is when the
+green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for
+the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals
+drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement
+rattles in the gust and the snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelt
+hard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper
+with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it
+like stars at twilight or like violets in May, perhaps to fade as
+soon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the
+darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the
+room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-born
+son, be New England's winter, which makes us one and all the nurslings
+of the storm and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek
+of the December blast. Now look we forth again and see how much of his
+task the storm-spirit has done.
+
+Slow and sure! He has the day--perchance the week--before him, and may
+take his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in snow. A smooth
+mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the
+dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white
+surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand
+shivering in a shallow snowdrift, looking, poor things! as
+disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary
+scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the
+summer. They neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems but
+the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in
+midwinter. The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the
+eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the
+real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object--as
+yonder spire--and observe how the riotous gust fights with the
+descending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the entire
+prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct but transient
+glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and now the dense
+wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdrifts at each
+other in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have an amusing
+parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions.
+It is a snow-battle of schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war and
+military glory might be written in the form of a child's story by
+describing the snow-ball fights of two rival schools, the alternate
+defeats and victories of each, and the final triumph of one party, or
+perhaps of neither! What pitched battles worthy to be chanted in
+Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses built all of massive
+snow-blocks! What feats of individual prowess and embodied onsets of
+martial enthusiasm! And when some well-contested and decisive victory
+had put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a lofty
+monument of snow upon the battlefield and crown it with the victor's
+statue hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeks
+thereafter the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon the
+level common, and, unmindful of the famous victory, would ask, "How
+came it there? Who reared it? And what means it?" The shattered
+pedestal of many a battle-monument has provoked these questions when
+none could answer.
+
+Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there, lending our ears
+to the wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice and
+dictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to
+sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea,
+if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy,
+shall be the theme of the next page.
+
+How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter
+autumn which is Nature's cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushes
+among the shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters the
+sear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap
+themselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,
+"Winter is at hand." Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and
+diligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice because each
+shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per
+ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the
+atmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the children look out of
+the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the
+air. It is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd around the hearth and
+cling to their mother's gown or press between their father's knees,
+affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide
+flue of the chimney.
+
+It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, they
+shudder and exclaim, "Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reign
+already." Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar
+sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity
+who tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his
+white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a
+wind-tossed snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of the
+northern blast, and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon
+his path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the
+spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing
+rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His
+dreary empire is established; all around stretches the desolation of
+the pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter
+is our sire, though a stern and rough one)--not ungrateful even for
+the severities which have nourished our unyielding strength of
+character. And let us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered by
+the music of merry bells; for the crackling and rustling hearth when
+the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of
+woman: for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which
+flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven
+months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a
+flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting
+him with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the path
+behind him. Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes
+fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring,
+yet step by step he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends the
+summer month within the Arctic circle.
+
+Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the
+winter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without
+abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser
+volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a
+layer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The garden
+is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of
+uncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it
+elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors of
+houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across
+a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen
+with the wind. And now the jingling of bells--a sluggish sound
+responsive to the horse's toilsome progress through the unbroken
+drifts--announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behind
+and ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes a
+sledge laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper whom winter has
+surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles
+along the uneven street? A sable hearse bestrewn with snow is bearing
+a dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh how dreary is a
+burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her
+poor child!
+
+Evening--the early eve of December--begins to spread its deepening
+veil over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens and
+throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber,
+but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas! I
+shiver and think it time to be disconsolate, but, taking a farewell
+glance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snowbirds
+skimming lightsomely through the tempest and flitting from drift to
+drift as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer.
+Whence come they? Where do they build their nests and seek their food?
+Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth,
+instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm and fluttering
+on the dreary verge of the winter's eve? I know not whence they come,
+nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock of
+snow-birds.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.
+
+
+Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year,
+I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three
+directions. Straight before me the main road extended its dusty length
+to Boston; on the left a branch went toward the sea, and would have
+lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles, while by the
+right-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada,
+visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of
+grass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object which, though
+locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver's
+portable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered
+wagon--or, more properly, a small house on wheels--with a door on one
+side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses
+munching provender out of the baskets which muzzled them were fastened
+near the vehicle. A delectable sound of music proceeded from the
+interior, and I immediately conjectured that this was some itinerant
+show halting at the confluence of the roads to intercept such idle
+travellers as myself. A shower had long been climbing up the western
+sky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a point
+of wisdom to seek shelter here.
+
+"Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?" cried I,
+approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the
+wagon.
+
+The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not
+the sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering
+showman, but a most respectable old personage whom I was sorry to have
+addressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored coat and
+small-clothes, with white top-boots, and exhibited the mild dignity of
+aspect and manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters,
+and sometimes in deacons, selectmen or other potentates of that kind.
+A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises, where I
+found only one other person, hereafter to be described.
+
+"This is a dull day for business," said the old gentleman as he
+ushered me in; "but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being
+bound for the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New
+England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my
+description. The spectacle--for I will not use the unworthy term of
+"puppet-show"--consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on
+a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind in the
+attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen
+standing ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a line
+across the stage, looking stern, grim and terrible enough to make it a
+pleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; and
+conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew in the pointed cap
+and motley coat of his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimic
+world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like that
+people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business and
+delights and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an
+eternal semblance of labor that was ended and pleasure that could be
+felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a
+barrel-organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening
+effect upon the figures and awoke them all to their proper occupations
+and amusements. By the selfsame impulse the tailor plied his needle,
+the blacksmith's hammer descended upon the anvil and the dancers
+whirled away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke into
+platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of
+horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and
+trampling of hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while
+an old toper of inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle and
+took off a hearty swig. Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper and
+turn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head and winking his
+eyes in as lifelike a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense of
+all human affairs and making fun of the whole multitude beneath him.
+At length the old magician (for I compared the showman to Prospero
+entertaining his guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I might
+give utterance to my wonder.
+
+"What an admirable piece of work is this!" exclaimed I, lifting up my
+hands in astonishment.
+
+Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man's
+gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom
+which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of
+vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
+most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations
+foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable
+circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this
+gray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and
+pleasurable adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through
+the sands of Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the
+north and east, and halting now on the green before a village
+meeting-house and now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often
+must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children as they
+viewed these animated figures, or his pride indulged by haranguing
+learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such
+wonderful effects, or his gallantry brought into play--for this is an
+attribute which such grave men do not lack--by the visits of pretty
+maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return at intervals
+to his own peculiar home! "I would I were assured of as happy a life
+as his," thought I.
+
+Though the showman's wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
+spectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person,
+at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man
+of two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat with
+velvet collar were smart, though no longer new, while a pair of green
+spectacles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave him
+something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a
+sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow and
+drew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he
+forthwith began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-sounding
+words and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myself
+one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required some
+considerable powers of commendation in the salesman. There were
+several ancient friends of mine--the novels of those happy days when
+my affections wavered between the _Scottish Chiefs_ and _Thomas
+Thumb_--besides a few of later date whose merits had not been
+acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear little
+venerable volume the _New England Primer_, looking as antique as
+ever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuated
+gilt picture-books made such a child of me that, partly for the
+glittering covers and partly for the fairy-tales within, I bought the
+whole, and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew
+largely on my purse. To balance these expenditures, I meddled neither
+with sermons nor science nor morality, though volumes of each were
+there, nor with a _Life of Franklin_ in the coarsest of paper,
+but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the doctor himself in
+the court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris, nor with Webster's
+spelling-book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a dozen
+little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the collection
+might have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up at an
+evening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered pamphlet
+which the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I purchased it
+immediately at his own price; and then for the first time the thought
+struck me that I had spoken face to face with the veritable author of
+a printed book.
+
+The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured
+to inquire which way he was travelling.
+
+"Oh," said he, "I keep company with this old gentlemen here, and we
+are moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented a
+corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed,
+was a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the
+country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan
+exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon
+felicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially when his character
+resembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate was to be
+reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the
+present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger
+and made him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literary
+achievement, was travelling the country in a showman's wagon. A more
+valuable yet not infrequent triumph might be won in his conversations
+with some elderly clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery
+back-settlement of New England, who as he recruited his library from
+the pedler's stock of sermons would exhort him to seek a college
+education and become the first scholar in his class. Sweeter and
+prouder yet would be his sensations when, talking poetry while he sold
+spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart,
+of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a
+wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at.
+But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had
+halted for the night and his stock of books was transferred to some
+crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multifarious company,
+whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or
+neighboring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler,
+works suited to each particular taste and capacity, proving, all the
+while, by acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his
+books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he
+traverse the land, sometimes a herald before the march of Mind,
+sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reaping
+everywhere a harvest of real and sensible popularity which the
+secluded bookworms by whose toil he lived could never hope for.
+
+"If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself in
+adamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller."
+
+Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about
+us, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,
+pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A
+sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
+halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosy
+face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if
+the sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and
+handsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than might
+have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into
+the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers
+stood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to those
+of my companions, and I was delighted with the more than
+hospitable--the even paternal--kindness of the old showman's manner as
+he welcomed them, while the man of literature hastened to lead the
+merry-eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.
+
+"You are housed but just in time, my young friends," said the master
+of the wagon; "the sky would have been down upon you within five
+minutes."
+
+The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner--not by any variation
+from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
+more caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with the
+language.
+
+"We knew that a shower was hanging over us," said he, "and consulted
+whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill,
+but, seeing your wagon in the road--"
+
+"We agreed to come hither," interrupted the girl, with a smile,
+"because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this."
+
+I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy was narrowly
+inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,
+tall, agile and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls
+clustering round a dark and vivacious countenance which, if it had not
+greater expression, was at least more active and attracted readier
+notice, than the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first
+appearance he had been laden with a neat mahogany box of about two
+feet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he had
+immediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor
+of the wagon.
+
+The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a
+brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which
+seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness,
+suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gay
+attire, combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green and a deep
+orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born
+in it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that
+mirth-inspiring instrument the fiddle, which her companion took from
+her hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us the
+previous company of the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for this
+could be no mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations,
+cattle-shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober
+land; and there is a dear friend of mine who will smile when this page
+recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by us in rescuing
+the show-box of such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted
+countrymen.
+
+"Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire; "shall we visit all the
+wonders of the world together?"
+
+She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not much
+have troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
+words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
+in through its small round magnifying-window while the girl sat by my
+side and gave short descriptive sketches as one after another the
+pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together--at least, our
+imaginations did--full many a famous city in the streets of which I
+had long yearned to tread. Once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
+Barcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore me through the air to
+Sicily and bade me look up at blazing �tna; then we took wing to
+Venice and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anon
+she set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of
+Napoleon. But there was one scene--its locality she could not
+tell--which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous
+palaces and churches, because the fancy haunted me that I myself the
+preceding summer had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in just
+such a pine-surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All these
+pictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl's
+touches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend how in so few
+sentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she
+contrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene.
+
+When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I
+looked into my guide's face.
+
+"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" inquired I, in the words of
+an old song.
+
+"Ah!" said the gay damsel; "you might as well ask where the summer
+wind is going. We are wanderers here and there and everywhere.
+Wherever there is mirth our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day,
+indeed, the people have told us of a great frolic and festival in
+these parts; so perhaps we may be needed at what you call the
+camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in
+my ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been
+her companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies
+cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two
+strangers the world was in its Golden Age--not that, indeed, it was
+less dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had
+no community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in
+their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their gladness,
+care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and Age,
+tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their
+sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade,
+would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves as
+these bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was
+throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them
+broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too,
+was an elastic foot as tireless as the wing of the bird of Paradise;
+mine was then an untroubled heart that would have gone singing on its
+delightful way.
+
+"Oh, maiden," said I aloud, "why did you not come hither alone?"
+
+While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box the
+unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed
+pretty nearly of the old showman's age, but much smaller, leaner and
+more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of
+gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance and a pair of
+diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
+puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman in
+a manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving that
+the damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded
+document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be
+a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand and signed by
+several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating
+that the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune and
+recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous
+disbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of
+which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation provided he
+would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked
+keenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable
+spirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which
+takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
+
+"Why, perhaps," said the ragged old mendicant, "if the bank is in good
+standing, I can't say but I may have enough about me to change your
+bill."
+
+"It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank," said I, "and better than the
+specie."
+
+As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff
+leather bag tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was
+opened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins of
+all sorts and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw gleaming among them
+the golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency the American
+eagle. In this precious heap was my bank-note deposited, the rate of
+exchange being considerably against me.
+
+His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his
+pocket an old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed to
+fill the buff leather bag in more ways than one.
+
+"Come!" said he; "I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for
+twenty-five cents more I'll tell you what it is."
+
+I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling
+the cards and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to
+the prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting
+the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of his
+preternatural science by describing scenes through which I had already
+passed.
+
+Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a
+page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine and
+proceeded to relate in all its minute particulars what was then the
+most singular event of my life. It was one which I had no purpose to
+disclose till the general unfolding of all secrets, nor would it be a
+much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or fortunate
+conjecture if the beggar were to meet me in the street today and
+repeat word for word the page which I have here written.
+
+The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loth
+to make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began to
+converse with the other occupants of the wagon.
+
+"Well, old friend," said the showman, "you have not yet told us which
+way your face is turned this afternoon."
+
+"I am taking a trip northward this warm weather," replied the
+conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,
+and maybe into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the
+breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
+to the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the
+way.
+
+The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should
+pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of
+these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.
+
+"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
+her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
+jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my
+own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,
+if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."
+
+This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
+those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had
+no title to be included in it.
+
+Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the
+four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover
+what enjoyments were peculiar to the old "straggler," as the people of
+the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As
+he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was
+fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing
+some of the mental and moral characteristics--the lighter and more
+comic ones--of the devil in popular stories. Among them might be
+reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen
+relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of
+petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the
+consciousness--so insupportable to some minds--that his whole life was
+a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the
+public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.
+Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent
+triumphs--as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out
+of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a
+part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some
+ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who
+was richer than himself, or when--though he would not always be so
+decidedly diabolical--his pretended wants should make him a sharer in
+the scanty living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible
+field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and
+achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering
+spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.
+
+All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
+had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to
+admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to
+him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had
+compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
+"wandering up and down upon the earth," and, indeed, a crafty
+disposition which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnected
+tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally impelled to
+a continual change of scene and society.
+
+My reflections were here interrupted.
+
+"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.
+
+The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
+roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beating
+violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
+people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the
+displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now an
+attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice uttering some strange,
+unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and I
+suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman stepped forward
+and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our
+wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the
+forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment.
+It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort
+of cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock of
+blue cotton girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of
+knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments of
+silver, while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope had
+interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had
+worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrim
+of the storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When the
+first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the
+Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen in their summer
+excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch
+canoes among the coasting-schooners, and build their wigwam beside
+some roaring mill-dam, and drive a little trade in basket-work where
+their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably wandering
+through the country toward Boston, subsisting on the careless charity
+of the people while he turned his archery to profitable account by
+shooting at cents which were to be the prize of his successful aim.
+
+The Indian had not long been seated ere our merry damsel sought to
+draw him into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up of
+sunshine in the month of May, for there was nothing so dark and dismal
+that her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wild
+man, like a fir tree in his native forest, soon began to brighten into
+a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length she inquired whether his
+journey had any particular end or purpose.
+
+"I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford," replied the Indian.
+
+"And here are five more," said the girl, "all aiming at the
+camp-meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we travel with light
+hearts; and, as for me, I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and am
+full of merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that
+there is never any sadness among them that keep me company. But oh,
+you would find it very dull indeed to go all the way to Stamford
+alone."
+
+My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian
+would prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offered
+him; on the contrary, the girl's proposal met with immediate
+acceptance and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation of
+enjoyment.
+
+I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether it flowed
+naturally from this combination of events or was drawn forth by a
+wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep
+music. I saw mankind in this weary old age of the world either
+enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or,
+if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope
+but to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life,
+among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that had
+darkened the sunshine of today. But there were some full of the
+primeval instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest
+years by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits and new
+associates, and cared little, though their birthplace might have been
+here in New England, if the grave should close over them in Central
+Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits;
+unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre,
+they had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared the
+representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer
+during thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land.
+Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished
+around his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot
+of its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind of
+their savage virtue and uncultured force, but here, untamable to the
+routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road as of old
+over the forest-leaves,--here was the Indian still.
+
+"Well," said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, "here is
+an honest company of us--one, two, three, four, five, six--all going
+to the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like
+to know where this young gentleman may be going?"
+
+I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind that
+preferred its own folly to another's wisdom, the open spirit that
+found companions everywhere--above all, the restless impulse that had
+so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments,--these were my
+claims to be of their society.
+
+"My friends," cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, "I am
+going with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+"But in what capacity?" asked the old showman, after a moment's
+silence. "All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way.
+Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it,
+are a mere strolling gentleman."
+
+I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me a
+propensity to their way of life she had not left me altogether
+destitute of qualifications for it, though I could not deny that my
+talent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than the
+meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate the
+story-tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and become an
+itinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such
+audiences as I could collect.
+
+"Either this," said I, "is my vocation, or I have been born in vain."
+
+The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take
+me as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of
+which undoubtedly would have given full scope to whatever inventive
+talent I might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words in
+opposition to my plan--influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousy
+of authorship, and partly by an apprehension that the _viv�-voce_
+practice would become general among novelists, to the infinite
+detriment of the book trade.
+
+Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.
+
+"'Mirth,'" cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L'Allegro,
+"'to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of thy crew!'"
+
+"Let us indulge the poor youth," said Mirth, with a kindness which
+made me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to
+misinterpret her motives. "I have espied much promise in him. True, a
+shadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to
+follow in a moment. He is never guilty of a sad thought but a merry
+one is twin-born with it. We will take him with us, and you shall see
+that he will set us all a-laughing before we reach the camp-meeting at
+Stamford." Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest and gained me
+admittance into the league; according to the terms of which, without a
+community of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all the aid
+and avert all the harm that might be in our power.
+
+This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe
+of us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual. The
+old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of
+the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book;
+tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in the
+spirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part more
+facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me. The
+young foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a master's hand, and
+gave an inspiring echo to the showman's melody. The bookish man and
+the merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance, the former
+enacting the double shuffle in a style which everybody must have
+witnessed ere election week was blotted out of time, while the girl,
+setting her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed
+such light rapidity of foot and harmony of varying attitude and motion
+that I could not conceive how she ever was to stop, imagining at the
+moment that Nature had made her, as the old showman had made his
+puppets, for no earthly purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bellowed
+forth a succession of most hideous outcries, somewhat affrighting us
+till we interpreted them as the war-song with which, in imitation of
+his ancestors, he was prefacing the assault on Stamford. The conjurer,
+meanwhile, sat demurely in a corner extracting a sly enjoyment from
+the whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry Andrew, directing his
+queer glance particularly at me. As for myself, with great
+exhilaration of fancy, I began to arrange and color the incidents of a
+tale wherewith I proposed to amuse an audience that very evening; for
+I saw that my associates were a little ashamed of me, and that no time
+was to be lost in obtaining a public acknowledgment of my abilities.
+
+"Come, fellow-laborers," at last said the old showman, whom we had
+elected president; "the shower is over, and we must be doing our duty
+by these poor souls at Stamford."
+
+"We'll come among them in procession, with music and dancing," cried
+the merry damsel.
+
+Accordingly--for it must be understood that our pilgrimage was to be
+performed on foot--we sallied joyously out of the wagon, each of us,
+even the old gentleman in his white top-boots, giving a great skip as
+we came down the ladder. Above our heads there was such a glory of
+sunshine and splendor of clouds, and such brightness of verdure below,
+that, as I modestly remarked at the time, Nature seemed to have washed
+her face and put on the best of her jewelry and a fresh green gown in
+honor of our confederation. Casting our eyes northward, we beheld a
+horseman approaching leisurely and splashing through the little puddle
+on the Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his saddle with
+rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom the
+showman and the conjurer shortly recognized to be what his aspect
+sufficiently indicated--a travelling preacher of great fame among the
+Methodists. What puzzled us was the fact that his face appeared turned
+from, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stamford. However, as this
+new votary of the wandering life drew near the little green space
+where the guide-post and our wagon were situated, my six
+fellow-vagabonds and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying
+out with united voices, "What news? What news from the camp-meeting at
+Stamford?"
+
+The missionary looked down in surprise at as singular a knot of people
+as could have been selected from all his heterogeneous auditors.
+Indeed, considering that we might all be classified under the general
+head of Vagabond, there was great diversity of character among the
+grave old showman, the sly, prophetic beggar, the fiddling foreigner
+and his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian and
+myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even
+fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of
+the preacher's mouth.
+
+"Good people," answered he, "the camp-meeting is broke up."
+
+So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode
+westward. Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object,
+we were sundered at once to the four winds of heaven. The
+fortune-teller, giving a nod to all and a peculiar wink to me,
+departed on his Northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took the
+Stamford road. The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already
+tackling their horses to the wagon with a design to peregrinate
+south-west along the sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel
+took their laughing leave and pursued the eastern road, which I had
+that day trodden; as they passed away the young man played a lively
+strain and the girl's happy spirit broke into a dance, and, thus
+dissolving, as it were, into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant
+pair departed from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown
+across my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy of my late
+companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forth
+toward the distant city.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE OLD MAID.
+
+
+The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
+spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
+lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the
+ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed, falling between the
+heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But
+how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a
+shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a corpse in
+its burial-clothes.
+
+Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange
+fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt
+the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and
+a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the
+moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as
+she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed her living
+lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from that long
+kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its
+anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved
+responsive to her own. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had
+waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another
+fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside.
+There the two maidens stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of
+the dead between them. But she who had first entered was proud and
+stately, and the other a soft and fragile thing.
+
+"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him living; the dead is
+mine."
+
+"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well hast thou spoken; the
+dead is thine."
+
+The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
+but a wild-and mournful expression passed across the features of the
+gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head
+pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark
+locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had
+bewildered her.
+
+"Edith!" cried her rival.
+
+Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and, removing
+her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
+encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.
+
+"Wilt thou betray me?" said the latter, calmly.
+
+"Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent," answered Edith. "Leave
+us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return and tell me
+of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest of sufferings
+more than death, we will both forgive thee."
+
+"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud girl, as if her heart
+acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.
+
+"This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
+curls that lay heavily on the dead man's brow.
+
+The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
+appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
+meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the
+motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and trembled ere
+she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon
+her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form fading into the moonlight?
+Scorning her own weakness, she went forth and perceived that a negro
+slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight, which he held
+between her face and his own and regarded her, as she thought, with an
+ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave
+lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion.
+The young clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and,
+bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.
+
+Years--many years--rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much
+older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped
+their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely
+woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the
+town as the "Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." A taint of insanity had
+affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free
+from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies
+unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures she had
+naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight except
+to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in
+sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and proud
+thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them
+came the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called
+her shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but
+stood at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear
+of the procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the
+house of mourning and be the shadow of affliction and see that the
+dead were duly buried. So long had this been her custom that the
+inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as
+the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself, and augured ill of the
+sinner's destiny unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding
+like a ghost behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal-party
+with her pale presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall
+just as the priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before
+her lover had been dead a year. Evil was the omen to that marriage.
+Sometimes she stole forth by moonlight and visited the graves of
+venerable integrity and wedded love and virgin innocence, and every
+spot where the ashes of a kind and faithful heart were mouldering.
+Over the hillocks of those favored dead would she stretch out her arms
+with a gesture as if she were scattering seeds, and many believed that
+she brought them from the garden of Paradise, for the graves which she
+had visited were green beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers
+from April to November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon
+the tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful and fantastic
+life till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
+wondered how the dead had ever been buried or mourners had endured
+their grief without the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. Still years
+went on, and still she followed funerals and was not yet summoned to
+her own festival of death.
+
+One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with business
+and bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of the
+church-spire, having left the housetops and loftiest trees in shadow.
+The scene was cheerful and animated in spite of the sombre shade
+between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants in white
+wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces of sea-captains, the foreign
+garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the disdainful port of natives of
+Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two
+back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests where axe had
+never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an
+embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes and
+courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious obeisances of the
+gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far
+from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from the pavement,
+surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of loneliness rather
+deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its site would have
+been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange or a brick block
+lettered all over with various signs, or the large house itself might
+have made a noble tavern with the "King's Arms" swinging before it and
+guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But, owing
+to some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had been
+long without a tenant, decaying from year to year and throwing the
+stately gloom of its shadow over the busiest part of the town.
+
+Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that
+have been described was observed at a distance down the street.
+
+"I espy a strange sail yonder," remarked a Liverpool captain--"that
+woman in the long white garment."
+
+The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others
+who at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had
+attracted his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of
+conversation gave place to speculations in an undertone on this
+unwonted occurrence.
+
+"Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?" inquired some.
+
+They looked for the signs of death at every door--the sexton, the
+hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the
+woeful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt
+spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its
+bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in
+the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to
+its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral except
+the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+"What may this portend?" asked each man of his neighbor.
+
+All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
+their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
+prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one whose
+presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet
+is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on,
+while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud
+and the humble stood aside that her white garment might not wave
+against them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity. Its wearer
+appeared very old, pale, emaciated and feeble, yet glided onward
+without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her course a
+little rosy boy burst forth from a door and ran with open arms toward
+the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips.
+She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expression of
+no earthly sweetness, so that the child shivered and stood awestruck
+rather than affrighted while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her
+garment might have been polluted even by an infant's touch; perhaps
+her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy within the year.
+
+"She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious. "The child put
+forth his arms and could not grasp her robe."
+
+The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of
+the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron
+knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture that
+some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the
+poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth--all gone from
+their home long since and for ever unless their ghosts still haunted
+it, fit company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his
+gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.
+
+"None, madam," said he, "have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
+agone--no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
+you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among
+themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin."
+
+The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand and
+a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than
+ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer,
+and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now
+heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion which all conceived
+to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the
+pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more distinct
+on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell on
+the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance toward the
+church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that
+the people saw of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+"Who undid the door?" asked many.
+
+This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
+could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
+against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
+within was a negro and bore a singular resemblance to old C�sar,
+formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
+before.
+
+"Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family," said one, half
+seriously.
+
+"Let us wait here," replied another; "more guests will knock at the
+door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open."
+
+Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate or
+the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was
+wending his way homeward, when a coach--no common spectacle in those
+days--drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage,
+hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a footman behind
+and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front, the whole giving
+an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was something awful in the
+heavy rumbling of the wheels.
+
+The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the
+deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.
+
+"Whose grand coach is this?" asked a very inquisitive body.
+
+The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
+gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach
+door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day
+examined the shield of arms on the panel.
+
+"Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flowers de luce," said he,
+then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.
+The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long
+residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and
+wealth had given him no mean station. "He left no child," continued
+the herald, "and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the
+coach appertains to his widow."
+
+Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the speaker
+been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady who
+thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she
+emerged the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her figure
+dignified in spite of age and infirmity--a stately ruin, but with a
+look at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid features
+had an awe about them unlike that of the white Old Maid, but as of
+something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed
+cane. The door swung open as she ascended, and the light of a torch
+glittered on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on the pillars of
+the porch. After a momentary pause, a glance backward and then a
+desperate effort, she went in.
+
+The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step,
+and, shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the
+torch was held by the very image of old C�sar.
+
+"But such a hideous grin," added he, "was never seen on the face of
+mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying-day."
+
+Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on the
+pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,
+while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when the
+people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient
+lady, the spectre of old C�sar and the Old Maid herself were not all a
+strangely-combined delusion with some dark purport in its mystery. The
+whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd
+continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows of the
+mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders, glad to
+indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded
+splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given and the
+guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from
+abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic
+reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they
+referred. So strong was the impression on some of the more imaginative
+hearers that two or three were seized with trembling fits at one and
+the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard three other
+raps of the iron knocker.
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed others. "See! The moon shines beneath the
+porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
+pillar. There is no one there."
+
+"Did not the door open?" whispered one of these fanciful persons.
+
+"Didst thou see it too?" said his companion, in a startled tone.
+
+But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third
+visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A
+few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red
+gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front window,
+as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This too was
+pronounced a mere fantasy.
+
+But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own
+terror painted in the faces of all the rest.
+
+"What an awful thing is this!" cried they.
+
+A shriek too fearfully distinct for doubt had been heard within the
+mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness, as
+if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
+whether to fly from the very sight of the house or to rush trembling
+in and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and
+affright they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their
+clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught
+them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of an
+ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair upon
+his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast and a back so bent over
+his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to
+choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time before the
+good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could be made to
+comprehend such portions of the affair as were comprehensible at all.
+But when possessed of the facts, his energies assumed unexpected
+vigor.
+
+"Verily," said the old gentleman, "it will be fitting that I enter the
+mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should
+have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the 'Old Maid in
+the Winding-Sheet.'"
+
+Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
+mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who had
+spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained the
+shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like their
+predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.
+
+"Old C�sar cometh not," observed the priest. "Well, I wot he no longer
+doth service in this mansion."
+
+"Assuredly, then, it was something worse in old C�sar's likeness,"
+said the other adventurer.
+
+"Be it as God wills," answered the clergyman. "See! my strength,
+though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let
+us enter and pass up the staircase."
+
+Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a very
+old man's mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the aged
+clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing aside,
+and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
+practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a throng.
+Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with sad and
+solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary locks, and was
+evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.
+
+"Reverend sir," said his attendant, who conceived this a very suitable
+prelude to their further search, "would it not be well that the people
+join with us in prayer?"
+
+"Well-a-day!" cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
+"Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
+present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
+many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I
+saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their
+burials, one after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet hath
+seen them to their graves."
+
+Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
+staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
+each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They
+therefore walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to the
+great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the shadow and
+partial moonlight of the street beneath. On their right hand was the
+open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left.
+
+The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.
+
+"Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole lifetime since, did I sit
+by the death-bed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
+gasp--" Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
+which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his
+companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence
+that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the
+moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It
+was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-backed
+oaken arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her breast and
+her head thrown back, sat the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. The
+stately dame had fallen on her knees with her forehead on the holy
+knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor and the other pressed
+convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair--once
+sable, now discolored with a greenish mould.
+
+As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's
+features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they
+trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it
+was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead face
+and the moonlight.
+
+"Both dead!" said the venerable man. "Then who shall divulge the
+secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light and
+shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now 'tis gone!"
+
+
+
+
+PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE.
+
+
+"And so, Peter, you won't even consider of the business?" said Mr.
+John Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his
+person and drawing on his gloves. "You positively refuse to let me
+have this crazy old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the
+price named?"
+
+"Neither at that, nor treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled
+and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. "The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must
+find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my
+estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid
+new mansion over the cellar of the old house."
+
+"Pho, Peter!" cried Mr. Brown as he opened the kitchen door; "content
+yourself with building castles in the air, where house-lots are
+cheaper than on earth, to say nothing of the cost of bricks and
+mortar. Such foundations are solid enough for your edifices, while
+this underneath us is just the thing for mine; and so we may both be
+suited. What say you, again?"
+
+"Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown," answered Peter Goldthwaite.
+"And, as for castles in the air, mine may not be as magnificent as
+that sort of architecture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr. Brown, as
+the very respectable brick block with dry-goods stores, tailors' shops
+and banking-rooms on the lower floor, and lawyers' offices in the
+second story, which you are so anxious to substitute."
+
+"And the cost, Peter? Eh?" said Mr. Brown as he withdrew in something
+of a pet. "That, I suppose, will be provided for off-hand by drawing a
+check on Bubble Bank?"
+
+John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly known to the
+commercial world between twenty and thirty years before under the firm
+of Goldthwaite & Brown; which copartnership, however, was speedily
+dissolved by the natural incongruity of its constituent parts. Since
+that event, John Brown, with exactly the qualities of a thousand other
+John Browns, and by just such plodding methods as they used, had
+prospered wonderfully and become one of the wealthiest John Browns on
+earth. Peter Goldthwaite, on the contrary, after innumerable schemes
+which ought to have collected all the coin and paper currency of the
+country into his coffers, was as needy a gentleman as ever wore a
+patch upon his elbow. The contrast between him and his former partner
+may be briefly marked, for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always
+had it, while Peter made luck the main condition of his projects, and
+always missed it. While the means held out his speculations had been
+magnificent, but were chiefly confined of late years to such small
+business as adventures in the lottery. Once he had gone on a
+gold-gathering expedition somewhere to the South, and ingeniously
+contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than ever, while
+others, doubtless, were filling theirs with native bullion by the
+handful. More recently he had expended a legacy of a thousand or two
+of dollars in purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the
+proprietor of a province; which, however, so far as Peter could find
+out, was situated where he might have had an empire for the same
+money--in the clouds. From a search after this valuable real estate
+Peter returned so gaunt and threadbare that on reaching New England
+the scarecrows in the corn-fields beckoned to him as he passed by.
+"They did but flutter in the wind," quoth Peter Goldthwaite. No,
+Peter, they beckoned, for the scarecrows knew their brother.
+
+At the period of our story his whole visible income would not have
+paid the tax of the old mansion in which we find him. It was one of
+those rusty, moss-grown, many-peaked wooden houses which are scattered
+about the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed second
+story projecting over the foundation, as if it frowned at the novelty
+around it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he was, and though,
+being centrally situated on the principal street of the town, it would
+have brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own
+reasons for never parting with, either by auction or private sale.
+There seemed, indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his
+birthplace; for, often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and
+standing there even now, he had not yet taken the step beyond it which
+would have compelled him to surrender the house to his creditors. So
+here he dwelt with bad luck till good should come.
+
+Here, then, in his kitchen--the only room where a spark of fire took
+off the chill of a November evening--poor Peter Goldthwaite had just
+been visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview,
+Peter, with rather a mortified look, glanced downward at his dress,
+parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite & Brown.
+His upper garment was a mixed surtout, woefully faded, and patched
+with newer stuff on each elbow; beneath this he wore a threadbare
+black coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced with
+others of a different pattern; and, lastly, though he lacked not a
+pair of gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been
+partially turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter's shins
+before a scanty fire. Peter's person was in keeping with his goodly
+apparel. Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he
+was the perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and
+empty hopes till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash nor
+stomach more substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite,
+crack-brained simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very
+brilliant figure in the world had he employed his imagination in the
+airy business of poetry instead of making it a demon of mischief in
+mercantile pursuits. After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless
+as a child, and as honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman
+which Nature meant him for, as an irregular life and depressed
+circumstances will permit any man to be.
+
+As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth looking round at the
+disconsolate old kitchen his eyes began to kindle with the
+illumination of an enthusiasm that never long deserted him. He raised
+his hand, clenched it and smote it energetically against the smoky
+panel over the fireplace.
+
+"The time is come," said he; "with such a treasure at command, it were
+folly to be a poor man any longer. Tomorrow morning I will begin with
+the garret, nor desist till I have torn the house down."
+
+Deep in the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a
+little old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith
+Peter Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet
+were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off
+flannel petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid
+upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that
+same chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter's
+grandfather had taken her from the almshouse. She had no friend but
+Peter, nor Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as Peter might have a
+shelter for his own head, Tabitha would know where to shelter hers,
+or, being homeless elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand
+and bring him to her native home, the almshouse. Should it ever be
+necessary, she loved him well enough to feed him with her last morsel
+and clothe him with her under-petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old
+woman, and, though never infected with Peter's flightiness, had become
+so accustomed to his freaks and follies that she viewed them all as
+matters of course. Hearing him threaten to tear the house down, she
+looked quietly up from her work.
+
+"Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter," said she.
+
+"The sooner we have it all down, the better," said Peter Goldthwaite.
+"I am tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy, smoky,
+creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man
+when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we
+shall by this time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny
+side, old Tabby, finished and furnished as best may suit your own
+notions."
+
+"I should like it pretty much such a room as this kitchen," answered
+Tabitha. "It will never be like home to me till the chimney-corner
+gets as black with smoke as this, and that won't be these hundred
+years. How much do you mean to lay out on the house, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"What is that to the purpose?" exclaimed Peter, loftily. "Did not my
+great-grand-uncle, Peter Goldthwaite, who died seventy years ago, and
+whose namesake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty such?"
+
+"I can't say but he did, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha, threading her
+needle.
+
+Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference to an immense hoard
+of the precious metals which was said to exist somewhere in the cellar
+or walls, or under the floors, or in some concealed closet or other
+out-of-the-way nook of the old house. This wealth, according to
+tradition, had been accumulated by a former Peter Goldthwaite whose
+character seems to have borne a remarkable similitude to that of the
+Peter of our story. Like him, he was a wild projector, seeking to heap
+up gold by the bushel and the cart-load instead of scraping it
+together coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had
+almost invariably failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the
+final one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches
+to his gaunt and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the
+nature of his fortunate speculation, one intimating that the ancient
+Peter had made the gold by alchemy; another, that he had conjured it
+out of people's pockets by the black art; and a third--still more
+unaccountable--that the devil had given him free access to the old
+provincial treasury. It was affirmed, however, that some secret
+impediment had debarred him from the enjoyment of his riches, and that
+he had a motive for concealing them from his heir, or, at any rate,
+had died without disclosing the place of deposit. The present Peter's
+father had faith enough in the story to cause the cellar to be dug
+over. Peter himself chose to consider the legend as an indisputable
+truth, and amid his many troubles had this one consolation--that,
+should all other resources fail, he might build up his fortunes by
+tearing his house down. Yet, unless he felt a lurking distrust of the
+golden tale, it is difficult to account for his permitting the
+paternal roof to stand so long, since he had never yet seen the moment
+when his predecessor's treasure would not have found plenty of room in
+his own strong-box. But now was the crisis. Should he delay the search
+a little longer, the house would pass from the lineal heir, and with
+it the vast heap of gold, to remain in its burial-place till the ruin
+of the aged walls should discover it to strangers of a future
+generation.
+
+"Yes," cried Peter Goldthwaite, again; "to-morrow I will set about
+it."
+
+The deeper he looked at the matter, the more certain of success grew
+Peter. His spirits were naturally so elastic that even now, in the
+blasted autumn of his age, he could often compete with the springtime
+gayety of other people. Enlivened by his brightening prospects, he
+began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin, with the queerest
+antics of his lean limbs and gesticulations of his starved features.
+Nay, in the exuberance of his feelings, he seized both of Tabitha's
+hands and danced the old lady across the floor till the oddity of her
+rheumatic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was echoed
+back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter Goldthwaite were
+laughing in every one. Finally, he bounded upward, almost out of
+sight, into the smoke that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and,
+alighting safely on the floor again, endeavored to resume his
+customary gravity.
+
+"To-morrow, at sunrise," he repeated, taking his lamp to retire to
+bed, "I'll see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the
+garret."
+
+"And, as we're out of wood, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha, puffing and
+panting with her late gymnastics, "as fast as you tear the house down
+I'll make a fire with the pieces."
+
+Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldthwaite. At one time
+he was turning a ponderous key in an iron door not unlike the door of
+a sepulchre, but which, being opened, disclosed a vault heaped up with
+gold coin as plentifully as golden corn in a granary. There were
+chased goblets, also, and tureens, salvers, dinner-dishes and
+dish-covers of gold or silver-gilt, besides chains and other jewels,
+incalculably rich, though tarnished with the damps of the vault; for,
+of all the wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried in
+the earth or sunken in the sea, Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this
+one treasure-place. Anon he had returned to the old house as poor as
+ever, and was received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of
+a man whom he might have mistaken for himself, only that his garments
+were of a much elder fashion. But the house, without losing its former
+aspect, had been changed into a palace of the precious metals. The
+floors, walls and ceilings were of burnished silver; the doors, the
+window-frames, the cornices, the balustrades and the steps of the
+staircase, of pure gold; and silver, with gold bottoms, were the
+chairs, and gold, standing on silver legs, the high chests of drawers,
+and silver the bedsteads, with blankets of woven gold and sheets of
+silver tissue. The house had evidently been transmuted by a single
+touch, for it retained all the marks that Peter remembered, but in
+gold or silver instead of wood, and the initials of his name--which
+when a boy he had cut in the wooden door-post--remained as deep in the
+pillar of gold. A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite except
+for a certain ocular deception which, whenever he glanced backward,
+caused the house to darken from its glittering magnificence into the
+sordid gloom of yesterday.
+
+Up betimes rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer and saw which he had
+placed by his bedside, and hied him to the garret. It was but scantily
+lighted up as yet by the frosty fragments of a sunbeam which began to
+glimmer through the almost opaque bull-eyes of the window. A moralizer
+might find abundant themes for his speculative and impracticable
+wisdom in a garret. There is the limbo of departed fashions, aged
+trifles of a day and whatever was valuable only to one generation of
+men, and which passed to the garret when that generation passed to the
+grave--not for safekeeping, but to be out of the way. Peter saw piles
+of yellow and musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein
+creditors long dead and buried had written the names of dead and
+buried debtors in ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones
+were more legible. He found old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and
+tatters, or Peter would have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty
+sword--not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small French
+rapier--which had never left its scabbard till it lost it. Here were
+canes of twenty different sorts, but no gold-headed ones, and
+shoebuckles of various pattern and material, but not silver nor set
+with precious stones. Here was a large box full of shoes with high
+heels and peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a multitude of phials
+half filled with old apothecary's stuff which, when the other half had
+done its business on Peter's ancestors, had been brought hither from
+the death-chamber. Here--not to give a longer inventory of articles
+that will never be put up at auction--was the fragment of a
+full-length looking-glass which by the dust and dimness of its surface
+made the picture of these old things look older than the reality. When
+Peter, not knowing that there was a mirror there, caught the faint
+traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the former Peter
+Goldthwaite had come back either to assist or impede his search for
+the hidden wealth. And at that moment a strange notion glimmered
+through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed
+the gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, however, he had
+unaccountably forgotten.
+
+"Well, Mr. Peter!" cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. "Have you torn
+the house down enough to heat the teakettle?"
+
+"Not yet, old Tabby," answered Peter, "but that's soon done, as you
+shall see." With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and laid
+about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and in
+a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish.
+
+"We shall get our winter's wood cheap," quoth Tabitha.
+
+The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him,
+smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers, unclenching spike-nails,
+ripping and tearing away boards, with a tremendous racket from morning
+till night. He took care, however, to leave the outside shell of the
+house untouched, so that the neighbors might not suspect what was
+going on.
+
+Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it
+lasted, had Peter been happier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was
+something in Peter Goldthwaite's turn of mind which brought him an
+inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused. If he were
+poor, ill-clad, even hungry and exposed, as it were, to be utterly
+annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin, yet only his body
+remained in these miserable circumstances, while his aspiring soul
+enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity. It was his nature to be
+always young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so.
+Gray hairs were nothing--no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look
+old, indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old
+figure much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was
+a young man of high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling
+of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers
+and ashes. It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long--not too long,
+but just to the right age--a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender
+dreams, he resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light,
+to go a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town. What
+heart could resist him? Happy Peter Goldthwaite!
+
+Every evening--as Peter had long absented himself from his former
+lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and
+as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private
+circles--he and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen
+hearth. This was always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his
+day's labor. As the foundation of the fire there would be a
+goodly-sized back-log of red oak, which after being sheltered from
+rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and distilled
+streams of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down
+within a week or two. Next there were large sticks, sound, black and
+heavy, which had lost the principle of decay and were indestructible
+except by fire, wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron. On this
+solid basis Tabitha would rear a lighter structure, composed of the
+splinters of door-panels, ornamented mouldings, and such quick
+combustibles, which caught like straw and threw a brilliant blaze high
+up the spacious flue, making its sooty sides visible almost to the
+chimney-top. Meantime, the gloom of the old kitchen would be chased
+out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the dusky cross-beams
+overhead, and driven nobody could tell whither, while Peter smiled
+like a gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age.
+All this, of course, was but an emblem of the bright fortune which the
+destruction of the house would shed upon its occupants.
+
+While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular
+discharge of fairy-musketry, Peter sat looking and listening in a
+pleasant state of excitement; but when the brief blaze and uproar were
+succeeded by the dark-red glow, the substantial heat and the deep
+singing sound which were to last throughout the evening, his humor
+became talkative. One night--the hundredth time--he teased Tabitha to
+tell him something new about his great-granduncle.
+
+"You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-five years, old
+Tabby, and must have heard many a tradition about him," said Peter.
+"Did not you tell me that when you first came to the house there was
+an old woman sitting where you sit now who had been housekeeper to the
+famous Peter Goldthwaite?"
+
+"So there was, Mr. Peter," answered Tabitha, "and she was near about a
+hundred years old. She used to say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite
+had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire--pretty much as
+you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter."
+
+"The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one," said
+Peter, complacently, "or he never would have grown so rich. But
+methinks he might have invested the money better than he did. No
+interest! nothing but good security! and the house to be torn down to
+come at it! What made him hide it so snug, Tabby?"
+
+"Because he could not spend it," said Tabitha, "for as often as he
+went to unlock the chest the Old Scratch came behind and caught his
+arm. The money, they say, was paid Peter out of his purse, and he
+wanted Peter to give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter
+swore he would not do."
+
+"Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner," remarked Peter. "But
+this is all nonsense, Tabby; I don't believe the story."
+
+"Well, it may not be just the truth," said Tabitha, "for some folks
+say that Peter did make over the house to the Old Scratch, and that's
+the reason it has always been so unlucky to them that lived in it. And
+as soon as Peter had given him the deed the chest flew open, and Peter
+caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and behold! there was nothing
+in his fist but a parcel of old rags."
+
+"Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby!" cried Peter, in great wrath.
+"They were as good golden guineas as ever bore the effigies of the
+king of England. It seems as if I could recollect the whole
+circumstance, and how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was, thrust in my
+hand, or his hand, and drew it out all of a blaze with gold. Old rags
+indeed!"
+
+But it was not an old woman's legend that would discourage Peter
+Goldthwaite. All night long he slept among pleasant dreams, and awoke
+at daylight with a joyous throb of the heart which few are fortunate
+enough to feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day he labored hard
+without wasting a moment except at meal-times, when Tabitha summoned
+him to the pork and cabbage, or such other sustenance as she had
+picked up or Providence had sent them. Being a truly pious man, Peter
+never failed to ask a blessing--if the food were none of the best,
+then so much the more earnestly, as it was more needed--nor to return
+thanks, if the dinner had been scanty, yet for the good appetite which
+was better than a sick stomach at a feast. Then did he hurry back to
+his toil, and in a moment was lost to sight in a cloud of dust from
+the old walls, though sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the
+clatter which he raised in the midst of it.
+
+How enviable is the consciousness of being usefully employed! Nothing
+troubled Peter, or nothing but those phantoms of the mind which seem
+like vague recollections, yet have also the aspect of presentiments.
+He often paused with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself,
+"Peter Goldthwaite, did you never strike this blow before?" or "Peter,
+what need of tearing the whole house down? Think a little while, and
+you will remember where the gold is hidden." Days and weeks passed on,
+however, without any remarkable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean
+gray rat peeped forth at the lean gray man, wondering what devil had
+got into the old house, which had always been so peaceable till now.
+And occasionally Peter sympathized with the sorrows of a female mouse
+who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and delicate young
+ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its ruin. But
+as yet no treasure.
+
+By this time, Peter, being as determined as fate and as diligent as
+time, had made an end with the uppermost regions and got down to the
+second story, where he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had
+formerly been the state-bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as
+the sleeping-apartment of Governor Dudley and many other eminent
+guests. The furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and
+tattered paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented
+with charcoal sketches, chiefly of people's heads in profile. These
+being specimens of Peter's youthful genius, it went more to his heart
+to obliterate them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by
+Michael Angelo. One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected
+him differently. It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself
+on a spade and bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with
+one hand extended to grasp something that he had found. But close
+behind him, with a fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure
+with horns, a tufted tail and a cloven hoof.
+
+"Avaunt, Satan!" cried Peter. "The man shall have his gold." Uplifting
+his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not
+only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the
+whole scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite
+through the plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.
+
+"Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?"
+said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.
+
+Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of
+the wall, and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the
+fireplace, about breast-high from the ground. It contained nothing but
+a brass lamp covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment.
+While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized the lamp and began to
+rub it with her apron.
+
+"There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha," said Peter. "It is not
+Aladdin's lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look
+here, Tabby!"
+
+Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was
+saddled with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she
+begun to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding
+both her hands against her sides.
+
+"You can't make a fool of the old woman," cried she. "This is your own
+handwriting, Mr. Peter, the same as in the letter you sent me from
+Mexico."
+
+"There is certainly a considerable resemblance," said Peter, again
+examining the parchment. "But you know yourself, Tabby, that this
+closet must have been plastered up before you came to the house or I
+came into the world. No; this is old Peter Goldthwaite's writing.
+These columns of pounds, shillings and pence are his figures, denoting
+the amount of the treasure, and this, at the bottom, is doubtless a
+reference to the place of concealment. But the ink has either faded or
+peeled off, so that it is absolutely illegible. What a pity!"
+
+"Well, this lamp is as good as new. That's some comfort," said
+Tabitha.
+
+"A lamp!" thought Peter. "That indicates light on my researches."
+
+For the present Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery
+than to resume his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs he stood
+poring over the parchment at one of the front windows, which was so
+obscured with dust that the sun could barely throw an uncertain shadow
+of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it open and looked out
+upon the great street of the town, while the sun looked in at his old
+house. The air, though mild, and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a
+dash of water.
+
+It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the
+housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops,
+which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a
+summer shower beneath the eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was
+as hard and solid as a pavement of white marble, and had not yet grown
+moist in the spring-like temperature. But when Peter thrust forth his
+head, he saw that the inhabitants, if not the town, were already
+thawed out by this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter
+weather. It gladdened him--a gladness with a sigh breathing through
+it--to see the stream of ladies gliding along the slippery sidewalks
+with their red cheeks set off by quilted hoods, boas and sable capes
+like roses amidst a new kind of foliage. The sleigh bells jingled to
+and fro continually, sometimes announcing the arrival of a sleigh from
+Vermont laden with the frozen bodies of porkers or sheep, and perhaps
+a deer or two; sometimes, of a regular marketman with chickens, geese
+and turkeys, comprising the whole colony of a barn-yard; and
+sometimes, of a farmer and his dame who had come to town partly for
+the ride, partly to go a-shopping and partly for the sale of some eggs
+and butter. This couple rode in an old-fashioned square sleigh which
+had served them twenty winters and stood twenty summers in the sun
+beside their door. Now a gentleman and lady skimmed the snow in an
+elegant car shaped somewhat like a cockle-shell; now a stage-sleigh
+with its cloth curtains thrust aside to admit the sun dashed rapidly
+down the street, whirling in and out among the vehicles that
+obstructed its passage; now came round a corner the similitude of
+Noah's ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh with seats for
+fifty people and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious receptacle was
+populous with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry girls and boys
+and merry old folks, all alive with fun and grinning to the full width
+of their mouths. They kept up a buzz of babbling voices and low
+laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep, joyous shout which the
+spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys
+let drive their snow-balls right among the pleasure-party. The sleigh
+passed on, and when concealed by a bend of the street was still
+audible by a distant cry of merriment.
+
+Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all
+these accessories--the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the
+gleaming snow, the cheerful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles
+and the jingle-jangle of merry bells which made the heart dance to
+their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen except that peaked piece of
+antiquity Peter Goldthwaite's house, which might well look sad
+externally, since such a terrible consumption was preying on its
+insides. And Peter's gaunt figure, half visible in the projecting
+second story, was worthy of his house.
+
+"Peter! How goes it, friend Peter?" cried a voice across the street as
+Peter was drawing in his head. "Look out here, Peter!"
+
+Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
+sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open,
+disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the
+attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite's window, and to the
+dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.
+
+"I say, Peter!" cried Mr. Brown, again; "what the devil are you about
+there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing
+the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?"
+
+"Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown," replied Peter. "If I make
+it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar upward."
+
+"Had not you better let me take the job?" said Mr. Brown,
+significantly.
+
+"Not yet," answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever since
+he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
+him.
+
+As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the
+secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter's
+visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid
+chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
+probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a
+home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very
+dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in contrast with
+the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into
+the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which
+the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and
+an intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an
+object that might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people
+would call madness. It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of
+life that each person rectifies his mind by other minds and squares
+his conduct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in
+eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence
+by merely looking out of the window. For a while he doubted whether
+there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case whether it was
+so exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced of its
+non-existence.
+
+But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which
+Fate had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In
+the course of his search he met with many things that are usually
+found in the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are not.
+What seemed most to the purpose was a rusty key which had been thrust
+into a chink of the wall, with a wooden label appended to the handle,
+bearing the initials "P.G." Another singular discovery was that of a
+bottle of wine walled up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the family
+that Peter's grandfather, a jovial officer in the old French war, had
+set aside many dozens of the precious liquor for the benefit of topers
+then unborn. Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and
+therefore kept the wine to gladden his success. Many half-pence did he
+pick up that had been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some
+few Spanish coins, and the half of a broken sixpence which had
+doubtless been a love-token. There was likewise a silver coronation
+medal of George III. But old Peter Goldthwaite's strong-box fled from
+one dark corner to another, or otherwise eluded the second Peter's
+clutches till, should he seek much farther, he must burrow into the
+earth.
+
+We will not follow him in his triumphant progress step by step.
+Suffice it that Peter worked like a steam-engine and finished in that
+one winter the job which all the former inhabitants of the house, with
+time and the elements to aid them, had only half done in a century.
+Except the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted. The house
+was nothing but a shell, the apparition of a house, as unreal as the
+painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of a great
+cheese in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a cheese no
+more. And Peter was the mouse.
+
+What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burnt up, for she wisely
+considered that without a house they should need no wood to warm it,
+and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said
+to have dissolved in smoke and flown up among the clouds through the
+great black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirable parallel
+to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat.
+
+On the night between the last day of winter and the first of spring
+every chink and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts
+of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had
+set in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed about the
+atmosphere by a real hurricane which fought against the house as if
+the prince of the air in person were putting the final stroke to
+Peter's labors. The framework being so much weakened and the inward
+props removed, it would have been no marvel if in some stronger
+wrestle of the blast the rotten walls of the edifice and all the
+peaked roofs had come crashing down upon the owner's head. He,
+however, was careless of the peril, but as wild and restless as the
+night itself, or as the flame that quivered up the chimney at each
+roar of the tempestuous wind.
+
+"The wine, Tabitha," he cried--"my grandfather's rich old wine! We
+will drink it now."
+
+Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner and
+placed the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp which
+had likewise been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before
+his eyes, and, looking through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen
+illuminated with a golden glory which also enveloped Tabitha and
+gilded her silver hair and converted her mean garments into robes of
+queenly splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.
+
+"Mr. Peter," remarked Tabitha, "must the wine be drunk before the
+money is found?"
+
+"The money _is_ found!" exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness.
+"The chest is within my reach; I will not sleep till I have turned
+this key in the rusty lock. But first of all let us drink."
+
+There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle
+with old Peter Goldthwaite's rusty key, and decapitated the sealed
+cork at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups which
+Tabitha had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant was this
+aged wine that it shone within the cups and rendered the sprig of
+scarlet flowers at the bottom of each more distinctly visible than
+when there had been no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume
+wasted itself round the kitchen.
+
+"Drink, Tabitha!" cried Peter. "Blessings on the honest old fellow who
+set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here's to Peter
+Goldthwaite's memory!"
+
+"And good cause have we to remember him," quoth Tabitha as she drank.
+
+How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various
+calamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be
+quaffed at last by two such boon-companions! A portion of the
+happiness of a former age had been kept for them, and was now set free
+in a crowd of rejoicing visions to sport amid the storm and desolation
+of the present time. Until they have finished the bottle we must turn
+our eyes elsewhere.
+
+It so chanced that on this stormy night Mr. John Brown found himself
+ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair by the glowing grate of
+anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good
+sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the misfortunes of others
+happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of his own
+prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his old partner,
+Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries and continual ill-luck, the
+poverty of his dwelling at Mr. Brown's last visit, and Peter's crazed
+and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the window.
+
+"Poor fellow!" thought Mr. John Brown. "Poor crack-brained Peter
+Goldthwaite! For old acquaintance' sake I ought to have taken care
+that he was comfortable this rough winter." These feelings grew so
+powerful that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit
+Peter Goldthwaite immediately.
+
+The strength of the impulse was really singular. Every shriek of the
+blast seemed a summons, or would have seemed so had Mr. Brown been
+accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much
+amazed at such active benevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak,
+muffled his throat and ears in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus
+fortified, bade defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had
+rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just weathering the
+corner by Peter Goldthwaite's house when the hurricane caught him off
+his feet, tossed him face downward into a snow-bank and proceeded to
+bury his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There seemed little
+hope of his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same
+moment his hat was snatched away and whirled aloft into some
+far-distant region whence no tidings have as yet returned.
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a passage through the
+snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered
+onward to Peter's door. There was such a creaking and groaning and
+rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice
+that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He
+therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen.
+His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with
+their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently
+they had just dragged from a cavity or concealed closet on the left
+side of the chimney. By the lamp in the old woman's hand Mr. Brown saw
+that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with
+iron plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle
+in which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants
+of another.
+
+Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the lock.
+
+"Oh, Tabitha," cried he, with tremulous rapture, "how shall I endure
+the effulgence? The gold!--the bright, bright gold! Methinks I can
+remember my last glance at it just as the iron-plated lid fell down.
+And ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret and
+gathering its splendor against this glorious moment. It will flash
+upon us like the noonday sun."
+
+"Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter!" said Tabitha, with somewhat less
+patience than usual. "But, for mercy's sake, do turn the key!"
+
+And with a strong effort of both hands Peter did force the rusty key
+through the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean
+time, had drawn near and thrust his eager visage between those of the
+other two at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze
+illuminated the kitchen.
+
+"What's here?" exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles and holding
+the lamp over the open chest. "Old Peter Goldthwaite's hoard of old
+rags!"
+
+"Pretty much so, Tabby," said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the
+treasure.
+
+Oh what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised
+to scare himself out of his scanty wits withal! Here was the semblance
+of an incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town and build
+every street anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane man would have
+given a solid sixpence for. What, then, in sober earnest, were the
+delusive treasures of the chest? Why, here were old provincial bills
+of credit and treasury notes and bills of land-banks, and all other
+bubbles of the sort, from the first issue--above a century and a half
+ago--down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a thousand pounds were
+intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than they.
+
+"And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite's treasure!" said John
+Brown. "Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself; and when
+the provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per
+cent, he bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my
+grandfather say that old Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very
+house and land to raise cash for his silly project. But the currency
+kept sinking till nobody would take it as a gift, and there was old
+Peter Goldthwaite, like Peter the second, with thousands in his
+strong-box and hardly a coat to his back. He went mad upon the
+strength of it. But never mind, Peter; it is just the sort of capital
+for building castles in the air."
+
+"The house will be down about our ears," cried Tabitha as the wind
+shook it with increasing violence.
+
+"Let it fall," said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself upon
+the chest.
+
+"No, no, my old friend Peter!" said John Brown. "I have house-room for
+you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow
+we will try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house;
+real estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome
+price."
+
+"And I," observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits, "have a
+plan for laying out the cash to great advantage."
+
+"Why, as to that," muttered John Brown to himself, "we must apply to
+the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if
+Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it to his heart's content
+with old Peter Goldthwaite's treasure."
+
+
+
+
+CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL.
+
+
+Passing a summer several years since at Edgartown, on the island of
+Martha's Vineyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of
+tombstones who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of
+Massachusetts in search of professional employment. The speculation
+had turned out so successful that my friend expected to transmute
+slate and marble into silver and gold to the amount of at least a
+thousand dollars during the few months of his sojourn at Nantucket and
+the Vineyard. The secluded life and the simple and primitive spirit
+which still characterizes the inhabitants of those islands, especially
+of Martha's Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer
+remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bustle of the world
+can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet, while every family is
+anxious to erect a memorial to its departed members, the untainted
+breath of Ocean bestows such health and length of days upon the people
+of the isles as would cause a melancholy dearth of business to a
+resident artist in that line. His own monument, recording his decease
+by starvation, would probably be an early specimen of his skill.
+Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an article of imported
+merchandise.
+
+In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown--where the dead
+have lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has
+returned to its original barrenness--in that ancient burial-ground I
+noticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated
+a century back or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers
+and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's-heads, crossbones,
+scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with
+here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward.
+These productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the
+colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London and
+brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this
+lonely isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the
+ordinary style, without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald
+inscriptions. But others--and those far the most impressive both to my
+taste and feelings--were roughly hewn from the gray rocks of the
+island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and
+relatives. On some there were merely the initials of a name; some were
+inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme, in deep letters which the moss
+and wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliterate. These,
+these were graves where loved ones slept. It is an old theme of
+satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental eulogies; but when
+affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor,
+then we may be sure that they copy from the record on their hearts.
+
+My acquaintance the sculptor--he may share that title with Greenough,
+since the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael--had found a
+ready market for all his blank slabs of marble and full occupation in
+lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of
+the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and
+singleness both of heart and mind which, methinks, is more rarely
+found among us Yankees than in any other community of people. In spite
+of his gray head and wrinkled brow, he was quite like a child in all
+matters save what had some reference to his own business; he seemed,
+unless my fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation than
+as people in want of tombstones, and his literary attainments
+evidently comprehended very little either of prose or poetry which had
+not at one time or other been inscribed on slate or marble. His sole
+task and office among the immortal pilgrims of the tomb--the duty for
+which Providence had sent the old man into the world, as it were with
+a chisel in his hand--was to label the dead bodies, lest their names
+should be forgotten at the resurrection. Yet he had not failed, within
+a narrow scope, to gather a few sprigs of earthly, and more than
+earthly, wisdom--the harvest of many a grave. And, lugubrious as his
+calling might appear, he was as cheerful an old soul as health and
+integrity and lack of care could make him, and used to set to work
+upon one sorrowful inscription or another with that sort of spirit
+which impels a man to sing at his labor. On the whole, I found Mr.
+Wigglesworth an entertaining, and often instructive, if not an
+interesting, character; and, partly for the charm of his society, and
+still more because his work has an invariable attraction for "man that
+is born of woman," I was accustomed to spend some hours a day at his
+workshop. The quaintness of his remarks and their not infrequent
+truth--a truth condensed and pointed by the limited sphere of his
+view--gave a raciness to his talk which mere worldliness and general
+cultivation would at once have destroyed.
+
+Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits of the various
+qualities of marble, numerous slabs of which were resting against the
+walls of the shop, or sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly
+without a word on either side while I watched how neatly his chisel
+struck out letter after letter of the names of the Nortons, the
+Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial families of the
+Vineyard. Often with an artist's pride the good old sculptor would
+speak of favorite productions of his skill which were scattered
+throughout the village graveyards of New England. But my chief and
+most instructive amusement was to witness his interviews with his
+customers, who held interminable consultations about the form and
+fashion of the desired monuments, the buried excellence to be
+commemorated, the anguish to be expressed, and finally the lowest
+price in dollars and cents for which a marble transcript of their
+feelings might be obtained. Really, my mind received many fresh ideas
+which perhaps may remain in it even longer than Mr. Wigglesworth's
+hardest marble will retain the deepest strokes of his chisel.
+
+An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had
+been killed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean no less than forty years
+before. It was singular that so strong an impression of early feeling
+should have survived through the changes of her subsequent life, in
+the course of which she had been a wife and a mother, and, so far as I
+could judge, a comfortable and happy woman. Reflecting within myself,
+it appeared to me that this lifelong sorrow--as, in all good faith,
+she deemed it--was one of the most fortunate circumstances of her
+history. It had given an ideality to her mind; it had kept her purer
+and less earthy than she would otherwise have been by drawing a
+portion of her sympathies apart from earth. Amid the throng of
+enjoyments and the pressure of worldly care and all the warm
+materialism of this life she had communed with a vision, and had been
+the better for such intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her
+maturity, and loving him with a far more real affection than she ever
+could have felt for this dream of her girlhood, there had still been
+an imaginative faith to the ocean-buried; so that an ordinary
+character had thus been elevated and refined. Her sighs had been the
+breath of Heaven to her soul. The good lady earnestly desired that the
+proposed monument should be ornamented with a carved border of marine
+plants interwined with twisted sea-shells, such as were probably
+waving over her lover's skeleton or strewn around it in the far depths
+of the Pacific. But, Mr. Wigglesworth's chisel being inadequate to the
+task, she was forced to content herself with a rose hanging its head
+from a broken stem.
+
+After her departure I remarked that the symbol was none of the most
+apt.
+
+"And yet," said my friend the sculptor, embodying in this image the
+thoughts that had been passing through my own mind, "that broken rose
+has shed its sweet smell through forty years of the good woman's
+life."
+
+It was seldom that I could find such pleasant food for contemplation
+as in the above instance. None of the applicants, I think, affected me
+more disagreeably than an old man who came, with his fourth wife
+hanging on his arm, to bespeak gravestones for the three former
+occupants of his marriage-bed. I watched with some anxiety to see
+whether his remembrance of either were more affectionate than of the
+other two, but could discover no symptom of the kind. The three
+monuments were all to be of the same material and form, and each
+decorated in bas-relief with two weeping willows, one of these
+sympathetic trees bending over its fellow, which was to be broken in
+the midst and rest upon a sepulchral urn. This, indeed, was Mr.
+Wigglesworth's standing emblem of conjugal bereavement. I shuddered at
+the gray polygamist who had so utterly lost the holy sense of
+individuality in wedlock that methought he was fain to reckon upon his
+fingers how many women who had once slept by his side were now
+sleeping in their graves. There was even--if I wrong him, it is no
+great matter--a glance sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were
+inclined to drive a thriftier bargain by bespeaking four gravestones
+in a lot.
+
+I was better pleased with a rough old whaling-captain who gave
+directions for a broad marble slab divided into two compartments, one
+of which was to contain an epitaph on his deceased wife and the other
+to be left vacant till death should engrave his own name there. As is
+frequently the case among the whalers of Martha's Vineyard, so much of
+this storm-beaten widower's life had been tossed away on distant seas
+that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent scarce three, and
+those at scattered intervals, beneath his own roof. Thus the wife of
+his youth, though she died in his and her declining age, retained the
+bridal dewdrops fresh around her memory.
+
+My observations gave me the idea, and Mr. Wigglesworth confirmed it,
+that husbands were more faithful in setting up memorials to their dead
+wives than widows to their dead husbands. I was not ill-natured enough
+to fancy that women less than men feel so sure of their own constancy
+as to be willing to give a pledge of it in marble. It is more probably
+the fact that, while men are able to reflect upon their lost
+companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other
+hand, are conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the
+departed whithersoever he has gone. Soul clings to soul, the living
+dust has a sympathy with the dust of the grave; and by the very
+strength of that sympathy the wife of the dead shrinks the more
+sensitively from reminding the world of its existence. The link is
+already strong enough; it needs no visible symbol. And, though a
+shadow walks ever by her side and the touch of a chill hand is on her
+bosom, yet life, and perchance its natural yearnings, may still be
+warm within her and inspire her with new hopes of happiness. Then
+would she mark out the grave the scent of which would be perceptible
+on the pillow of the second bridal? No, but rather level its green
+mound with the surrounding earth, as if, when she dug up again her
+buried heart, the spot had ceased to be a grave.
+
+Yet, in spite of these sentimentalities, I was prodigiously amused by
+an incident of which I had not the good-fortune to be a witness, but
+which Mr. Wigglesworth related with considerable humor. A gentlewoman
+of the town, receiving news of her husband's loss at sea, had bespoken
+a handsome slab of marble, and came daily to watch the progress of my
+friend's chisel. One afternoon, when the good lady and the sculptor
+were in the very midst of the epitaph--which the departed spirit might
+have been greatly comforted to read--who should walk into the workshop
+but the deceased himself, in substance as well as spirit! He had been
+picked up at sea, and stood in no present need of tombstone or
+epitaph.
+
+"And how," inquired I, "did his wife bear the shock of joyful
+surprise?"
+
+"Why," said the old man, deepening the grin of a death's-head on which
+his chisel was just then employed, "I really felt for the poor woman;
+it was one of my best pieces of marble--and to be thrown away on a
+living man!"
+
+A comely woman with a pretty rosebud of a daughter came to select a
+gravestone for a twin-daughter, who had died a month before. I was
+impressed with the different nature of their feelings for the dead.
+The mother was calm and woefully resigned, fully conscious of her
+loss, as of a treasure which she had not always possessed, and
+therefore had been aware that it might be taken from her; but the
+daughter evidently had no real knowledge of what Death's doings were.
+Her thoughts knew, but not her heart. It seemed to me that by the
+print and pressure which the dead sister had left upon the survivor's
+spirit her feelings were almost the same as if she still stood side by
+side and arm in arm with the departed, looking at the slabs of marble,
+and once or twice she glanced around with a sunny smile, which, as its
+sister-smile had faded for ever, soon grew confusedly overshadowed.
+Perchance her consciousness was truer than her reflection; perchance
+her dead sister was a closer companion than in life.
+
+The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth
+about a suitable epitaph, and finally chose an ordinary verse of
+ill-matched rhymes which had already been inscribed upon innumerable
+tombstones. But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses,
+we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds
+a profound and individual purport in what seems so vague and
+inexpressive unless interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew,
+though the selfsame words may have served for a thousand graves.
+
+"And yet," said I afterward to Mr. Wigglesworth, "they might have made
+a better choice than this. While you were discussing the subject I was
+struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the
+lips of both mother and daughter. One of these would have formed an
+inscription equally original and appropriate."
+
+"No, no!" replied the sculptor, shaking his head; "there is a good
+deal of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry,
+and so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones.
+And somehow they seem to stretch to suit a great grief and shrink to
+fit a small one."
+
+It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took
+place between Mr. Wigglesworth and his customers. A shrewd gentlewoman
+who kept a tavern in the town was anxious to obtain two or three
+gravestones for the deceased members of her family, and to pay for
+these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor to board. Hereupon a
+fantasy arose in my mind of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting down to
+dinner at a broad, flat tombstone carving one of his own plump little
+marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of crossbones and drinking out of a
+hollow death's-head or perhaps a lachrymatory vase or sepulchral urn,
+while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly
+banquet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man he
+laughed heartily and pronounced my humor to be of the right sort.
+
+"I have lived at such a table all my days," said he, "and eaten no
+small quantity of slate and marble."
+
+"Hard fare," rejoined I, smiling, "but you seemed to have found it
+excellent of digestion, too."
+
+A man of fifty or thereabouts with a harsh, unpleasant countenance
+ordered a stone for the grave of his bitter enemy, with whom he had
+waged warfare half a lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The
+secret of this phenomenon was that hatred had become the sustenance
+and enjoyment of the poor wretch's soul; it had supplied the place of
+all kindly affections; it had been really a bond of sympathy between
+himself and the man who shared the passion; and when its object died,
+the unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead. He expressed a
+purpose of being buried side by side with his enemy.
+
+"I doubt whether their dust will mingle," remarked the old sculptor to
+me; for often there was an earthliness in his conceptions.
+
+"Oh yes," replied I, who had mused long upon the incident; "and when
+they rise again, these bitter foes may find themselves dear friends.
+Methinks what they mistook for hatred was but love under a mask."
+
+A gentleman of antiquarian propensities provided a memorial for an
+Indian of Chabbiquidick--one of the few of untainted blood remaining
+in that region, and said to be a hereditary chieftain descended from
+the sachem who welcomed Governor Mayhew to the Vineyard. Mr.
+Wiggles-worth exerted his best skill to carve a broken bow and
+scattered sheaf of arrows in memory of the hunters and warriors whose
+race was ended here, but he likewise sculptured a cherub, to denote
+that the poor Indian had shared the Christian's hope of immortality.
+
+"Why," observed I, taking a perverse view of the winged boy and the
+bow and arrows, "it looks more like Cupid's tomb than an Indian
+chief's."
+
+"You talk nonsense," said the sculptor, with the offended pride of
+art. He then added with his usual good-nature, "How can Cupid die when
+there are such pretty maidens in the Vineyard?"
+
+"Very true," answered I; and for the rest of the day I thought of
+other matters than tombstones.
+
+At our next meeting I found him chiselling an open book upon a marble
+headstone, and concluded that it was meant to express the erudition of
+some black-letter clergyman of the Cotton Mather school. It turned
+out, however, to be emblematical of the scriptural knowledge of an old
+woman who had never read anything but her Bible, and the monument was
+a tribute to her piety and good works from the orthodox church of
+which she had been a member. In strange contrast with this Christian
+woman's memorial was that of an infidel whose gravestone, by his own
+direction, bore an avowal of his belief that the spirit within him
+would be extinguished like a flame, and that the nothingness whence he
+sprang would receive him again.
+
+Mr. Wigglesworth consulted me as to the propriety of enabling a dead
+man's dust to utter this dreadful creed.
+
+"If I thought," said he, "that a single mortal would read the
+inscription without a shudder, my chisel should never cut a letter of
+it. But when the grave speaks such falsehoods, the soul of man will
+know the truth by its own horror."
+
+"So it will," said I, struck by the idea. "The poor infidel may strive
+to preach blasphemies from his grave, but it will be only another
+method of impressing the soul with a consciousness of immortality."
+
+There was an old man by the name of Norton, noted throughout the
+island for his great wealth, which he had accumulated by the exercise
+of strong and shrewd faculties combined with a most penurious
+disposition. This wretched miser, conscious that he had not a friend
+to be mindful of him in his grave, had himself taken the needful
+precautions for posthumous remembrance by bespeaking an immense slab
+of white marble with a long epitaph in raised letters, the whole to be
+as magnificent as Mr. Wigglesworth's skill could make it. There was
+something very characteristic in this contrivance to have his money's
+worth even from his own tombstone, which, indeed, afforded him more
+enjoyment in the few months that he lived thereafter than it probably
+will in a whole century, now that it is laid over his bones.
+
+This incident reminds me of a young girl--a pale, slender, feeble
+creature most unlike the other rosy and healthful damsels of the
+Vineyard, amid whose brightness she was fading away. Day after day did
+the poor maiden come to the sculptor's shop and pass from one piece of
+marble to another, till at last she pencilled her name upon a slender
+slab which, I think, was of a more spotless white than all the rest. I
+saw her no more, but soon afterward found Mr. Wigglesworth cutting her
+virgin-name into the stone which she had chosen.
+
+"She is dead, poor girl!" said he, interrupting the tune which he was
+whistling, "and she chose a good piece of stuff for her headstone.
+Now, which of these slabs would you like best to see your own name
+upon?"
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, my good Mr. Wigglesworth," replied I,
+after a moment's pause, for the abruptness of the question had
+somewhat startled me--"to be quite sincere with you, I care little or
+nothing about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to
+scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the
+dust that once was human. The weight of these heavy marbles, though
+unfelt by the dead corpse or the enfranchised soul, presses drearily
+upon the spirit of the survivor and causes him to connect the idea of
+death with the dungeon-like imprisonment of the tomb, instead of with
+the freedom of the skies. Every gravestone that you ever made is the
+visible symbol of a mistaken system. Our thoughts should soar upward
+with the butterfly, not linger with the exuvi� that confined him. In
+truth and reason, neither those whom we call the living, and still
+less the departed, have anything to do with the grave."
+
+"I never heard anything so heathenish," said Mr. Wigglesworth,
+perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his
+notions and feelings and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his
+whole life's labor. "Would you forget your dead friends the moment
+they are under the sod?"
+
+"They are not under the sod," I rejoined; "then why should I mark the
+spot where there is no treasure hidden? Forget them? No; but, to
+remember them aright, I would forget what they have cast off. And to
+gain the truer conception of death I would forget the grave."
+
+But still the good old sculptor murmured, and stumbled, as it were,
+over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life. Whether he
+were right or wrong, I had grown the wiser from our companionship and
+from my observations of nature and character as displayed by those who
+came, with their old griefs or their new ones, to get them recorded
+upon his slabs of marble. And yet with my gain of wisdom I had
+likewise gained perplexity; for there was a strange doubt in my mind
+whether the dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and regrets, have
+not as much real comfort in them--leaving religious influences out of
+the question--as what we term life's joys.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHAKER BRIDAL.
+
+
+One day, in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty
+years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there
+was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect. Individuals
+had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury,
+Harvard and Alfred, and from all the other localities where this
+strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by
+their systematic industry. An elder was likewise there who had made a
+pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in
+Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted
+Mother Ann. He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables,
+had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred
+dance every step of which is believed to alienate the enthusiast from
+earth and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss. His brethren
+of the North had now courteously invited him to be present on an
+occasion when the concurrence of every eminent member of their
+community was peculiarly desirable.
+
+The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair, not only
+hoary-headed and infirm with age, but worn down by a lingering disease
+which it was evident would very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to
+other hands. At his footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the
+Shaker garb.
+
+"My brethren," said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders, feebly
+exerting himself to utter these few words, "here are the son and
+daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about
+to lighten my weary shoulders. Read their faces, I pray you, and say
+whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice
+aright."
+
+Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most
+scrutinizing gaze. The man--whose name was Adam Colburn--had a face
+sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and
+traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely
+reached middle age. There was something severe in his aspect and a
+rigidity throughout his person--characteristics that caused him
+generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he
+had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson,
+was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost
+invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance
+which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.
+
+"This pair are still in the summer of their years," observed the elder
+from Harvard, a shrewd old man. "I would like better to see the
+hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be
+exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which
+have heretofore subsisted between them."
+
+"Nay, brother," said the elder from Canterbury; "the hoar-frost and
+the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha,
+even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they
+are yet green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable
+Father's purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved
+one another as the world's people love? Are there not many brethren
+and sisters among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet,
+adopting our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual
+affection?"
+
+Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it
+inexpedient that they should now preside together over a Shaker
+village, it was certainly most singular that such should be the final
+result of many warm and tender hopes. Children of neighboring
+families, their affection was older even than their school-days; it
+seemed an innate principle interfused among all their sentiments and
+feelings, and not so much a distinct remembrance as connected with
+their whole volume of remembrances. But just as they reached a proper
+age for their union misfortunes had fallen heavily on both and made it
+necessary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare
+subsistence. Even under these circumstances Martha Pierson would
+probably have consented to unite her fate with Adam Colburn's, and,
+secure of the bliss of mutual love, would patiently have awaited the
+less important gifts of Fortune. But Adam, being of a calm and
+cautious character, was loth to relinquish the advantages which a
+single man possesses for raising himself in the world. Year after
+year, therefore, their marriage had been deferred.
+
+Adam Colburn had followed many vocations, had travelled far and seen
+much of the world and of life. Martha had earned her bread sometimes
+as a sempstress, sometimes as help to a farmer's wife, sometimes as
+schoolmistress of the village children, sometimes as a nurse or
+watcher of the sick, thus acquiring a varied experience the ultimate
+use of which she little anticipated. But nothing had gone prosperously
+with either of the lovers; at no subsequent moment would matrimony
+have been so prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the
+opening bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still, they had held
+fast their mutual faith. Martha might have been the wife of a man who
+sat among the senators of his native State, and Adam could have won
+the hand, as he had unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and
+comely widow. But neither of them desired good-fortune save to share
+it with the other.
+
+At length that calm despair which occurs only in a strong and somewhat
+stubborn character and yields to no second spring of hope settled down
+on the spirit of Adam Colburn. He sought an interview with Martha and
+proposed that they should join the Society of Shakers. The converts of
+this sect are oftener driven within its hospitable gates by worldly
+misfortune than drawn thither by fanaticism, and are received without
+inquisition as to their motives. Martha, faithful still, had placed
+her hand in that of her lover and accompanied him to the Shaker
+village. Here the natural capacity of each, cultivated and
+strengthened by the difficulties of their previous lives, had soon
+gained them an important rank in the society, whose members are
+generally below the ordinary standard of intelligence. Their faith and
+feelings had in some degree become assimilated to those of their
+fellow-worshippers. Adam Colburn gradually acquired reputation not
+only in the management of the temporal affairs of the society, but as
+a clear and efficient preacher of their doctrines. Martha was not less
+distinguished in the duties proper to her sex. Finally, when the
+infirmities of Father Ephraim had admonished him to seek a successor
+in his patriarchal office, he thought of Adam and Martha, and proposed
+to renew in their persons the primitive form of Shaker government as
+established by Mother Ann. They were to be the father and mother of
+the village. The simple ceremony which would constitute them such was
+now to be performed.
+
+"Son Adam and daughter Martha," said the venerable Father Ephraim,
+fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, "if ye can conscientiously
+undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your
+fitness."
+
+"Father," replied Adam, speaking with the calmness of his character,
+"I came to your village a disappointed man, weary of the world, worn
+out with continual trouble, seeking only a security against evil
+fortune, as I had no hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success
+were almost dead within me. I came hither as a man might come to a
+tomb willing to lie down in its gloom and coldness for the sake of its
+peace and quiet. There was but one earthly affection in my breast, and
+it had grown calmer since my youth; so that I was satisfied to bring
+Martha to be my sister in our new abode. We are brother and sister,
+nor would I have it otherwise. And in this peaceful village I have
+found all that I hope for--all that I desire. I will strive with my
+best strength for the spiritual and temporal good of our community. My
+conscience is not doubtful in this matter. I am ready to receive the
+trust."
+
+"Thou hast spoken well, son Adam," said the father. "God will bless
+thee in the office which I am about to resign."
+
+"But our sister," observed the elder from Harvard. "Hath she not
+likewise a gift to declare her sentiments?"
+
+Martha started and moved her lips as if she would have made a formal
+reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old
+recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and
+womanhood, might have gushed from her heart in words that it would
+have been profanation to utter there.
+
+"Adam has spoken," said she, hurriedly; "his sentiments are likewise
+mine."
+
+But while speaking these few words Martha grew so pale that she looked
+fitter to be laid in her coffin than to stand in the presence of
+Father Ephraim and the elders; she shuddered, also, as if there were
+something awful or horrible in her situation and destiny. It required,
+indeed, a more than feminine strength of nerve to sustain the fixed
+observance of men so exalted and famous throughout the sect as these
+were. They had overcome their natural sympathy with human frailties
+and affections. One, when he joined the society, had brought with him
+his wife and children, but never from that hour had spoken a fond word
+to the former or taken his best-loved child upon his knee. Another,
+whose family refused to follow him, had been enabled--such was his
+gift of holy fortitude--to leave them to the mercy of the world. The
+youngest of the elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from
+infancy in a Shaker village, and was said never to have clasped a
+woman's hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie
+than the cold fraternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the
+most awful character of all. In his youth he had been a dissolute
+libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken
+of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered at
+the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to
+sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could be
+purified from earthly passions.
+
+However that might be, poor Martha had a woman's heart, and a tender
+one, and it quailed within her as she looked round at those strange
+old men, and from them to the calm features of Adam Colburn. But,
+perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath
+and again spoke.
+
+"With what strength is left me by my many troubles," said she, "I am
+ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it."
+
+"My children, join your hands," said Father Ephraim.
+
+They did so. The elders stood up around, and the father feebly raised
+himself to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great
+chair.
+
+"I have bidden you to join your hands," said he, "not in earthly
+affection, for ye have cast off its chains for ever, but as brother
+and sister in spiritual love and helpers of one another in your
+allotted task. Teach unto others the faith which ye have received.
+Open wide your gates--I deliver you the keys thereof--open them wide
+to all who will give up the iniquities of the world and come hither to
+lead lives of purity and peace. Receive the weary ones who have known
+the vanity of earth; receive the little children, that they may never
+learn that miserable lesson. And a blessing be upon your labors; so
+that the time may hasten on when the mission of Mother Ann shall have
+wrought its full effect, when children shall no more be born and die,
+and the last survivor of mortal race--some old and weary man like
+me--shall see the sun go down nevermore to rise on a world of sin and
+sorrow."
+
+The aged father sank back exhausted, and the surrounding elders
+deemed, with good reason, that the hour was come when the new heads of
+the village must enter on their patriarchal duties. In their attention
+to Father Ephraim their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew
+paler and paler, unnoticed even by Adam Colburn. He, indeed, had
+withdrawn his hand from hers and folded his arms with a sense of
+satisfied ambition. But paler and paler grew Martha by his side, till,
+like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the feet of her
+early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could
+endure the weight of its desolate agony no longer.
+
+
+
+
+NIGHT-SKETCHES,
+
+BENEATH AN UMBRELLA.
+
+
+Pleasant is a rainy winter's day within-doors. The best study for such
+a day--or the best amusement: call it what you will--is a book of
+travels describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is
+mistily presented through the windows. I have experienced that Fancy
+is then most successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors
+to the objects which the author has spread upon his page, and that his
+words become magic spells to summon up a thousand varied pictures.
+Strange landscapes glimmer through the familiar walls of the room, and
+outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred
+precincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough
+to contain the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its
+parched sands tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels
+patiently journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be
+not lofty, yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it
+till their summits shine far above the clouds of the middle
+atmosphere. And with my humble means--a wealth that is not taxable--I
+can transport hither the magnificent merchandise of an Oriental
+bazaar, and call a crowd of purchasers from distant countries to pay a
+fair profit for the precious articles which are displayed on all
+sides. True it is, however, that amid the bustle of traffic, or
+whatever else may seem to be going on around me, the raindrops will
+occasionally be heard to patter against my window-panes, which look
+forth upon one of the quietest streets in a New England town. After a
+time, too, the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my
+bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality
+depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock
+shall strike bedtime to satisfy myself that the world is not entirely
+made up of such shadowy materials as have busied me throughout the
+day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies that the things
+without him will seem as unreal as those within.
+
+When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly
+buttoning my shaggy overcoat and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome
+of which immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible
+raindrops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and
+cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and
+chill discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful
+auguries innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry
+shame upon me, I should turn back within-doors, resume my elbow-chair,
+my slippers and my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as
+the day has been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering
+reluctance, no doubt, has quelled for a moment the adventurous spirit
+of many a traveller when his feet, which were destined to measure the
+earth around, were leaving their last tracks in the home-paths.
+
+In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I
+look upward and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but
+only a black, impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its
+lights were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if
+Nature were dead and the world had put on black and the clouds were
+weeping for her. With their tears upon my cheek I turn my eyes
+earthward, but find little consolation here below. A lamp is burning
+dimly at the distant corner, and throws just enough of light along the
+street to show, and exaggerate by so faintly showing, the perils and
+difficulties which beset my path. Yonder dingily-white remnant of a
+huge snowbank, which will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days
+of March, over or through that wintry waste must I stride onward.
+Beyond lies a certain Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and
+liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep--in a word, of unknown
+bottom--on which the lamplight does not even glimmer, but which I have
+occasionally watched in the gradual growth of its horrors from morn
+till nightfall. Should I flounder into its depths, farewell to upper
+earth! And hark! how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream the
+turbulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam of the
+lamp, but elsewhere brawls noisily through the densest gloom! Oh,
+should I be swept away in fording that impetuous and unclean torrent,
+the coroner will have a job with an unfortunate gentleman who would
+fain end his troubles anywhere but in a mud-puddle.
+
+Pshaw! I will linger not another instant at arm's-length from these
+dim terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable the longer I delay
+to grapple with them. Now for the onset, and, lo! with little damage
+save a dash of rain in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up
+the pantaloons and the left boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at
+the corner of the street. The lamp throws down a circle of red light
+around me, and twinkling onward from corner to corner I discern other
+beacons, marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a
+lonesome and dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to the
+storm with their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces
+a spattering gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin
+spouts! The puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from
+various quarters at once. I have often observed that this corner is a
+haunt and loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do
+upon the deep dashing ships against our iron-bound shores, nor in the
+forest tearing up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their
+vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief.
+See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is passing
+just within the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her
+umbrella and turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of
+her cloak across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable
+liberties with the lower part of her attire. Happily, the good dame is
+no gossamer, but a figure of rotundity and fleshly substance; else
+would these aerial tormentors whirl her aloft like a witch upon a
+broomstick, and set her down, doubtless, in the filthiest kennel
+hereabout.
+
+From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town.
+Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great
+victory has been won either on the battlefield or at the polls. Two
+rows of shops with windows down nearly to the ground cast a glow from
+side to side, while the black night hangs overhead like a canopy, and
+thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks
+gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the
+sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the
+scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around
+their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till
+they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can
+be dispelled only by radiance from above.
+
+And, after all, it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the
+wanderers in it. Here comes one who has so long been familiar with
+tempestuous weather that he takes the bluster of the storm for a
+friendly greeting, as if it should say, "How fare ye, brother?" He is
+a retired sea-captain wrapped in some nameless garment of the
+pea-jacket order, and is now laying his course toward the
+marine-insurance office, there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck
+with a crew of old seadogs like himself. The blast will put in its
+word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them. Next
+I meet an unhappy slipshod gentleman with a cloak flung hastily over
+his shoulders, running a race with boisterous winds and striving to
+glide between the drops of rain. Some domestic emergency or other has
+blown this miserable man from his warm fireside in quest of a doctor.
+See that little vagabond! How carelessly he has taken his stand right
+underneath a spout while staring at some object of curiosity in a
+shop-window! Surely the rain is his native element; he must have
+fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed to do.
+
+Here is a picture, and a pretty one--a young man and a girl, both
+enveloped in cloaks and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a
+cotton umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his
+dancing-pumps, and they are on their way no doubt, to some
+cotillon-party or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments
+included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward
+by a vision of festal splendor. But ah! a most lamentable disaster!
+Bewildered by the red, blue and yellow meteors in an apothecary's
+window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are
+precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two
+streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a
+looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be,
+I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your
+fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye
+touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph
+and a river-deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths of the
+dark pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, disconsolate, abashed, but
+with love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a
+test which proves too strong for many. Faithful though over head and
+ears in trouble!
+
+Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied
+aspect of mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the
+lighted windows or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that
+mine is altogether a chameleon spirit with no hue of its own. Now I
+pass into a more retired street where the dwellings of wealth and
+poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly-contrasted
+pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder
+casement I discern a family circle--the grandmother, the parents and
+the children--all flickering, shadow-like, in the glow of a
+wood-fire.--Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against
+the window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside.--Surely
+my fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my
+bosom night and storm and solitude instead of wife and children.
+Peace, murmurer! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the
+hearth, though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images.
+
+Well, here is still a brighter scene--a stately mansion illuminated
+for a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every
+room, and sunny landscapes hanging round the walls. See! a coach has
+stopped, whence emerges a slender beauty who, canopied by two
+umbrellas, glides within the portal and vanishes amid lightsome
+thrills of music. Will she ever feel the night-wind and the rain?
+Perhaps--perhaps! And will Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud
+mansion? As surely as the dancers will be gay within its halls
+to-night. Such thoughts sadden yet satisfy my heart, for they teach me
+that the poor man in this mean, weatherbeaten hovel, without a fire to
+cheer him, may call the rich his brother--brethren by Sorrow, who must
+be an inmate of both their households; brethren by Death, who will
+lead them both to other homes.
+
+Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the
+utmost limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with
+the darkness like the farthest star that stands sentinel on the
+borders of uncreated space. It is strange what sensations of sublimity
+may spring from a very humble source. Such are suggested by this
+hollow roar of a subterranean cataract where the mighty stream of a
+kennel precipitates itself beneath an iron grate and is seen no more
+on earth. Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will
+magnify it till you start and smile at the illusion. And now another
+sound--the rumbling of wheels as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls
+heavily off the pavements and splashes through the mud and water of
+the road. All night long the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro
+between drowsy watch and troubled sleep, and will dream of their own
+quiet beds and awake to find themselves still jolting onward. Happier
+my lot, who will straightway hie me to my familiar room and toast
+myself comfortably before the fire, musing and fitfully dozing and
+fancying a strangeness in such sights as all may see. But first let me
+gaze at this solitary figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern
+which throws the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground
+about him. He passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will
+not follow him.
+
+This figure shall supply me with a moral wherewith, for lack of a more
+appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the
+dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the
+fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again.
+And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we
+bear the lamp of Faith enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely
+lead us home to that heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.
+
+
+
+
+ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS.
+
+
+At noon of an autumnal day more than two centuries ago the English
+colors were displayed by the standard bearer of the Salem train-band,
+which had mustered for martial exercise under the orders of John
+Endicott. It was a period when the religious exiles were accustomed
+often to buckle on their armor and practise the handling of their
+weapons of war. Since the first settlement of New England its
+prospects had never been so dismal. The dissensions between Charles I.
+and his subjects were then, and for several years afterward, confined
+to the floor of Parliament. The measures of the king and ministry were
+rendered more tyrannically violent by an opposition which had not yet
+acquired sufficient confidence in its own strength to resist royal
+injustice with the sword. The bigoted and haughty primate Laud,
+archbishop of Canterbury, controlled the religious affairs of the
+realm, and was consequently invested with powers which might have
+wrought the utter ruin of the two Puritan colonies, Plymouth and
+Massachusetts. There is evidence on record that our forefathers
+perceived their danger, but were resolved that their infant country
+should not fall without a struggle, even beneath the giant strength of
+the king's right arm.
+
+Such was the aspect of the times when the folds of the English banner
+with the red cross in its field were flung out over a company of
+Puritans. Their leader, the famous Endicott, was a man of stern and
+resolute countenance, the effect of which was heightened by a grizzled
+beard that swept the upper portion of his breastplate. This piece of
+armor was so highly polished that the whole surrounding scene had its
+image in the glittering steel. The central object in the mirrored
+picture was an edifice of humble architecture with neither steeple nor
+bell to proclaim it--what, nevertheless, it was--the house of prayer.
+A token of the perils of the wilderness was seen in the grim head of a
+wolf which had just been slain within the precincts of the town, and,
+according to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed on
+the porch of the meeting-house. The blood was still plashing on the
+doorstep. There happened to be visible at the same noontide hour so
+many other characteristics of the times and manners of the Puritans
+that we must endeavor to represent them in a sketch, though far less
+vividly than they were reflected in the polished breastplate of John
+Endicott.
+
+In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important engine
+of Puritanic authority the whipping-post, with the soil around it well
+trodden by the feet of evil-doers who had there been disciplined. At
+one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory and at the other the
+stocks, and, by a singular good fortune for our sketch, the head of an
+Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely encased in the
+former machine, while a fellow-criminal who had boisterously quaffed a
+health to the king was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by
+side on the meeting-house steps stood a male and a female figure. The
+man was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bearing
+on his breast this label, "A WANTON GOSPELLER," which betokened that
+he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the
+infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect
+showed no lack of zeal to maintain his heterodoxies even at the stake.
+The woman wore a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribution
+for having wagged that unruly member against the elders of the church,
+and her countenance and gestures gave much cause to apprehend that the
+moment the stick should be removed a repetition of the offence would
+demand new ingenuity in chastising it.
+
+The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced to undergo their
+various modes of ignominy for the space of one hour at noonday. But
+among the crowd were several whose punishment would be lifelong--some
+whose ears had been cropped like those of puppy-dogs, others whose
+cheeks had been branded with the initials of their misdemeanors; one
+with his nostrils slit and seared, and another with a halter about his
+neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off or to conceal beneath
+his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously tempted to affix
+the other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough. There was
+likewise a young woman with no mean share of beauty whose doom it was
+to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown in the eyes of all the
+world and her own children. And even her own children knew what that
+initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate
+creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth with golden
+thread and the nicest art of needlework; so that the capital A might
+have been thought to mean "Admirable," or anything rather than
+"Adulteress."
+
+Let not the reader argue from any of these evidences of iniquity that
+the times of the Puritans were more vicious than our own, when as we
+pass along the very street of this sketch we discern no badge of
+infamy on man or woman. It was the policy of our ancestors to search
+out even the most secret sins and expose them to shame, without fear
+or favor, in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were such the
+custom now, perchance we might find materials for a no less piquant
+sketch than the above.
+
+Except the malefactors whom we have described and the diseased or
+infirm persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen
+years and sixty were seen in the ranks of the train-band. A few
+stately savages in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian
+stood gazing at the spectacle. Their flint-headed arrows were but
+childish weapons, compared with the matchlocks of the Puritans, and
+would have rattled harmlessly against the steel caps and hammered iron
+breastplates which enclosed each soldier in an individual fortress.
+The valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy
+followers, and prepared to renew the martial toils of the day.
+
+"Come, my stout hearts!" quoth he, drawing his sword. "Let us show
+these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might.
+Well for them if they put us not to prove it in earnest!"
+
+The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and each man drew
+the heavy butt of his matchlock close to his left foot, thus awaiting
+the orders of the captain. But as Endicott glanced right and left
+along the front he discovered a personage at some little distance with
+whom it behoved him to hold a parley. It was an elderly gentleman
+wearing a black cloak and band and a high-crowned hat beneath which
+was a velvet skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan
+minister. This reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been
+recently cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as if he had
+been travelling on foot through the swamps of the wilderness. His
+aspect was perfectly that of a pilgrim, heightened also by an
+apostolic dignity. Just as Endicott perceived him he laid aside his
+staff and stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain which gushed into
+the sunshine about a score of yards from the corner of the
+meeting-house. But ere the good man drank he turned his face
+heavenward in thankfulness, and then, holding back his gray beard with
+one hand, he scooped up his simple draught in the hollow of the other.
+
+"What ho, good Mr. Williams!" shouted Endicott. "You are welcome back
+again to our town of peace. How does our worthy Governor Winthrop? And
+what news from Boston?"
+
+"The governor hath his health, worshipful sir," answered Roger
+Williams, now resuming his staff and drawing near. "And, for the news,
+here is a letter which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, His
+Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it contains tidings of much
+import, for a ship arrived yesterday from England."
+
+Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course known to all the
+spectators, had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under
+the banner of his company, and put the governor's epistle into his
+hand. The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop's coat-of-arms.
+Endicott hastily unclosed the letter and began to read, while, as his
+eye passed down the page, a wrathful change came over his manly
+countenance. The blood glowed through it till it seemed to be kindling
+with an internal heat, nor was it unnatural to suppose that his
+breastplate would likewise become red hot with the angry fire of the
+bosom which it covered. Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the
+letter fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag
+above his head.
+
+"Black tidings these, Mr. Williams," said he; "blacker never came to
+New England. Doubtless you know their purport?"
+
+"Yea, truly," replied Roger Williams, "for the governor consulted
+respecting this matter with my brethren in the ministry at Boston, and
+my opinion was likewise asked. And His Excellency entreats you by me
+that the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be
+stirred up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the king and the
+archbishop a handle against us."
+
+"The governor is a wise man--a wise man, and a meek and moderate,"
+said Endicott, setting his teeth grimly. "Nevertheless, I must do
+according to my own best judgment. There is neither man, woman nor
+child in New England but has a concern as dear as life in these
+tidings; and if John Endicott's voice be loud enough, man, woman and
+child shall hear them.--Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square.--Ho,
+good people! Here are news for one and all of you."
+
+The soldiers closed in around their captain, and he and Roger Williams
+stood together under the banner of the red cross, while the women and
+the aged men pressed forward and the mothers held up their children to
+look Endicott in the face. A few taps of the drum gave signal for
+silence and attention.
+
+"Fellow-soldiers, fellow-exiles," began Endicott, speaking under
+strong excitement, yet powerfully restraining it, "wherefore did ye
+leave your native country? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green
+and fertile fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls,
+where we were born and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie
+buried? Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in
+a wilderness? A howling wilderness it is. The wolf and the bear meet
+us within halloo of our dwellings. The savage lieth in wait for us in
+the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of the trees break
+our ploughshares when we would till the earth. Our children cry for
+bread, and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them.
+Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil
+and wintry sky? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights? Was
+it not for liberty to worship God according to our conscience?"
+
+"Call you this liberty of conscience?" interrupted a voice on the
+steps of the meeting-house.
+
+It was the wanton gospeller. A sad and quiet smile flitted across the
+mild visage of Roger Williams, but Endicott, in the excitement of the
+moment, shook his sword wrathfully at the culprit--an ominous gesture
+from a man like him.
+
+"What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?" cried he. "I said
+liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him. Break
+not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this
+time to-morrow.--Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed
+rhapsodist. As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have
+come to a land whereof the Old World hath scarcely heard, that we
+might make a new world unto ourselves and painfully seek a path from
+hence to heaven. But what think ye now? This son of a Scotch
+tyrant--this grandson of a papistical and adulterous Scotch woman
+whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always save an
+anointed head from the block--"
+
+"Nay, brother, nay," interposed Mr. Williams; "thy words are not meet
+for a secret chamber, far less for a public street."
+
+"Hold thy peace, Roger Williams!" answered Endicott, imperiously. "My
+spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand.--I tell ye,
+fellow-exiles, that Charles of England and Laud, our bitterest
+persecutor, arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even
+hither. They are taking counsel, saith this letter, to send over a
+governor-general in whose breast shall be deposited all the law and
+equity of the land. They are minded, also, to establish the idolatrous
+forms of English episcopacy; so that when Laud shall kiss the pope's
+toe as cardinal of Rome he may deliver New England, bound hand and
+foot, into the power of his master."
+
+A deep groan from the auditors--a sound of wrath as well as fear and
+sorrow--responded to this intelligence.
+
+"Look ye to it, brethren," resumed Endicott, with increasing energy.
+"If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall briefly
+behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded,
+and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round it at
+noon-day. We shall hear the sacring-bell and the voices of the Romish
+priests saying the mass. But think ye, Christian men, that these
+abominations may be suffered without a sword drawn, without a shot
+fired, without blood spilt--yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit? No!
+Be ye strong of hand and stout of heart. Here we stand on our own
+soil, which we have bought with our goods, which we have won with our
+swords, which we have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with
+the sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our prayers to
+the God that brought us hither! Who shall enslave us here? What have
+we to do with this mitred prelate--with this crowned king? What have
+we to do with England?"
+
+Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now
+full of his own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the
+standard-bearer, who stood close behind him.
+
+"Officer, lower your banner," said he.
+
+The officer obeyed, and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it
+through the cloth and with his left hand rent the red cross completely
+out of the banner. He then waved the tattered ensign above his head.
+
+"Sacrilegious wretch!" cried the high-churchman in the pillory, unable
+longer to restrain himself; "thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy
+religion."
+
+"Treason! treason!" roared the royalist in the stocks. "He hath
+defaced the king's banner!"
+
+"Before God and man I will avouch the deed," answered Endicott.--"Beat
+a flourish, drummer--shout, soldiers and people--in honor of the
+ensign of New England. Neither pope nor tyrant hath part in it now."
+
+With a cry of triumph the people gave their sanction to one of the
+boldest exploits which our history records. And for ever honored be
+the name of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and
+recognize in the rending of the red cross from New England's banner
+the first omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated after
+the bones of the stern Puritan had lain more than a century in the
+dust.
+
+
+
+
+THE LILY'S QUEST.
+
+AN APOLOGUE.
+
+
+Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the
+form of an antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to
+all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
+pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
+friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there
+they would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of
+pathos which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and
+fiction and permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and
+romance; there, in short--for why should we shape out the vague
+sunshine of their hopes?--there all pure delights were to cluster like
+roses among the pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and
+spontaneously.
+
+So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay
+set out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
+together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
+were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
+for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
+Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her "Lily" because her form
+was as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in
+hand down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of
+Lilias Fay's paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged
+creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness
+where the deep shadows fell.
+
+But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
+a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
+made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
+drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them,
+the lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their
+hearts that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely
+unsuited to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay,
+an old man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under
+the burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
+absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast
+between the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They
+looked as if moulded of heaven's sunshine and he of earth's gloomiest
+shade; they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand
+through life, while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all
+the woeful influences which life could fling upon them.
+
+But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
+the gentle Lily, and she paused.
+
+"What sweeter place shall we find than this?" said she. "Why should we
+seek farther for the site of our temple?"
+
+It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by
+any very prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a
+hill, with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a
+church-spire in another. There were vistas and pathways leading onward
+and onward into the green woodlands and vanishing away in the
+glimmering shade. The temple, if erected here, would look toward the
+west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams
+out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and few of their
+anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.
+
+"Yes," said Adam Forrester; "we might seek all day and find no
+lovelier spot. We will build our temple here."
+
+But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site
+which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and
+frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to
+blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal
+figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered
+stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as
+young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now
+relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.
+
+"Not here," cried old Walter Gascoigne. "Here, long ago, other mortals
+built their temple of happiness; seek another site for yours."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Lilias Fay. "Have any ever planned such a temple
+save ourselves?"
+
+"Poor child!" said her gloomy kinsman. "In one shape or other every
+mortal has dreamed your dream." Then he told the lovers, how--not,
+indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling--had once stood there, and
+that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever
+at the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.
+
+Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake
+of sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the
+history of almost every household, and yet his hearers felt as if no
+sunshine ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep
+a stain--or, at least, that no joyous temple should be built there.
+
+"This is very sad," said the Lily, sighing.
+
+"Well, there are lovelier spots than this," said Adam Forrester,
+soothingly--"spots which sorrow has not blighted."
+
+So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them,
+looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot
+and was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
+rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the
+midst of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual
+voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side
+with gray precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had
+not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices
+and wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief
+joy of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the
+presence of a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble
+merrily and disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow,
+and throw the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.
+
+"Here, here is the spot!" cried the two lovers, with one voice, as
+they reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. "This glen
+was made on purpose for our temple."
+
+"And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears," said
+Lilias Fay.
+
+"And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime," said Adam
+Forrester.
+
+"Ye must build no temple here," murmured their dismal companion.
+
+And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
+they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
+symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
+And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
+hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
+this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
+which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim's death-shrieks were
+often heard to echo between the cliffs.
+
+"And see!" cried old Gascoigne; "is the stream yet pure from the stain
+of the murderer's hands?"
+
+"Methinks it has a tinge of blood," faintly answered the Lily; and,
+being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover's
+arm, whispering, "Let us flee from this dreadful vale."
+
+"Come, then," said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; "we shall
+soon find a happier spot."
+
+They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which
+millions--which every child of earth--has tried in turn.
+
+And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
+millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the
+old lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked
+lovely in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
+miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
+of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
+kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
+old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
+malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
+sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
+mother's fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak,
+two lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses
+in each other's arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
+evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
+when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
+of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their
+sad demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were
+seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and
+their posterity.
+
+"Where in this world," exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, "shall
+we build our temple of happiness?"
+
+"Where in this world, indeed?" repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
+and weary--the more so by the heaviness of her heart--the Lily drooped
+her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, "Where in
+this world shall we build our temple?"
+
+"Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?" said their
+companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
+that dwelt on them. "Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
+may build it."
+
+While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly
+thrown their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had
+chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted
+to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a
+certain regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and
+a group of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive
+shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory of the
+sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers
+would dwell together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where
+they were to worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the
+ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale
+lily was growing at their feet.
+
+"We will build our temple here," said they, simultaneously, and with
+an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
+
+Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
+turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
+hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
+those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
+just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with
+his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre
+hat overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
+purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a
+token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate
+the site of their temple of happiness.
+
+In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
+fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid
+the solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright
+sunshine. It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful
+pillars supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this
+dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books
+and music might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of
+the neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient
+mausoleum and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of
+dark-veined marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones.
+They doubted, too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a
+creature of this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day
+more fragile, so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch
+her up and waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth
+of the temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot
+his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and
+giving as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a
+tomb. In due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple
+rite of dedication.
+
+On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
+mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
+strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
+faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
+ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
+With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
+Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the
+time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which the Lily
+had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning
+in the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded
+upon the slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had
+long since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a
+loving hand had now transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden
+of Paradise.
+
+But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam
+Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of
+many delightful hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there.
+And, lo! a wonder! Digging a grave beneath the temple's marble floor,
+the sexton found no virgin earth such as was meet to receive the
+maiden's dust, but an ancient sepulchre in which were treasured up the
+bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
+ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the funeral procession
+brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne
+standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and
+face of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand
+the spot would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they
+lowered the coffin down.
+
+"And so," said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which
+his insanity was wont to gleam forth, "you have found no better
+foundation for your happiness than on a grave?"
+
+But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its
+birth in Adam's mind even from the old man's taunting words, for then
+he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and
+himself had acted, and the mystery of life and death was opened to
+him.
+
+"Joy! joy!" he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. "On a grave be
+the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity."
+
+With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and
+glimmered down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape
+of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom,
+symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that
+the darkest riddle of humanity was read.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE.
+
+
+It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health
+and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the
+world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not
+infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me--one with the roar
+of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs--forth from the
+haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath
+the shadow of even one primeval tree, much less be lost among the
+multitude of hoary trunks and hidden from the earth and sky by the
+mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach more
+like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban
+farmhouse. When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a
+necessity within me, I am drawn to the seashore which extends its line
+of rude rocks and seldom-trodden sands for leagues around our bay.
+Setting forth at my last ramble on a September morning, I bound myself
+with a hermit's vow to interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to
+share no social pleasure, but to derive all that day's enjoyment from
+shore and sea and sky, from my soul's communion with these, and from
+fantasies and recollections or anticipated realities. Surely here is
+enough to feed a human spirit for a single day.--Farewell, then, busy
+world! Till your evening lights shall shine along the street--till
+they gleam upon my sea-flushed face as I tread homeward--free me from
+your ties and let me be a peaceful outlaw.
+
+Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and, clambering down a
+crag, I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does
+the spirit leap forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the
+full extent of the broad blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to
+the sea! I descend over its margin and dip my hand into the wave that
+meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is Ocean's voice
+of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let
+us pace together--the reader's fancy arm in arm with mine--this noble
+beach, which extends a mile or more from that craggy promontory to
+yonder rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea; in the rear, a
+precipitous bank the grassy verge of which is breaking away year after
+year, and flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below.
+The beach itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with
+hardly any pebbles intermixed. Near the water's edge there is a wet
+margin which glistens brightly in the sunshine and reflects objects
+like a mirror, and as we tread along the glistening border a dry spot
+flashes around each footstep, but grows moist again as we lift our
+feet. In some spots the sand receives a complete impression of the
+sole, square toe and all; elsewhere it is of such marble firmness that
+we must stamp heavily to leave a print even of the iron-shod heel.
+Along the whole of this extensive beach gambols the surf-wave. Now it
+makes a feint of dashing onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek
+murmur and does but kiss the strand; now, after many such abortive
+efforts, it rears itself up in an unbroken line, heightening as it
+advances, without a speck of foam on its green crest. With how fierce
+a roar it flings itself forward and rushes far up the beach!
+
+As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was
+startled, as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human
+life was within the magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the
+remote distance of the beach, appearing like sea-nymphs, or some
+airier things such as might tread upon the feathery spray, was a group
+of girls. Hardly had I beheld them, when they passed into the shadow
+of the rocks and vanished. To comfort myself--for truly I would fain
+have gazed a while longer--I made acquaintance with a flock of
+beach-birds. These little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by
+about a stone's-throw along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food
+upon its margin. Yet, with a philosophy which mankind would do well to
+imitate, they drew a continual pleasure from their toil for a
+subsistence. The sea was each little bird's great playmate. They
+chased it downward as it swept back, and again ran up swiftly before
+the impending wave, which sometimes overtook them and bore them off
+their feet. But they floated as lightly as one of their own feathers
+on the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings they seemed to rest
+on the evanescent spray. Their images--long-legged little figures with
+gray backs and snowy bosoms--were seen as distinctly as the realities
+in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a
+score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their
+dalliance with the surf-wave; and thus they bore me company along the
+beach, the types of pleasant fantasies, till at its extremity they
+took wing over the ocean and were gone. After forming a friendship
+with these small surf-spirits, it is really worth a sigh to find no
+memorial of them save their multitudinous little tracks in the sand.
+
+When we have paced the length of the beach, it is pleasant and not
+unprofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and
+occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks, being
+all discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
+every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the
+surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to
+relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf, and
+trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
+live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer
+monster. Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon
+the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a
+jelly-fish which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to
+snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water
+brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming shallower and more
+shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the
+effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary
+appears to have bewildered us, for our tracks go round and round and
+are confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the
+level beach. And here amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost
+the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in
+an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and
+awfulness of the great deep. Thus by tracking our footprints in the
+sand we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a glance
+upon it when it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always
+make us wiser.
+
+This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With
+your staff you may write verses--love-verses if they please you
+best--and consecrate them with a woman's name. Here, too, may be
+inscribed thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the
+heart's secret places, which you would not pour upon the sand without
+the certainty that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea
+will wash them out. Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now
+(for there is room enough on your canvas) draw huge faces--huge as
+that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands--and fit them with bodies of
+corresponding immensity and legs which might stride halfway to yonder
+island. Child's-play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale. But,
+after all, the most fascinating employment is simply to write your
+name in the sand. Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides may
+barely measure them, and three for the long strokes; cut deep, that
+the record may be permanent. Statesmen and warriors and poets have
+spent their strength in no better cause than this. Is it accomplished?
+Return, then, in an hour or two, and seek for this mighty record of a
+name. The sea will have swept over it, even as time rolls its effacing
+waves over the names of statesmen and warriors and poets. Hark! the
+surf-wave laughs at you.
+
+Passing from the beach, I begin to clamber over the crags, making my
+difficult way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the
+assaults of a fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of
+attitude. Some of them have their feet in the foam and are shagged
+halfway upward with seaweed; some have been hollowed almost into
+caverns by the unwearied toil of the sea, which can afford to spend
+centuries in wearing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble. One huge
+rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a giant's
+tombstone, on which the veins resemble inscriptions, but in an unknown
+tongue. We will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antediluvian
+race, or else that Nature's own hand has here recorded a mystery
+which, could I read her language, would make mankind the wiser and the
+happier. How many a thing has troubled me with that same idea! Pass on
+and leave it unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue which might seem to
+have been hewn through the very heart of an enormous crag, affording
+passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with
+tumultuous foam and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare and
+glistening. In this chasm there was once an intersecting vein of
+softer stone, which the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the
+granite walls remain entire on either side. How sharply and with what
+harsh clamor does the sea rake back the pebbles as it momentarily
+withdraws into its own depths! At intervals the floor of the chasm is
+left nearly dry, but anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are
+seen struggling to get in at once; two hit the walls athwart, while
+one rushes straight through, and all three thunder as if with rage and
+triumph. They heap the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and spray.
+While watching this scene I can never rid myself of the idea that a
+monster endowed with life and fierce energy is striving to burst his
+way through the narrow pass. And what a contrast to look through the
+stormy chasm and catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond!
+
+Many interesting discoveries may be made among these broken cliffs.
+Once, for example, I found a dead seal which a recent tempest had
+tossed into the nook of the rocks, where his shaggy carcase lay rolled
+in a heap of eel-grass as if the sea-monster sought to hide himself
+from my eye. Another time a shark seemed on the point of leaping from
+the surf to swallow me, nor did I wholly without dread approach near
+enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death
+from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a
+bird--a large gray bird--but whether a loon or a wild goose or the
+identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology
+to decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its
+head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly
+lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird
+would soar among the clouds no more, nor ride upon its native waves;
+so I drew near and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for a
+remembrance. Another day I discovered an immense bone wedged into a
+chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a
+scymitar, bejewelled with barnacles and small shellfish and partly
+covered with a growth of seaweed. Some leviathan of former ages had
+used this ponderous mass as a jaw-bone. Curiosities of a minuter order
+may be observed in a deep reservoir which is replenished with water at
+every tide, but becomes a lake among the crags save when the sea is at
+its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin grow marine plants, some
+of which tower high beneath the water and cast a shadow in the
+sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro and hide themselves among the
+seaweed; there is also a solitary crab who appears to lead the life of
+a hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of the place, and
+likewise several five-fingers; for I know no other name than that
+which children give them. If your imagination be at all accustomed to
+such freaks, you may look down into the depths of this pool and fancy
+it the mysterious depth of ocean. But where are the hulks and
+scattered timbers of sunken ships? where the treasures that old Ocean
+hoards? where the corroded cannon? where the corpses and skeletons of
+seamen who went down in storm and battle?
+
+On the day of my last ramble--it was a September day, yet as warm as
+summer--what should I behold as I approached the above-described basin
+but three girls sitting on its margin and--yes, it is veritably
+so--laving their snowy feet in the sunny water? These, these are the
+warm realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on
+the beach. Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with
+their feet! They have not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock and
+steal away again.
+
+In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this
+encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant
+sensation. I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet,
+glancing at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with
+the ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down
+from some high crag and watch a group of children gathering pebbles
+and pearly shells and playing with the surf as with old Ocean's hoary
+beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at
+anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and
+sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew--four gentlemen in
+roundabout jackets--are busy with their fishing-lines. But with an
+inward antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any
+meditative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his
+sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.
+
+From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily
+over the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has
+given me a right to call my own. I would do battle for it even with
+the churl that should produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings
+melted into its rocky walls and sandy floor and made them a portion of
+myself? It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough,
+high precipice which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of
+sand. In front the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal; in
+the rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth which gives
+nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees that
+grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for
+footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir trees, but
+oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on
+the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this
+autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor.
+Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of
+yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves
+and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance I
+detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the
+stern gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a
+little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it
+fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the
+feast? A few biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft
+of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By
+this time the little rill has filled its reservoir again, and as I
+quaff it I thank God more heartily than for a civic banquet that he
+gives me the healthful appetite to make a feast of bread and water.
+
+Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the sand and, basking
+in the sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this
+my hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes
+fancy that they have ears to hear them and a soul to sympathize. There
+is a magic in this spot. Dreams haunt its precincts and flit around me
+in broad sunlight, nor require that sleep shall blindfold me to real
+objects ere these be visible. Here can I frame a story of two lovers,
+and make their shadows live before me and be mirrored in the tranquil
+water as they tread along the sand, leaving no footprints. Here,
+should I will it, I can summon up a single shade and be myself her
+lover.--Yes, dreamer, but your lonely heart will be the colder for
+such fancies.--Sometimes, too, the Past comes back, and finds me here,
+and in her train come faces which were gladsome when I knew them, yet
+seem not gladsome now. Would that my hiding-place were lonelier, so
+that the Past might not find me!--Get ye all gone, old friends, and
+let me listen to the murmur of the sea--a melancholy voice, but less
+sad than yours. Of what mysteries is it telling? Of sunken ships and
+whereabouts they lie? Of islands afar and undiscovered whose tawny
+children are unconscious of other islands and of continents, and deem
+the stars of heaven their nearest neighbors? Nothing of all this.
+What, then? Has it talked for so many ages and meant nothing all the
+while? No; for those ages find utterance in the sea's unchanging
+voice, and warn the listener to withdraw his interest from mortal
+vicissitudes and let the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul.
+This is wisdom, and therefore will I spend the next half-hour in
+shaping little boats of driftwood and launching them on voyages across
+the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of
+ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of
+five hundred tons and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "Far
+Cathay." Yet how would the merchant sneer at me!
+
+And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a
+thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock
+mid-deep in the surf--see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars
+and foams,--let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise
+my oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and
+got the victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the
+gentleman in seaweed has nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable
+roaring. His voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine is
+hushed. Once more I shout and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh
+what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary that he may lift
+his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a listener!--But
+hush! Be silent, my good friend! Whence comes that stifled laughter?
+It was musical, but how should there be such music in my solitude?
+Looking upward, I catch a glimpse of three faces peeping from the
+summit of the cliff like angels between me and their native sky.--Ah,
+fair girls! you may make yourself merry at my eloquence, but it was my
+turn to smile when I saw your white feet in the pool. Let us keep each
+other's secrets.
+
+The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the
+sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will
+come and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of
+these gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind.
+Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink
+gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been
+what few can be--sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word
+outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the
+recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has
+been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head
+upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my
+hands in triumph, and see my shadow clapping its unreal hands and
+claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all
+day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries!
+
+Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time--it is time;
+for as the sun sinks over the western wave the sea grows melancholy
+and the surf has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray and
+not of earth in their remoteness amid the desolate waste. My spirit
+wanders forth afar, but finds no resting-place and comes shivering
+back. It is time that I were hence. But grudge me not the day that has
+been spent in seclusion which yet was not solitude, since the great
+sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and
+the wind has told me his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around
+me in my hermitage. Such companionship works an effect upon a man's
+character as if he had been admitted to the society of creatures that
+are not mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets,
+the influence of this day will still be felt; so that I shall walk
+among men kindly and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but
+yet shall not melt into the indistinguishable mass of humankind. I
+shall think my own thoughts and feel my own emotions and possess my
+individuality unviolated.
+
+But it is good at the eve of such a day to feel and know that there
+are men and women in the world. That feeling and that knowledge are
+mine at this moment, for on the shore, far below me, the fishing-party
+have landed from their skiff and are cooking their scaly prey by a
+fire of driftwood kindled in the angle of two rude rocks. The three
+visionary girls are likewise there. In the deepening twilight, while
+the surf is dashing near their hearth, the ruddy gleam of the fire
+throws a strange air of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is
+with pebbles and seaweed and exposed to the "melancholy main."
+Moreover, as the smoke climbs up the precipice, it brings with it a
+savory smell from a pan of fried fish and a black kettle of chowder,
+and reminds me that my dinner was nothing but bread and water and a
+tuft of samphire and an apple. Methinks the party might find room for
+another guest at that flat rock which serves them for a table; and if
+spoons be scarce, I could pick up a clam-shell on the beach. They see
+me now; and--the blessing of a hungry man upon him!--one of them sends
+up a hospitable shout: "Halloo, Sir Solitary! Come down and sup with
+us!" The ladies wave their handkerchiefs. Can I decline? No; and be it
+owned, after all my solitary joys, that this is the sweetest moment of
+a day by the seashore.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD.
+
+
+There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy than, while gazing
+at a figure of melancholy age, to recreate its youth, and without
+entirely obliterating the identity of form and features to restore
+those graces which Time has snatched away. Some old people--especially
+women--so age-worn and woeful are they, seem never to have been young
+and gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent
+into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with
+sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds and weep at
+funerals. Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential
+to their existence; all their attributes combine to render them
+darksome shadows creeping strangely amid the sunshine of human life.
+Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful creatures
+and set Fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken
+the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color, and
+repair the shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy maiden shall be seen
+in the old matron's elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let
+the years roll back again, each sadder than the last, and the whole
+weight of age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure.
+Wrinkles and furrows, the handwriting of Time, may thus be deciphered
+and found to contain deep lessons of thought and feeling.
+
+Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my
+much-respected friend the Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute who
+has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying-breaths these
+forty years. See! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth with her
+gown and upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering thriftily into her
+person the whole warmth of the fire which now at nightfall begins to
+dissipate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers
+capriciously in front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms
+of her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar
+the outlines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a
+teaspoon in her right hand with which to stir up the contents of a
+tumbler in her left, whence steams a vapory fragrance abhorred of
+temperance societies. Now she sips, now stirs, now sips again. Her sad
+old heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva which
+is mixed half and half with hot water in the tumbler. All day long she
+has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home only
+when the spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too.
+But now are her melancholy meditations cheered and her torpid blood
+warmed and her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous years
+by a draught from the true fountain of youth in a case-bottle. It is
+strange that men should deem that fount a fable, when its liquor fills
+more bottles than the Congress-water.--Sip it again, good nurse, and
+see whether a second draught will not take off another score of years,
+and perhaps ten more, and show us in your high-backed chair the
+blooming damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane.--Get you gone,
+Age and Widowhood!--Come back, unwedded Youth!--But, alas! the charm
+will not work. In spite of Fancy's most potent spell, I can see only
+an old dame cowering over the fire, a picture of decay and desolation,
+while the November blast roars at her in the chimney and fitful
+showers rush suddenly against the window.
+
+Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton--such was the pretty
+maiden-name of Nurse Toothaker--possessed beauty that would have
+gladdened this dim and dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her
+the heart of Edward Fane, who has since made so great a figure in the
+world and is now a grand old gentleman with powdered hair and as gouty
+as a lord. These early lovers thought to have walked hand in hand
+through life. They had wept together for Edward's little sister Mary,
+whom Rose tended in her sickness--partly because she was the sweetest
+child that ever lived or died, but more for love of him. She was but
+three years old. Being such an infant, Death could not embody his
+terrors in her little corpse; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead
+child's brow, though chill, as she curled the silken hair around it,
+nor to take her tiny hand and clasp a flower within its fingers.
+Afterward, when she looked through the pane of glass in the coffin-lid
+and beheld Mary's face, it seemed not so much like death or life as
+like a wax-work wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep and
+dreaming of its mother's smile. Rose thought her too fair a thing to
+be hidden in the grave, and wondered that an angel did not snatch up
+little Mary's coffin and bear the slumbering babe to heaven and bid
+her wake immortal. But when the sods were laid on little Mary, the
+heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy that in
+grasping the child's cold fingers her virgin hand had exchanged a
+first greeting with mortality and could never lose the earthy taint.
+How many a greeting since! But as yet she was a fair young girl with
+the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom, and, instead of
+"Rose"--which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty--her
+lover called her "Rosebud."
+
+The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward Fane. His mother
+was a rich and haughty dame with all the aristocratic prejudices of
+colonial times. She scorned Rose Grafton's humble parentage and caused
+her son to break his faith, though, had she let him choose, he would
+have prized his Rosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers parted,
+and have seldom met again. Both may have visited the same mansions,
+but not at the same time, for one was bidden to the festal hall and
+the other to the sick-chamber; he was the guest of Pleasure and
+Prosperity, and she of Anguish. Rose, after their separation, was long
+secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with
+the revengeful hope of breaking her false lover's heart. She went to
+her bridegroom's arms with bitterer tears, they say, than young girls
+ought to shed at the threshold of the bridal-chamber. Yet, though her
+husband's head was getting gray and his heart had been chilled with an
+autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love him, and wondered at her own
+conjugal affection. He was all she had to love; there were no
+children.
+
+In a year or two poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome
+infirmity which settled in his joints and made him weaker than a
+child. He crept forth about his business, and came home at dinner-time
+and eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife's heart,
+but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy
+dub of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife if she sometimes
+blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked
+for the appearance of some old, old man, but he dragged his nerveless
+limbs into the parlor--and there was Mr. Toothaker! The disease
+increasing, he never went into the sunshine save with a staff in his
+right hand and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing heavily
+downward like a dead man's hand. Thus, a slender woman still looking
+maiden-like, she supported his tall, broad-chested frame along the
+pathway of their little garden, and plucked the roses for her
+gray-haired husband, and spoke soothingly as to an infant. His mind
+was palsied with his body; its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few
+months more she helped him up the staircase with a pause at every
+step, and a longer one upon the landing-place, and a heavy glance
+behind as he crossed the threshold of his chamber. He knew, poor man!
+that the precincts of those four walls would thenceforth be his
+world--his world, his home, his tomb, at once a dwelling-and a
+burial-place--till he were borne to a darker and a narrower one. But
+Rose was with him in the tomb. He leaned upon her in his daily passage
+from the bed to the chair by the fireside, and back again from the
+weary chair to the joyless bed--his bed and hers, their
+marriage-bed--till even this short journey ceased and his head lay all
+day upon the pillow and hers all night beside it. How long poor Mr.
+Toothaker was kept in misery! Death seemed to draw near the door, and
+often to lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into
+the chamber, nodding to Rose and pointing at her husband, but still
+delayed to enter. "This bedridden wretch cannot escape me," quoth
+Death. "I will go forth and run a race with the swift and fight a
+battle with the strong, and come back for Toothaker at my leisure."
+Oh, when the deliverer came so near, in the dull anguish of her
+worn-out sympathies did she never long to cry, "Death, come in"?
+
+But no; we have no right to ascribe such a wish to our friend Rose.
+She never failed in a wife's duty to her poor sick husband. She
+murmured not though a glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her
+as him, nor answered peevishly though his complaining accents roused
+her from sweetest dream only to share his wretchedness. He knew her
+faith, yet nourished a cankered jealousy; and when the slow disease
+had chilled all his heart save one lukewarm spot which Death's frozen
+fingers were searching for, his last words were, "What would my Rose
+have done for her first love, if she has been so true and kind to a
+sick old man like me?" And then his poor soul crept away and left the
+body lifeless, though hardly more so than for years before, and Rose a
+widow, though in truth it was the wedding-night that widowed her. She
+felt glad, it must be owned, when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because
+his corpse had retained such a likeness to the man half alive that she
+hearkened for the sad murmur of his voice bidding her shift his
+pillow. But all through the next winter, though the grave had held him
+many a month, she fancied him calling from that cold bed, "Rose, Rose!
+Come put a blanket on my feet!"
+
+So now the Rosebud was the widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come
+early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom
+was fled. She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a
+widow's cheerful gravity she might have won a widower, stealing into
+his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the widow Toothaker
+had no such projects. By her watchings and continual cares her heart
+had become knit to her first husband with a constancy which changed
+its very nature and made her love him for his infirmities, and
+infirmity for his sake. When the palsied old man was gone, even her
+early lover could not have supplied his place. She had dwelt in a
+sick-chamber and been the companion of a half-dead wretch till she
+could scarcely breathe in a free air and felt ill at ease with the
+healthy and the happy. She missed the fragrance of the doctor's stuff.
+She walked the chamber with a noiseless footfall. If visitors came in,
+she spoke in soft and soothing accents, and was startled and shocked
+by their loud voices. Often in the lonesome evening she looked
+timorously from the fireside to the bed, with almost a hope of
+recognizing a ghastly face upon the pillow. Then went her thoughts
+sadly to her husband's grave. If one impatient throb had wronged him
+in his lifetime, if she had secretly repined because her buoyant youth
+was imprisoned with his torpid age, if ever while slumbering beside
+him a treacherous dream had admitted another into her heart,--yet the
+sick man had been preparing a revenge which the dead now claimed. On
+his painful pillow he had cast a spell around her; his groans and
+misery had proved more captivating charms than gayety and youthful
+grace; in his semblance Disease itself had won the Rosebud for a
+bride, nor could his death dissolve the nuptials. By that indissoluble
+bond she had gained a home in every sick-chamber, and nowhere else;
+there were her brethren and sisters; thither her husband summoned her
+with that voice which had seemed to issue from the grave of Toothaker.
+At length she recognized her destiny.
+
+We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the widow; now we see her in
+a separate and insulated character: she was in all her attributes
+Nurse Toothaker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled
+lips, could make known her experience in that capacity. What a history
+might she record of the great sicknesses in which she has gone hand in
+hand with the exterminating angel! She remembers when the small-pox
+hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has
+witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and
+old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last
+loved one. Where would be Death's triumph if none lived to weep? She
+can speak of strange maladies that have broken out as if
+spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands
+with rich silks and other merchandise, the costliest portion of the
+cargo. And once, she recollects, the people died of what was
+considered a new pestilence, till the doctors traced it to the ancient
+grave of a young girl who thus caused many deaths a hundred years
+after her own burial. Strange that such black mischief should lurk in
+a maiden's grave! She loves to tell how strong men fight with fiery
+fevers, utterly refusing to give up their breath, and how consumptive
+virgins fade out of the world, scarcely reluctant, as if their lovers
+were wooing them to a far country.--Tell us, thou fearful woman; tell
+us the death-secrets. Fain would I search out the meaning of words
+faintly gasped with intermingled sobs and broken sentences
+half-audibly spoken between earth and the judgment-seat.
+
+An awful woman! She is the patron-saint of young physicians and the
+bosom-friend of old ones. In the mansions where she enters the inmates
+provide themselves black garments; the coffin-maker follows her, and
+the bell tolls as she comes away from the threshold. Death himself has
+met her at so many a bedside that he puts forth his bony hand to greet
+Nurse Toothaker. She is an awful woman. And oh, is it conceivable that
+this handmaid of human infirmity and affliction--so darkly stained, so
+thoroughly imbued with all that is saddest in the doom of mortals--can
+ever again be bright and gladsome even though bathed in the sunshine
+of eternity? By her long communion with woe has she not forfeited her
+inheritance of immortal joy? Does any germ of bliss survive within
+her?
+
+Hark! an eager knocking st Nurse Toothaker's door. She starts from her
+drowsy reverie, sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon, and lights
+a lamp at the dim embers of the fire. "Rap, rap, rap!" again, and she
+hurries adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can be at
+death's door now, since there is such an earnest messenger at Nurse
+Toothaker's. Again the peal resounds just as her hand is on the lock.
+"Be quick, Nurse Toothaker!" cries a man on the doorstep. "Old General
+Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach and has sent for you to
+watch by his death-bed. Make haste, for there is no time to
+lose."--"Fane! Edward Fane! And has he sent for me at last? I am
+ready. I will get on my cloak and begone. So," adds the sable-gowned,
+ashen-visaged, funereal old figure, "Edward Fane remembers his
+Rosebud."
+
+Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss within her. Her
+long-hoarded constancy, her memory of the bliss that was remaining
+amid the gloom of her after-life like a sweet-smelling flower in a
+coffin, is a symbol that all may be renewed. In some happier clime the
+Rosebud may revive again with all the dewdrops in its bosom.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREEFOLD DESTINY.
+
+A FA�RY LEGEND.
+
+
+I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far
+as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in
+which the spirit and mechanism of the fa�ry legend should be combined
+with the characters and manners of familiar life. In the little tale
+which follows a subdued tinge of the wild and wonderful is thrown over
+a sketch of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped,
+without entirely obliterating the sober hues of nature. Rather than a
+story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered as an
+allegory such as the writers of the last century would have expressed
+in the shape of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to
+give a more lifelike warmth than could be infused into those fanciful
+productions.
+
+In the twilight of a summer eve a tall dark figure over which long and
+remote travel had thrown an outlandish aspect was entering a village
+not in "fa�ry londe," but within our own familiar boundaries. The
+staff on which this traveller leaned had been his companion from the
+spot where it grew in the jungles of Hindostan; the hat that
+overshadowed his sombre brow, had shielded him from the suns of Spain;
+but his cheek had been blackened by the red-hot wind of an Arabian
+desert and had felt the frozen breath of an Arctic region. Long
+sojourning amid wild and dangerous men, he still wore beneath his vest
+the ataghan which he had once struck into the throat of a Turkish
+robber. In every foreign clime he had lost something of his New
+England characteristics, and perhaps from every people he had
+unconsciously borrowed a new peculiarity; so that when the
+world-wanderer again trod the street of his native village it is no
+wonder that he passed unrecognized, though exciting the gaze and
+curiosity of all. Yet, as his arm casually touched that of a young
+woman who was wending her way to an evening lecture, she started and
+almost uttered a cry.
+
+"Ralph Cranfield!" was the name that she half articulated.
+
+"Can that be my old playmate Faith Egerton?" thought the traveller,
+looking round at her figure, but without pausing.
+
+Ralph Cranfield from his youth upward had felt himself marked out for
+a high destiny. He had imbibed the idea--we say not whether it were
+revealed to him by witchcraft or in a dream of prophecy, or that his
+brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of
+a sybil, but he had imbibed the idea, and held it firmest among his
+articles of faith--that three marvellous events of his life were to be
+confirmed to him by three signs.
+
+The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his
+youthful imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the
+maid who alone of all the maids on earth could make him happy by her
+love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful
+woman wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart--whether of
+pearl or ruby or emerald or carbuncle or a changeful opal, or perhaps
+a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as it were
+a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger he
+was bound to address her thus: "Maiden, I have brought you a heavy
+heart. May I rest its weight on you?" And if she were his fated
+bride--if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here below
+which all eternity should only bind more closely--she would reply,
+with her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, "This token which I have
+worn so long is the assurance that you may."
+
+And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a
+mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the earth of which the
+burial-place would be revealed to none but him. When his feet should
+press upon the mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him
+pointing downward--whether carved of marble or hewn in gigantic
+dimensions on the side of a rocky precipice, or perchance a hand of
+flame in empty air, he could not tell, but at least he would discern a
+hand, the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the Latin word
+"_Effode_"--"Dig!" And, digging thereabouts, the gold in coin or
+ingots, the precious stones, or of whatever else the treasure might
+consist, would be certain to reward his toil.
+
+The third and last of the miraculous events in the life of this
+high-destined man was to be the attainment of extensive influence and
+sway over his fellow-creatures. Whether he were to be a king and
+founder of a hereditary throne, or the victorious leader of a people
+contending for their freedom, or the apostle of a purified and
+regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show. As messengers of the
+sign by which Ralph Cranfield might recognize the summons, three
+venerable men were to claim audience of him. The chief among them--a
+dignified and majestic person arrayed, it may be supposed, in the
+flowing garments of an ancient sage--would be the bearer of a wand or
+prophet's rod. With this wand or rod or staff the venerable sage would
+trace a certain figure in the air, and then proceed to make known his
+Heaven-instructed message, which, if obeyed, must lead to glorious
+results.
+
+With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his imaginative youth
+Ralph Cranfield had set forth to seek the maid, the treasure, and the
+venerable sage with his gift of extended empire. And had he found
+them? Alas! it was not with the aspect of a triumphant man who had
+achieved a nobler destiny than all his fellows, but rather with the
+gloom of one struggling against peculiar and continual adversity, that
+he now passed homeward to his mother's cottage. He had come back, but
+only for a time, to lay aside the pilgrim's staff, trusting that his
+weary manhood would regain somewhat of the elasticity of youth in the
+spot where his threefold fate had been foreshown him. There had been
+few changes in the village, for it was not one of those thriving
+places where a year's prosperity makes more than the havoc of a
+century's decay, but, like a gray hair in a young man's head, an
+antiquated little town full of old maids and aged elms and moss-grown
+dwellings. Few seemed to be the changes here. The drooping elms,
+indeed, had a more majestic spread, the weather-blackened houses were
+adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss, and doubtless there were
+a few more gravestones in the burial-ground inscribed with names that
+had once been familiar in the village street; yet, summing up all the
+mischief that ten years had wrought, it seemed scarcely more than if
+Ralph Cranfield had gone forth that very morning and dreamed a
+day-dream till the twilight, and then turned back again. But his heart
+grew cold because the village did not remember him as he remembered
+the village.
+
+"Here is the change," sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast.
+"Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering and
+heavy with disappointed hopes? The youth returns not who went forth so
+joyously."
+
+And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother's gate, in front of the
+small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had
+kept herself comfortable during her son's long absence. Admitting
+himself within the enclosure, he leaned against a great old tree,
+trifling with his own impatience as people often do in those intervals
+when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the
+dwelling--its windows brightened with the sky-gleam, its doorway with
+the half of a millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving
+thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood's
+friend--the old tree against which he leaned--and, glancing his eye
+down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It
+was a half-obliterated inscription--the Latin word "_Effode_"--which
+he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree with a whole
+day's toil when he had first begun to muse about his exalted destiny.
+It might be accounted a rather singular coincidence that the bark just
+above the inscription had put forth an excrescence shaped not unlike a
+hand, with the forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate.
+Such, at least, was its appearance in the dusky light.
+
+"Now, a credulous man," said Ralph Cranfield, carelessly, to himself,
+"might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world
+lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother's dwelling. That
+would be a jest indeed."
+
+More he thought not about the matter, for now the door was opened and
+an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to
+discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises and was
+standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield's mother.
+Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the
+other to his rest--if quiet rest he found.
+
+But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow, for his sleep
+and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was
+rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold
+mystery of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to have
+awaited him beneath his mother's roof and thronged riotously around to
+welcome his return. In the well-remembered chamber, on the pillow
+where his infancy had slumbered, he had passed a wilder night than
+ever in an Arab tent or when he had reposed his head in the ghastly
+shades of a haunted forest. A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside
+and laid her finger on the scintillating heart; a hand of flame had
+glowed amid the darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the
+earth; a hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand and beckoned the
+dreamer onward to a chair of state. The same phantoms, though fainter
+in the daylight, still flitted about the cottage and mingled among
+the crowd of familiar faces that were drawn thither by the news of
+Ralph Cranfield's return to bid him welcome for his mother's sake.
+There they found him, a tall, dark, stately man of foreign aspect,
+courteous in demeanor and mild of speech, yet with an abstracted eye
+which seemed often to snatch a glance at the invisible.
+
+Meantime, the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house full of
+joy that she again had somebody to love and be careful of, and for
+whom she might vex and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily
+life. It was nearly noon when she looked forth from the door and
+descried three personages of note coming along the street through the
+hot sunshine and the masses of elm-tree shade. At length they reached
+her gate and undid the latch.
+
+"See, Ralph!" exclaimed she, with maternal pride; "here is Squire
+Hawkwood and the two other selectmen coming on purpose to see you.
+Now, do tell them a good long story about what you have seen in
+foreign parts."
+
+The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood, was a very
+pompous but excellent old gentleman, the head and prime-mover in all
+the affairs of the village, and universally acknowledged to be one of
+the sagest men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion even then
+becoming antiquated, a three-cornered hat, and carried a silver-headed
+cane the use of which seemed to be rather for flourishing in the air
+than for assisting the progress of his legs. His two companions were
+elderly and respectable yeomen who, retaining an ante-Revolutionary
+reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in the
+squire's rear.
+
+As they approached along the pathway Ralph Cranfield sat in an oaken
+elbow-chair half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors and
+enveloping their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded his
+mental world. "Here," thought he, smiling at the conceit--"here come
+three elderly personages, and the first of the three is a venerable
+sage with a staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of
+my fate?"
+
+While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered, Ralph rose from his
+seat and advanced a few steps to receive them, and his stately figure
+and dark countenance as he bent courteously toward his guests had a
+natural dignity contrasting well with the bustling importance of the
+squire. The old gentleman, according to invariable custom, gave an
+elaborate preliminary flourish with his cane in the air, then removed
+his three-cornered hat in order to wipe his brow, and finally
+proceeded to make known his errand.
+
+"My colleagues and myself," began the squire, "are burdened with
+momentous duties, being jointly selectmen of this village. Our minds
+for the space of three days past have been laboriously bent on the
+selection of a suitable person to fill a most important office and
+take upon himself a charge and rule which, wisely considered, may be
+ranked no lower than those of kings and potentates. And whereas you,
+our native townsman, are of good natural intellect and well cultivated
+by foreign travel, and that certain vagaries and fantasies of your
+youth are doubtless long ago corrected,--taking all these matters, I
+say, into due consideration, we are of opinion that Providence hath
+sent you hither at this juncture for our very purpose."
+
+During this harangue Cranfield gazed fixedly at the speaker, as if he
+beheld something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little
+figure, and as if the squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient
+sage instead of a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet
+breeches and silk stockings. Nor was his wonder without sufficient
+cause, for the flourish of the squire's staff, marvellous to relate,
+had described precisely the signal in the air which was to ratify the
+message of the prophetic sage whom Cranfield had sought around the
+world.
+
+"And what," inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor in his
+voice--"what may this office be which is to equal me with kings and
+potentates?"
+
+"No less than instructor of our village school," answered Squire
+Hawkwood, "the office being now vacant by the death of the venerable
+Master Whitaker after a fifty years' incumbency."
+
+"I will consider of your proposal," replied Ralph Cranfield,
+hurriedly, "and will make known my decision within three days."
+
+After a few more words the village dignitary and his companions took
+their leave. But to Cranfield's fancy their images were still present,
+and became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures
+which had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterward had shown
+themselves in his waking moments, assuming homely aspects among
+familiar things. His mind dwelt upon the features of the squire till
+they grew confused with those of the visionary sage and one appeared
+but the shadow of the other. The same visage, he now thought, had
+looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops; the same form had
+beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure
+had mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great
+Geyser. At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the
+dreamy messenger of destiny in this pompous, bustling, self-important,
+little-great man of the village. Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat
+all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his
+mother's thousand questions about his travels and adventures. At
+sunset he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the aged elm
+tree, his eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand pointing
+downward at the half-obliterated inscription.
+
+As Cranfield walked down the street of the village the level sunbeams
+threw his shadow far before him, and he fancied that, as his shadow
+walked among distant objects, so had there been a presentiment
+stalking in advance of him throughout his life. And when he drew near
+each object over which his tall shadow had preceded him, still it
+proved to be one of the familiar recollections of his infancy and
+youth. Every crook in the pathway was remembered. Even the more
+transitory characteristics of the scene were the same as in by-gone
+days. A company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and
+refreshed him with their fragrant breath. "It is sweeter," thought he,
+"than the perfume which was wafted to our ship from the Spice
+Islands." The round little figure of a child rolled from a doorway and
+lay laughing almost beneath Cranfield's feet. The dark and stately man
+stooped down, and, lifting the infant, restored him to his mother's
+arms. "The children," said he to himself, and sighed and smiled--"the
+children are to be my charge." And while a flow of natural feeling
+gushed like a well-spring in his heart he came to a dwelling which he
+could nowise forbear to enter. A sweet voice which seemed to come from
+a deep and tender soul was warbling a plaintive little air within. He
+bent his head and passed through the lowly door. As his foot sounded
+upon the threshold a young woman advanced from the dusky interior of
+the house, at first hastily, and then with a more uncertain step, till
+they met face to face. There was a singular contrast in their two
+figures--he dark and picturesque, one who had battled with the world,
+whom all suns had shone upon and whom all winds had blown on a varied
+course; she neat, comely and quiet--quiet even in her agitation--as if
+all her emotions had been subdued to the peaceful tenor of her life.
+Yet their faces, all unlike as they were, had an expression that
+seemed not so alien--a glow of kindred feeling flashing upward anew
+from half-extinguished embers.
+
+"You are welcome home," said Faith Egerton.
+
+But Cranfield did not immediately answer, for his eye had, been caught
+by an ornament in the shape of a heart which Faith wore as a brooch
+upon her bosom. The material was the ordinary white quartz, and he
+recollected having himself shaped it out of one of those Indian
+arrowheads which are so often found in the ancient haunts of the red
+men. It was precisely on the pattern of that worn by the visionary
+maid. When Cranfield departed on his shadowy search, he had bestowed
+this brooch, in a gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton.
+
+"So, Faith, you have kept the heart?" said he, at length.
+
+"Yes," said she, blushing deeply; then, more gayly, "And what else
+have you brought me from beyond the sea?"
+
+"Faith," replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated words by an
+uncontrollable impulse, "I have brought you nothing but a heavy heart.
+May I rest its weight on you?"
+
+"This token which I have worn so long," said Faith, laying her
+tremulous finger on the heart, "is the assurance that you may."
+
+"Faith, Faith!" cried Cranfield, clasping her in his arms; "you have
+interpreted my wild and weary dream!"
+
+Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the mysterious
+treasure he was to till the earth around his mother's dwelling and
+reap its products; instead of warlike command or regal or religious
+sway, he was to rule over the village children; and now the visionary
+maid had faded from his fancy, and in her place he saw the playmate of
+his childhood.
+
+Would all who cherish such wild wishes but look around them, they
+would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity and happiness,
+within those precincts and in that station where Providence itself has
+cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary
+world-search or a lifetime spent in vain!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Twice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Twice Told Tales
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: October 11, 2004 [EBook #13707]
+Last Updated: July 28, 2016
+Last Updated: June 28, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE TOLD TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, John Hagerson, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+TWICE-TOLD TALES.
+
+BY
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA:
+DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER,
+23 SOUTH NINTH STREET.
+
+
+1889.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                               PAGE
+
+THE GRAY CHAMPION                                5
+
+SUNDAY AT HOME                                  15
+
+THE WEDDING-KNELL                               23
+
+THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL                       33
+
+THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT                      49
+
+THE GENTLE BOY                                  63
+
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE                  99
+
+LITTLE ANNIE'S RAMBLE                          113
+
+WAKEFIELD                                      123
+
+A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP                      133
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE                            141
+
+THE PROPHETIC PICTURES                         159
+
+DAVID SWAN                                     175
+
+SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE                          183
+
+THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS                  191
+
+THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY                        197
+
+THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN                     204
+
+FANCY'S SHOW-BOX                               211
+
+DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT                     218
+
+LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE:
+    I.--HOWE'S MASQUERADE                      233
+   II.--EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT             249
+  III.--LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE                 263
+   IV.--OLD ESTHER DUDLEY                      281
+
+THE HAUNTED MIND                               294
+
+THE VILLAGE UNCLE                              300
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST                            313
+
+THE SISTER-YEARS                               323
+
+SNOWFLAKES                                     332
+
+THE SEVEN VAGABONDS                            338
+
+THE WHITE OLD MAID                             358
+
+PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE                   370
+
+CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL                        393
+
+THE SHAKER BRIDAL                              405
+
+NIGHT-SKETCHES                                 412
+
+ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS                     419
+
+THE LILY'S QUEST                               427
+
+FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE                     435
+
+EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD                          447
+
+THE THREEFOLD DESTINY                          455
+
+
+
+
+TWICE-TOLD TALES.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY CHAMPION.
+
+
+There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual
+pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on
+the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the
+Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a
+harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger
+our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely
+a single characteristic of tyranny--a governor and council holding
+office from the king and wholly independent of the country; laws made
+and taxes levied without concurrence of the people, immediate or by
+their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated and the
+titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint
+stifled by restrictions on the press; and finally, disaffection
+overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on
+our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen
+submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their
+allegiance to the mother-country, whether its head chanced to be a
+Parliament, Protector or popish monarch. Till these evil times,
+however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists
+had ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the
+privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain.
+
+At length a rumor reached our shores that the prince of Orange had
+ventured on an enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of
+civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was
+but a doubtful whisper; it might be false or the attempt might fail,
+and in either case the man that stirred against King James would lose
+his head. Still, the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people
+smiled mysteriously in the streets and threw bold glances at their
+oppressors, while far and wide there was a subdued and silent
+agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from
+its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved
+to avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm
+their despotism by yet harsher measures.
+
+One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite
+councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the
+governor's guard and made their appearance in the streets of Boston.
+The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the
+drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets less as
+the martial music of the soldiers than as a muster-call to the
+inhabitants themselves. A multitude by various avenues assembled in
+King street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century
+afterward, of another encounter between the troops of Britain and a
+people struggling against her tyranny.
+
+Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the Pilgrims came, this
+crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features
+of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency
+than on happier occasions. There was the sober garb, the general
+severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural
+forms of speech and the confidence in Heaven's blessing on a righteous
+cause which would have marked a band of the original Puritans when
+threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet
+time for the old spirit to be extinct, since there were men in the
+street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees before a
+house was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old
+soldiers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the
+thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the
+house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans of King Philip's war,
+who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old with pious
+fierceness while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them
+with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the crowd, which,
+unlike all other mobs, regarded them with such reverence as if there
+were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their
+influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse them.
+
+Meantime, the purpose of the governor in disturbing the peace of the
+town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country
+into a ferment was almost the Universal subject of inquiry, and
+variously explained.
+
+"Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," cried some, "because
+he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be
+dragged to prison. We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King
+street."
+
+Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their
+minister, who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic
+dignity, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of his
+profession--a crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied at that
+period that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take
+the place of that worthy in the _Primer_.
+
+"The pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew," cried
+others. "We are to be massacred, man and male-child."
+
+Neither was this rumor wholly discredited; although the wiser class
+believed the governor's object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor
+under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first
+settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing
+that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade of
+military force and to confound the opposite faction by possessing
+himself of their chief.
+
+"Stand firm for the old charter-governor!" shouted the crowd, seizing
+upon the idea--"the good old Governor Bradstreet!"
+
+While this cry was at the loudest the people were surprised by the
+well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of
+nearly ninety, who appeared on the elevated steps of a door and with
+characteristic mildness besought them to submit to the constituted
+authorities.
+
+"My children," concluded this venerable person, "do nothing rashly.
+Cry not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England and expect
+patiently what the Lord will do in this matter."
+
+The event was soon to be decided. All this time the roll of the drum
+had been approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with
+reverberations from house to house and the regular tramp of martial
+footsteps it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made
+their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with
+shouldered matchlocks and matches burning, so as to present a row of
+fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a
+machine that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
+moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode
+a party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund
+Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his
+favorite councillors and the bitterest foes of New England. At his
+right hand rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that "blasted
+wretch," as Cotton Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our
+ancient government and was followed with a sensible curse-through life
+and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests
+and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came behind with a downcast look,
+dreading, as well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people,
+who beheld him, their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors
+of his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor and two or
+three civil officers under the Crown were also there. But the figure
+which most attracted the public eye and stirred up the deepest feeling
+was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel riding haughtily among
+the magistrates in his priestly vestments, the fitting representative
+of prelacy and persecution, the union of Church and State, and all
+those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness.
+Another guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.
+
+The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its
+moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the
+nature of things and the character of the people--on one side the
+religious multitude with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the
+other the group of despotic rulers with the high churchman in the
+midst and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently
+clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority and scoffing at the
+universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
+deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience
+could be secured.
+
+"O Lord of hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a champion
+for thy people!"
+
+This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry to
+introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were
+now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the
+soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The
+intervening space was empty--a paved solitude between lofty edifices
+which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen
+the figure of an ancient man who seemed to have emerged from among the
+people and was walking by himself along the centre of the street to
+confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress--a dark cloak
+and a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years
+before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to
+assist the tremulous gait of age.
+
+When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
+round, displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable
+by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at
+once of encouragement and warning, then turned again and resumed his
+way.
+
+"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.
+
+"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.
+
+But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of
+fourscore years and upward, were disturbed, deeming it strange that
+they should forget one of such evident authority whom they must have
+known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop and all the old
+councillors, giving laws and making prayers and leading them against
+the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with
+locks as gray in their youth as their own were now. And the young! How
+could he have passed so utterly from their memories--that hoary sire,
+the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely
+been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood?
+
+"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?"
+whispered the wondering crowd.
+
+Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
+solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
+advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
+ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the
+decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in
+gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior's
+step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced
+on one side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the
+other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man
+grasped his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader's
+truncheon.
+
+"Stand!" cried he.
+
+The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal
+of that voice--fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
+raised to God in prayer--were irresistible. At the old man's word and
+outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the
+advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
+multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
+gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to
+some old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor's drum had
+summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation,
+and looked for the deliverance of New England.
+
+The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
+brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
+have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the
+hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his
+severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent
+it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark
+old man was chief ruler there, and that the governor and council with
+soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of
+the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
+
+"What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely.--"On,
+Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
+choice that you give all his countrymen--to stand aside or be trampled
+on."
+
+"Nay, nay! Let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant,
+laughing. "See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary who hath
+lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of
+times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
+Noll's name."
+
+"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
+tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's governor?"
+
+"I have stayed the march of a king himself ere now," replied the gray
+figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the
+cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and,
+beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
+appear once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And
+what speak ye of James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the
+throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word
+in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back,
+thou that wast a governor, back! With this night thy power is ended.
+To-morrow, the prison! Back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"
+
+The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the
+words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
+unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago. But
+his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not
+wholly without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street
+into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he
+cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude and beheld them burning
+with that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench, and again
+he fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in an open
+space where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his
+thoughts he uttered no word which might discover, but, whether the
+oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look or perceived his
+peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he
+gave back and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded
+retreat. Before another sunset the governor and all that rode so
+proudly with him were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James
+had abdicated King William was proclaimed throughout New England.
+
+But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops
+had gone from King street and the people were thronging tumultuously
+in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged governor, was seen to embrace a
+form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed that while they
+marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man had
+faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till
+where he stood there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary
+shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his
+reappearance in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor
+knew when his funeral passed nor where his gravestone was.
+
+And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the
+records of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too
+mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times for its humbling
+lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have
+heard that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the
+spirit of their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had
+passed, he walked once more in King street. Five years later, in the
+twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green beside the
+meeting-house at Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a
+slab of slate inlaid commemorates the first-fallen of the Revolution.
+And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill,
+all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long
+may it be ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness and
+adversity and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us or the
+invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come! for
+he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit, and his shadowy
+march on the eve of danger must ever be the pledge that New England's
+sons will vindicate their ancestry.
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY AT HOME.
+
+
+Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to
+watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my
+chamber window. First the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter
+lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower
+and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to
+the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now
+the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
+At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the
+stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing with
+fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves
+among the nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same
+sun brightens it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar
+robe of brightness for the Sabbath.
+
+By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for
+the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls
+and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and
+somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our
+thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind
+comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and
+small concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the
+few that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their
+separate and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings
+abroad the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither
+have gladness and festivity found a better utterance than by its
+tongue; and when the dead are slowly passing to their home, the
+steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of
+this connection with human interests, what a moral loneliness on
+week-days broods round about its stately height! It has no kindred
+with the houses above which it towers; it looks down into the narrow
+thoroughfare--the lonelier because the crowd are elbowing their
+passage at its base. A glance at the body of the church deepens this
+impression. Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted
+shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent
+organ, the voiceless pulpit and the clock which tells to solitude how
+time is passing. Time--where man lives not--what is it but eternity?
+And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up throughout the
+week all thoughts and feelings that have reference to eternity, until
+the holy day comes round again to let them forth. Might not, then, its
+more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town, with space for
+old trees to wave around it and throw their solemn shadows over a
+quiet green? We will say more of this hereafter.
+
+But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a
+holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices
+on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business
+anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether
+I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across
+the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the
+figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the
+Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions--and
+this among them--are the shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit
+around me or seem to close their evil wings and settle down, but so
+long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven
+retains its sanctity on the Sabbath--while that blessed sunshine lives
+within me--never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If
+it have gone astray, it will return again.
+
+I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind
+the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot so
+near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple
+should be deemed consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it
+said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil
+one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has no such
+holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency. It must suffice
+that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to
+church, while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats
+have left their souls at home. But I am there even before my friend
+the sexton. At length he comes--a man of kindly but sombre aspect, in
+dark gray clothes, and hair of the same mixture. He comes and applies
+his key to the wide portal. Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty
+pews or ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again
+to enjoy the music of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too! All the
+steeples in town are talking together aloft in the sunny air and
+rejoicing among themselves while their spires point heavenward.
+Meantime, here are the children assembling to the Sabbath-school,
+which is kept somewhere within the church. Often, while looking at the
+arched portal, I have been gladdened by the sight of a score of these
+little girls and boys in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks
+bursting suddenly forth into the sunshine like a swarm of gay
+butterflies that had been shut up in the solemn gloom. Or I might
+compare them to cherubs haunting that holy place.
+
+About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell
+individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is
+invariably an old woman in black whose bent frame and rounded
+shoulders are evidently laden with some heavy affliction which she is
+eager to rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as
+often, for the sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is an elderly
+man, also, who arrives in good season and leans against the corner of
+the tower, just within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a
+darksome brow. I sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of
+the two. After these, others drop in singly and by twos and threes,
+either disappearing through the doorway or taking their stand in its
+vicinity. At last, and always with an unexpected sensation, the bell
+turns in the steeple overhead and throws out an irregular clangor,
+jarring the tower to its foundation. As if there were magic in the
+sound, the sidewalks of the street, both up and down along, are
+immediately thronged with two long lines of people, all converging
+hitherward and streaming into the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of
+a coach draws nearer--a deeper thunder by its contrast with the
+surrounding stillness--until it sets down the wealthy worshippers at
+the portal among their humblest brethren. Beyond that entrance--in
+theory, at least--there are no distinctions of earthly rank; nor,
+indeed, by the goodly apparel which is flaunting in the sun would
+there seem to be such on the hither side. Those pretty girls! Why will
+they disturb my pious meditations? Of all days in the week, they
+should strive to look least fascinating on the Sabbath, instead of
+heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival the blessed angels
+and keep our thoughts from heaven. Were I the minister himself, I must
+needs look. One girl is white muslin from the waist upward and black
+silk downward to her slippers; a second blushes from top-knot to
+shoe-tie, one universal scarlet; another shines of a pervading yellow,
+as if she had made a garment of the sunshine. The greater part,
+however, have adopted a milder cheerfulness of hue. Their veils,
+especially when the wind raises them, give a lightness to the general
+effect and make them appear like airy phantoms as they flit up the
+steps and vanish into the sombre doorway. Nearly all--though it is
+very strange that I should know it--wear white stockings, white as
+snow, and neat slippers laced crosswise with black ribbon pretty high
+above the ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effective than a
+black one.
+
+Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe simplicity,
+needing no black silk gown to denote his office. His aspect claims my
+reverence, but cannot win my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter
+keeping fast the gate of Heaven and frowning, more stern than pitiful,
+on the wretched applicants, that face should be my study. By middle
+age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought upon the heart or been
+attempered by it. As the minister passes into the church the bell
+holds its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the congregation dies
+away. The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then at my
+window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he
+has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies
+asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me,
+and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties.
+Oh, I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising
+congregation reaches my ears. They are standing up to pray. Could I
+bring my heart into unison with those who are praying in yonder church
+and lift it heavenward with a fervor of supplication, but no distinct
+request, would not that be the safest kind of prayer?--"Lord, look
+down upon me in mercy!" With that sentiment gushing from my soul,
+might I not leave all the rest to him?
+
+Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I
+can enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir
+and the massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me.
+At this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my
+heart-strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be
+praised! I know nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate
+harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse's lullaby.
+The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful
+echoes till I start from my reverie and find that the sermon has
+commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify in a regular way by
+any but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher
+utters gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward step by
+step quite out of hearing of the good man's voice unless he be indeed
+a son of thunder. At my open window, catching now and then a sentence
+of the "parson's saw," I am as well situated as at the foot of the
+pulpit stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this one
+discourse will be the texts of many sermons preached by those
+colleague pastors--colleagues, but often disputants--my Mind and
+Heart. The former pretends to be a scholar and perplexes me with
+doctrinal points; the latter takes me on the score of feeling; and
+both, like several other preachers, spend their strength to very
+little purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand them.
+
+Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my
+curtain just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour-hand
+on the dial has passed beyond four o'clock. The declining sun is
+hidden behind the steeple and throws its shadow straight across the
+street; so that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the
+church door all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the
+threshold. A commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down and the
+pew doors thrown back; a multitude of feet are trampling along the
+unseen aisles, and the congregation bursts suddenly through the
+portal. Foremost scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense
+and dark phalanx of grown men, and lastly a crowd of females with
+young children and a few scattered husbands. This instantaneous
+outbreak of life into loneliness is one of the pleasantest scenes of
+the day. Some of the good people are rubbing their eyes, thereby
+intimating that they have been wrapped, as it were, in a sort of holy
+trance by the fervor of their devotion. There is a young man, a
+third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always to flourish a white
+handkerchief and brush the seat of a tight pair of black silk
+pantaloons which shine as if varnished. They must have been made of
+the stuff called "everlasting," or perhaps of the same piece as
+Christian's garments in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, for he put them
+on two summers ago and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a
+great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But now, with nods and
+greetings among friends, each matron takes her husband's arm and paces
+gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging
+sunset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve
+of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here, with
+faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable
+gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his
+severe visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the
+most captivating picture of bliss in heaven is "There we shall be
+white!"
+
+All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now,
+attuning its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ.
+Who are the choristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down
+from heaven this blessed morn to blend themselves with the worship of
+the truly good are playing and singing their farewell to the earth. On
+the wings of that rich melody they were borne upward.
+
+This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the
+singing-men and singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and
+raised their voices fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ.
+Yet it lifted my soul higher than all their former strains. They are
+gone--the sons and daughters of Music--and the gray sexton is just
+closing the portal. For six days more there will be no face of man in
+the pews and aisles and galleries, nor a voice in the pulpit, nor
+music in the choir. Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice to
+be a desert in the heart of the town and populous only for a few hours
+of each seventh day? Oh, but the church is a symbol of religion. May
+its site, which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was
+felled, be kept holy for ever, a spot of solitude and peace amid the
+trouble and vanity of our week-day world! There is a moral, and a
+religion too, even in the silent walls. And may the steeple still
+point heavenward and be decked with the hallowed sunshine of the
+Sabbath morn!
+
+
+
+
+THE WEDDING-KNELL.
+
+
+There is a certain church, in the city of New York which I have always
+regarded with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there
+solemnized under very singular circumstances in my grandmother's
+girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene,
+and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now
+standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred I
+am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would it be worth while to
+correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error by reading the date of
+its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church
+surrounded by an enclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear
+urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the
+tributes of private affection or more splendid memorials of historic
+dust. With such a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath
+its tower, one would be willing to connect some legendary interest.
+
+The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement,
+though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part and
+forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr.
+Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all
+men who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions
+a vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always
+an indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of
+public advantage or personal ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and
+fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable
+relaxation in his behalf of the common rules of society. In truth,
+there were so many anomalies in his character, and, though shrinking
+with diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been his fatality
+so often to become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of
+conduct, that people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of
+insanity. But there was no need of this. His caprices had their origin
+in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose, and in
+feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food. If he
+were mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless and
+abortive life.
+
+The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom in
+everything but age as can well be conceived. Compelled to relinquish
+her first engagement, she had been united to a man of twice her own
+years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and by whose death she
+was left in possession of a splendid fortune. A Southern gentleman
+considerably younger than herself succeeded to her hand and carried
+her to Charleston, where after many uncomfortable years she found
+herself again a widow. It would have been singular if any uncommon
+delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's;
+it could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment,
+the cold duty of her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart's
+principles consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her
+Southern husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea
+of his death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was that
+wisest but unloveliest variety of woman, a philosopher, bearing
+troubles of the heart with equanimity, dispensing with all that should
+have been her happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in
+most matters, the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one
+frailty that made her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not
+remain beautiful by proxy in the person of a daughter; she therefore
+refused to grow old and ugly on any consideration; she struggled with
+Time, and held fast her roses in spite of him, till the venerable
+thief appeared to have relinquished the spoil as not worth the trouble
+of acquiring it.
+
+The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such an
+unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's
+return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones,
+seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no
+inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of
+expediency which she would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr.
+Ellenwood, and there was just the specious phantom of sentiment and
+romance in this late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a
+fool of a woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of
+life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly
+wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been
+induced to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But
+while people talked the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be
+solemnized according to the Episcopalian forms and in open church,
+with a degree of publicity that attracted many spectators, who
+occupied the front seats of the galleries and the pews near the altar
+and along the broad aisle. It had been arranged, or possibly it was
+the custom of the day, that the parties should proceed separately to
+church. By some accident the bridegroom was a little less punctual
+than the widow and her bridal attendants, with whose arrival, after
+this tedious but necessary preface, the action of our tale may be said
+to commence.
+
+The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were heard, and the
+gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal-party came through the
+church door with the sudden and gladsome effect of a burst of
+sunshine. The whole group, except the principal figure, was made up of
+youth and gayety. As they streamed up the broad aisle, while the pews
+and pillars seemed to brighten on either side, their steps were as
+buoyant as if they mistook the church for a ball-room and were ready
+to dance hand in hand to the altar. So brilliant was the spectacle
+that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its
+entrance. At the moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold
+the bell swung heavily in the tower above her and sent forth its
+deepest knell. The vibrations died away, and returned with prolonged
+solemnity as she entered the body of the church.
+
+"Good heavens! What an omen!" whispered a young lady to her lover.
+
+"On my honor," replied the gentleman, "I believe the bell has the good
+taste to toll of its own accord. What has she to do with weddings? If
+you, dearest Julia, were approaching the altar, the bell would ring
+out its merriest peal. It has only a funeral-knell for her."
+
+The bride and most of her company had been too much occupied with the
+bustle of entrance to hear the first boding stroke of the bell--or, at
+least, to reflect on the singularity of such a welcome to the altar.
+They therefore continued to advance with undiminished gayety. The
+gorgeous dresses of the time--the crimson velvet coats, the gold-laced
+hats, the hoop-petticoats, the silk, satin, brocade and embroidery,
+the buckles, canes and swords, all displayed to the best advantage on
+persons suited to such finery--made the group appear more like a
+bright-colored picture than anything real. But by what perversity of
+taste had the artist represented his principal figure as so wrinkled
+and decayed, while yet he had decked her out in the brightest splendor
+of attire, as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into age
+and become a moral to the beautiful around her? On they went, however,
+and had glittered along about a third of the aisle, when another
+stroke of the bell seemed to fill the church with a visible gloom,
+dimming and obscuring the bright-pageant till it shone forth again as
+from a mist.
+
+This time the party wavered, stopped and huddled closer together,
+while a slight scream was heard from some of the ladies and a confused
+whispering among the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might
+have been fancifully compared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly
+shaken by a puff of wind which threatened to scatter the leaves of an
+old brown, withered rose on the same stalk with two dewy buds, such
+being the emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But
+her heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible
+shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her
+heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in
+dismay, she took the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell
+continued to swing, strike and vibrate with the same doleful
+regularity as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb.
+
+"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," said the
+widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But so many
+weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and
+yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under
+such different auspices."
+
+"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strange
+occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of the famous Bishop
+Taylor wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe
+that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he seems to hang the
+bridal-chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a
+coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse
+something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, so to keep death
+in mind while contracting that engagement which is life's chiefest
+business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this
+funeral-knell."
+
+But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener
+point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the
+mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a
+marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken
+only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the
+wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were
+disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
+have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
+The widow's glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a
+window of the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that
+she had dedicated to her first husband; then her eyelids dropped over
+their faded orbs and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another
+grave. Two buried men with a voice at her ear and a cry afar off were
+calling her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth of
+feeling, she thought how much happier had been her fate if, after
+years of bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral and she were
+followed to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover, long
+her husband. But why had she returned to him when their cold hearts
+shrank from each other's embrace?
+
+Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to
+fade in the air. A whisper, communicated from those who stood nearest
+the windows, now spread through the church: a hearse with a train of
+several coaches was creeping along the street, conveying some dead man
+to the churchyard, while the bride awaited a living one at the altar.
+Immediately after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends
+were heard at the door. The widow looked down the aisle and clenched
+the arm of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand with such
+unconscious violence that the fair girl trembled.
+
+"You frighten me, my dear madam," cried she. "For heaven's sake, what
+is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear--nothing," said the widow; then, whispering close to
+her ear, "There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of. I am
+expecting my bridegroom to come into the church with my two first
+husbands for groomsmen."
+
+"Look! look!" screamed the bridemaid. "What is here? The funeral!"
+
+As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. First came an
+old man and woman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head
+to foot in the deepest black, all but their pale features and hoary
+hair, he leaning on a staff and supporting her decrepit form with his
+nerveless arm. Behind appeared another and another pair, as aged, as
+black and mournful as the first. As they drew near the widow
+recognized in every face some trait of former friends long forgotten,
+but now returning as if from their old graves to warn her to prepare a
+shroud, or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their
+wrinkles and infirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens
+of her own decay. Many a merry night had she danced with them in
+youth, and now in joyless age she felt that some withered partner
+should request her hand and all unite in a dance of death to the music
+of the funeral-bell.
+
+While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed
+that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe
+as some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full
+in sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid
+stare, and a young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the
+laughter on her lips. When the spectral procession approached the
+altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in the centre
+appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with all this gloomy
+pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his
+shroud.
+
+No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like
+aspect. The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all
+else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
+The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that
+seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the
+air while he spoke.
+
+"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips. "The hearse is ready; the
+sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us be
+married, and then to our coffins!"
+
+How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her the
+ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful friends stood apart,
+shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom and herself; the
+whole scene expressed by the strongest imagery the vain struggle of
+the gilded vanities of this world when opposed to age, infirmity,
+sorrow and death.
+
+The awestruck silence was first broken by the clergyman.
+
+"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of authority,
+"you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by the unusual
+circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must be deferred.
+As an old friend, let me entreat you to return home."
+
+"Home--yes; but not without my bride," answered he, in the same hollow
+accents. "You deem this mockery--perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my
+aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my
+withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have been mockery
+or madness; but now let young and old declare which of us has come
+hither without a wedding-garment--the bridegroom or the bride."
+
+He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside the widow,
+contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
+glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None
+that beheld them could deny the terrible strength of the moral which
+his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.
+
+"Cruel! cruel!" groaned the heartstricken bride.
+
+"Cruel?" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a wild
+bitterness, "Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the other! In
+youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took
+away all the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality
+enough even to grieve at--with only a pervading gloom, through which I
+walked wearily and cared not whither. But after forty years, when I
+have built my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting
+there--no, not for such a life as we once pictured--you call me to the
+altar. At your summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your
+youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed
+your life. What is there for me but your decay and death? And
+therefore I have bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the
+sexton's deepest knell, and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a
+burial-service, that we may join our hands at the door of the
+sepulchre and enter it together."
+
+It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion
+in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. The stern
+lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She
+seized the bridegroom's hand.
+
+"Yes!" cried she; "let us wed even at the door of the sepulchre. My
+life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is one
+true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth: it makes me worthy
+of you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for eternity."
+
+With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while
+a tear was gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human
+feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear,
+even with his shroud.
+
+"Beloved of my youth," said he, "I have been wild. The despair of my
+whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me. Forgive and be
+forgiven. Yes; it is evening with us now, and we have realized none of
+our morning dreams of happiness. But let us join our hands before the
+altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through
+life, yet who meet again as they are leaving it and find their earthly
+affection changed into something holy as religion. And what is time to
+the married of eternity?"
+
+Amid the tears of many and a swell of exalted sentiment in those who
+felt aright was solemnized the union of two immortal souls. The train
+of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale
+features of the aged bride and the death-bell tolling through the
+whole till its deep voice overpowered the marriage-words,--all marked
+the funeral of earthly hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the
+organ, as if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene,
+poured forth an anthem, first mingling with the dismal knell, then
+rising to a loftier strain, till the soul looked down upon its woe.
+And when the awful rite was finished and with cold hand in cold hand
+the married of eternity withdrew, the organ's peal of solemn triumph
+drowned the wedding-knell.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL.
+
+A PARABLE.[1]
+
+
+The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house pulling lustily
+at the bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along
+the street. Children with bright faces tripped merrily beside their
+parents or mimicked a graver gait in the conscious dignity of their
+Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty
+maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than
+on week-days. When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the
+sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr.
+Hooper's door. The first glimpse of the clergyman's figure was the
+signal for the bell to cease its summons.
+
+[Footnote 1: Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of
+York, Maine, who died about eighty years since, made himself
+remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the
+Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different
+import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend, and
+from that day till the hour of his own death he hid his face from
+men.]
+
+"But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?" cried the sexton,
+in astonishment.
+
+All within hearing immediately turned about and beheld the semblance
+of Mr. Hooper pacing slowly his meditative way toward the
+meeting-house. With one accord they started, expressing more wonder
+than if some strange minister were coming to dust the cushions of Mr.
+Hooper's pulpit.
+
+"Are you sure it is our parson?" inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton.
+
+"Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper," replied the sexton. "He was to
+have exchanged pulpits with Parson Shute of Westbury, but Parson Shute
+sent to excuse himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral sermon."
+
+The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight. Mr.
+Hooper, a gentlemanly person of about thirty, though still a bachelor,
+was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had
+starched his band and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday's garb.
+There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about
+his forehead and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by
+his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed
+to consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his
+features except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his
+sight further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and
+inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper
+walked onward at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking
+on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly
+to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house
+steps. But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met
+with a return.
+
+"I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper's face was behind that
+piece of crape," said the sexton.
+
+"I don't like it," muttered an old woman as she hobbled into the
+meeting-house. "He has changed himself into something awful only by
+hiding his face."
+
+"Our parson has gone mad!" cried Goodman Gray, following him across
+the threshold.
+
+A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into
+the meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could
+refrain from twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright
+and turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon
+the seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a
+general bustle, a rustling of the women's gowns and shuffling of the
+men's feet, greatly at variance with that hushed repose which should
+attend the entrance of the minister. But Mr. Hooper appeared not to
+notice the perturbation of his people. He entered with an almost
+noiseless step, bent his head mildly to the pews on each side and
+bowed as he passed his oldest parishioner, a white-haired
+great-grandsire, who occupied an arm-chair in the centre of the aisle.
+It was strange to observe how slowly this venerable man became
+conscious of something singular in the appearance of his pastor. He
+seemed not fully to partake of the prevailing wonder till Mr. Hooper
+had ascended the stairs and showed himself in the pulpit, face to face
+with his congregation except for the black veil. That mysterious
+emblem was never once withdrawn. It shook with his measured breath as
+he gave out the psalm, it threw its obscurity between him and the holy
+page as he read the Scriptures, and while he prayed the veil lay
+heavily on his uplifted countenance. Did he seek to hide it from the
+dread Being whom he was addressing?
+
+Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape that more than one
+woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet
+perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to
+the minister as his black veil to them.
+
+Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic
+one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive
+influences rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the
+word. The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same
+characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his
+pulpit oratory, but there was something either in the sentiment of the
+discourse itself or in the imagination of the auditors which made it
+greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their
+pastor's lips. It was tinged rather more darkly than usual with the
+gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper's temperament. The subject had reference to
+secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and
+dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even
+forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them. A subtle power was
+breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most
+innocent girl and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher
+had crept upon them behind his awful veil and discovered their hoarded
+iniquity of deed or thought. Many spread their clasped hands on their
+bosoms. There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said--at least,
+no violence; and yet with every tremor of his melancholy voice the
+hearers quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe. So
+sensible were the audience of some unwonted attribute in their
+minister that they longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil,
+almost believing that a stranger's visage would be discovered, though
+the form, gesture and voice were those of Mr. Hooper.
+
+At the close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous
+confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious
+of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some
+gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their
+mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped
+in silent meditation; some talked loudly and profaned the Sabbath-day
+with ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads,
+intimating that they could penetrate the mystery, while one or two
+affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper's
+eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp as to require a shade.
+
+After a brief interval forth came good Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of
+his flock. Turning his veiled face from one group to another, he paid
+due reverence to the hoary heads, saluted the middle-aged with kind
+dignity as their friend and spiritual guide, greeted the young with
+mingled authority and love, and laid his hands on the little
+children's heads to bless them. Such was always his custom on the
+Sabbath-day. Strange and bewildered looks repaid him for his courtesy.
+None, as on former occasions, aspired to the honor of walking by their
+pastor's side. Old Squire Saunders--doubtless by an accidental lapse
+of memory--neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table, where the good
+clergyman had been wont to bless the food almost every Sunday since
+his settlement. He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and at the
+moment of closing the door was observed to look back upon the people,
+all of whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister. A sad smile
+gleamed faintly from beneath the black veil and flickered about his
+mouth, glimmering as he disappeared.
+
+"How strange," said a lady, "that a simple black veil, such as any
+woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on
+Mr. Hooper's face!"
+
+"Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper's intellects,"
+observed her husband, the physician of the village. "But the strangest
+part of the affair is the effect of this vagary even on a sober-minded
+man like myself. The black veil, though it covers only our pastor's
+face, throws its influence over his whole person and makes him
+ghost-like from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?"
+
+"Truly do I," replied the lady; "and I would not be alone with him for
+the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself."
+
+"Men sometimes are so," said her husband.
+
+The afternoon service was attended with similar circumstances. At its
+conclusion the bell tolled for the funeral of a young lady. The
+relatives and friends were assembled in the house and the more distant
+acquaintances stood about the door, speaking of the good qualities of
+the deceased, when their talk was interrupted by the appearance of Mr.
+Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It was now an appropriate
+emblem. The clergyman stepped into the room where the corpse was laid,
+and bent over the coffin to take a last farewell of his deceased
+parishioner. As he stooped the veil hung straight down from his
+forehead, so that, if her eye-lids had not been closed for ever, the
+dead maiden might have seen his face. Could Mr. Hooper be fearful of
+her glance, that he so hastily caught back the black veil? A person
+who watched the interview between the dead and living scrupled not to
+affirm that at the instant when the clergyman's features were
+disclosed the corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and
+muslin cap, though the countenance retained the composure of death. A
+superstitious old woman was the only witness of this prodigy.
+
+From the coffin Mr. Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners,
+and thence to the head of the staircase, to make the funeral prayer.
+It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so
+imbued with celestial hopes that the music of a heavenly harp swept by
+the fingers of the dead seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest
+accents of the minister. The people trembled, though they but darkly
+understood him, when he prayed that they and himself, and all of
+mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been,
+for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.
+The bearers went heavily forth and the mourners followed, saddening
+all the street, with the dead before them and Mr. Hooper in his black
+veil behind.
+
+"Why do you look back?" said one in the procession to his partner.
+
+"I had a fancy," replied she, "that the minister and the maiden's
+spirit were walking hand in hand."
+
+"And so had I at the same moment," said the other.
+
+That night the handsomest couple in Milford village were to be joined
+in wedlock. Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid
+cheerfulness for such occasions which often excited a sympathetic
+smile where livelier merriment would have been thrown away. There was
+no quality of his disposition which made him more beloved than this.
+The company at the wedding awaited his arrival with impatience,
+trusting that the strange awe which had gathered over him throughout
+the day would now be dispelled. But such was not the result. When Mr.
+Hooper came, the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same
+horrible black veil which had added deeper gloom to the funeral and
+could portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate
+effect on the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from
+beneath the black crape and dimmed the light of the candles. The
+bridal pair stood up before the minister, but the bride's cold fingers
+quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her death-like
+paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been buried a few
+hours before was come from her grave to be married. If ever another
+wedding were so dismal, it was that famous one where they tolled the
+wedding-knell.
+
+After performing the ceremony Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his
+lips, wishing happiness to the new-married couple in a strain of mild
+pleasantry that ought to have brightened the features of the guests
+like a cheerful gleam from the hearth. At that instant, catching a
+glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved
+his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His
+frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon
+the carpet and rushed forth into the darkness, for the Earth too had
+on her black veil.
+
+The next day the whole village of Milford talked of little else than
+Parson Hooper's black veil. That, and the mystery concealed behind it,
+supplied a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the
+street and good women gossipping at their open windows. It was the
+first item of news that the tavernkeeper told to his guests. The
+children babbled of it on their way to school. One imitative little
+imp covered his face with an old black handkerchief, thereby so
+affrighting his playmates that the panic seized himself and he
+wellnigh lost his wits by his own waggery.
+
+It was remarkable that, of all the busybodies and impertinent people
+in the parish, not one ventured to put the plain question to Mr.
+Hooper wherefore he did this thing. Hitherto, whenever there appeared
+the slightest call for such interference, he had never lacked advisers
+nor shown himself averse to be guided by their judgment. If he erred
+at all, it was by so painful a degree of self-distrust that even the
+mildest censure would lead him to consider an indifferent action as a
+crime. Yet, though so well acquainted with this amiable weakness, no
+individual among his parishioners chose to make the black veil a
+subject of friendly remonstrance. There was a feeling of dread,
+neither plainly confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each
+to shift the responsibility upon another, till at length it was found
+expedient to send a deputation of the church, in order to deal with
+Mr. Hooper about the mystery before it should grow into a scandal.
+Never did an embassy so ill discharge its duties. The minister
+received them with friendly courtesy, but became silent after they
+were seated, leaving to his visitors the whole burden of introducing
+their important business. The topic, it might be supposed, was obvious
+enough. There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper's forehead
+and concealing every feature above his placid mouth, on which, at
+times, they could perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But
+that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before
+his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them. Were
+the veil but cast aside, they might speak freely of it, but not till
+then. Thus they sat a considerable time, speechless, confused and
+shrinking uneasily from Mr. Hooper's eye, which they felt to be fixed
+upon them with an invisible glance. Finally, the deputies returned
+abashed to their constituents, pronouncing the matter too weighty to
+be handled except by a council of the churches, if, indeed, it might
+not require a General Synod.
+
+But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with
+which the black veil had impressed all besides herself. When the
+deputies returned without an explanation, or even venturing to demand
+one, she with the calm energy of her character determined to chase
+away the strange cloud that appeared to be settling round Mr. Hooper
+every moment more darkly than before. As his plighted wife it should
+be her privilege to know what the black veil concealed. At the
+minister's first visit, therefore, she entered upon the subject with a
+direct simplicity which made the task easier both for him and her.
+After he had seated himself she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the
+veil, but could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so
+overawed the multitude; it was but a double fold of crape hanging down
+from his forehead to his mouth and slightly stirring with his breath.
+
+"No," said she, aloud, and smiling, "there is nothing terrible in this
+piece of crape, except that it hides a face which I am always glad to
+look upon. Come, good sir; let the sun shine from behind the cloud.
+First lay aside your black veil, then tell me why you put it on."
+
+Mr. Hooper's smile glimmered faintly.
+
+"There is an hour to come," said he, "when all of us shall cast aside
+our veils. Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece of
+crape till then."
+
+"Your words are a mystery too," returned the young lady. "Take away
+the veil from them, at least."
+
+"Elizabeth, I will," said he, "so far as my vow may suffer me. Know,
+then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it
+ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of
+multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No
+mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me
+from the world; even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it."
+
+"What grievous affliction hath befallen you," she earnestly inquired,
+"that you should thus darken your eyes for ever?"
+
+"If it be a sign of mourning," replied Mr. Hooper, "I, perhaps, like
+most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black
+veil."
+
+"But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an
+innocent sorrow?" urged Elizabeth. "Beloved and respected as you are,
+there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness
+of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office do away this scandal."
+
+The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the
+rumors that were already abroad in the village. But Mr. Hooper's
+mildness did not forsake him. He even smiled again--that same sad
+smile which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light
+proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil.
+
+"If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough," he merely
+replied; "and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do
+the same?" And with this gentle but unconquerable obstinacy did he
+resist all her entreaties.
+
+At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in
+thought, considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to
+withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other
+meaning, was perhaps a symptom of mental disease. Though of a firmer
+character than his own, the tears rolled down her cheeks. But in an
+instant, as it were, a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes
+were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when like a sudden twilight
+in the air its terrors fell around her. She arose and stood trembling
+before him.
+
+"And do you feel it, then, at last?" said he, mournfully.
+
+She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand and turned to
+leave the room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.
+
+"Have patience with me, Elizabeth!" cried he, passionately. "Do not
+desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine,
+and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between
+our souls. It is but a mortal veil; it is not for eternity. Oh, you
+know not how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my
+black veil! Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity for ever."
+
+"Lift the veil but once and look me in the face," said she.
+
+"Never! It cannot be!" replied Mr. Hooper.
+
+"Then farewell!" said Elizabeth.
+
+She withdrew her arm from his grasp and slowly departed, pausing at
+the door to give one long, shuddering gaze that seemed almost to
+penetrate the mystery of the black veil. But even amid his grief Mr.
+Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him
+from happiness, though the horrors which it shadowed forth must be
+drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.
+
+From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil
+or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to
+hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was
+reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the
+sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its
+own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was
+irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of
+mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside
+to avoid him, and that others would make it a point of hardihood to
+throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of the latter class
+compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the
+burial-ground; for when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would
+always be faces behind the gravestones peeping at his black veil. A
+fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him
+thence. It grieved him to the very depth of his kind heart to observe
+how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest
+sports while his melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive
+dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else that a
+preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black
+crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so
+great that he never willingly passed before a mirror nor stooped to
+drink at a still fountain lest in its peaceful bosom he should be
+affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to the whispers
+that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too
+horrible to be entirely concealed or otherwise than so obscurely
+intimated. Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into
+the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor
+minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said
+that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings
+and outward terrors he walked continually in its shadow, groping
+darkly within his own soul or gazing through a medium that saddened
+the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his
+dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr.
+Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he
+passed by.
+
+Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable
+effect of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of
+his mysterious emblem--for there was no other apparent cause--he
+became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His
+converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves,
+affirming, though but figuratively, that before he brought them to
+celestial light they had been with him behind the black veil. Its
+gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections.
+Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper and would not yield their
+breath till he appeared, though ever, as he stooped to whisper
+consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own. Such
+were the terrors of the black veil even when Death had bared his
+visage. Strangers came long distances to attend service at his church
+with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure because it was
+forbidden them to behold his face. But many were made to quake ere
+they departed. Once, during Governor Belcher's administration, Mr.
+Hooper was appointed to preach the election sermon. Covered with his
+black veil, he stood before the chief magistrate, the council and the
+representatives, and wrought so deep an impression that the
+legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom
+and piety of our earliest ancestral sway.
+
+In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward
+act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though
+unloved and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their
+health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish. As
+years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired
+a name throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father
+Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners who were of mature age when he was
+settled had been borne away by many a funeral: he had one congregation
+in the church and a more crowded one in the churchyard; and, having
+wrought so late into the evening and done his work so well, it was now
+good Father Hooper's turn to rest.
+
+Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight in the
+death-chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none.
+But there was the decorously grave though unmoved physician, seeking
+only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save.
+There were the deacons and other eminently pious members of his
+church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark of Westbury, a young
+and zealous divine who had ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of
+the expiring minister. There was the nurse--no hired handmaiden of
+Death, but one whose calm affection had endured thus long in secrecy,
+in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not perish even at the
+dying-hour. Who but Elizabeth! And there lay the hoary head of good
+Father Hooper upon the death-pillow with the black veil still swathed
+about his brow and reaching down over his face, so that each more
+difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it to stir. All through life
+that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had
+separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him
+in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; and still it lay upon
+his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber and shade
+him from the sunshine of eternity.
+
+For some time previous his mind had been confused, wavering doubtfully
+between the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at
+intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to come. There had
+been feverish turns which tossed him from side to side and wore away
+what little strength he had. But in his most convulsive struggles and
+in the wildest vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought
+retained its sober influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lest
+the black veil should slip aside. Even if his bewildered soul could
+have forgotten, there was a faithful woman at his pillow who with
+averted eyes would have covered that aged face which she had last
+beheld in the comeliness of manhood.
+
+At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of
+mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath
+that grew fainter and fainter except when a long, deep and irregular
+inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit.
+
+The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.
+
+"Venerable Father Hooper," said he, "the moment of your release is at
+hand. Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time
+from eternity?"
+
+Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head;
+then--apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful--he
+exerted himself to speak.
+
+"Yea," said he, in faint accents; "my soul hath a patient weariness
+until that veil be lifted."
+
+"And is it fitting," resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, "that a man so
+given to prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and
+thought, so far as mortal judgment may pronounce,--is it fitting that
+a father in the Church should leave a shadow on his memory that may
+seem to blacken a life so pure? I pray you, my venerable brother, let
+not this thing be! Suffer us to be gladdened by your triumphant aspect
+as you go to your reward. Before the veil of eternity be lifted let me
+cast aside this black veil from your face;" and, thus speaking, the
+Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward to reveal the mystery of so many
+years.
+
+But, exerting a sudden energy that made all the beholders stand
+aghast, Father Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the
+bedclothes and pressed them strongly on the black veil, resolute to
+struggle if the minister of Westbury would contend with a dying man.
+
+"Never!" cried the veiled clergyman. "On earth, never!"
+
+"Dark old man," exclaimed the affrighted minister, "with what horrible
+crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?"
+
+Father Hooper's breath heaved: it rattled in his throat; but, with a
+mighty effort grasping forward with his hands, he caught hold of life
+and held it back till he should speak. He even raised himself in bed,
+and there he sat shivering with the arms of Death around him, while
+the black veil hung down, awful at that last moment in the gathered
+terrors of a lifetime. And yet the faint, sad smile so often there now
+seemed to glimmer from its obscurity and linger on Father Hooper's
+lips.
+
+"Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled face
+round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each other. Have
+men avoided me and women shown no pity and children screamed and fled
+only for my black veil? What but the mystery which it obscurely
+typifies has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows
+his inmost heart to his friend, the lover to his best-beloved; when
+man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely
+treasuring up the secret of his sin,--then deem me a monster for the
+symbol beneath which I have lived and die. I look around me, and, lo!
+on every visage a black veil!"
+
+While his auditors shrank from one another in mutual affright, Father
+Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile
+lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and
+a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years
+has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is
+moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the
+thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT.
+
+
+    There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in
+    the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston,
+    or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted the facts
+    recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists have
+    wrought themselves almost spontaneously into a sort of allegory.
+    The masques, mummeries and festive customs described in the text
+    are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these
+    points may be found in Strutt's _Book of English Sports and
+    Pastimes_.
+
+Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the
+banner-staff of that gay colony. They who reared it, should their
+banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's rugged
+hills and scatter flower-seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom
+were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep
+verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap of a more vivid hue than
+the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all
+the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the summer months and
+revelling with autumn and basking in the glow of winter's fireside.
+Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile,
+and came hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry
+Mount.
+
+Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on Midsummer
+eve. This venerated emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the
+slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the
+old wood-monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner colored like
+the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with
+birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with
+silvery leaves fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots
+of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden-flowers and
+blossoms of the wilderness laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so
+fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine
+tree. Where this green and flowery splendor terminated the shaft of
+the Maypole was stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at
+its top. On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of
+roses--some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the
+forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the colonists had
+reared from English seed. O people of the Golden Age, the chief of
+your husbandry was to raise flowers!
+
+But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the
+Maypole? It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from
+their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as
+all the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were
+Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders
+of a comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag; a
+second, human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a
+third, still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the
+beard and horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a
+bear erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with
+pink silk stockings. And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real
+bear of the dark forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of
+a human hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His
+inferior nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped.
+Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or
+extravagant, with red noses pendulous before their mouths, which
+seemed of awful depth and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit
+of laughter. Here might be seen the salvage man--well known in
+heraldry--hairy as a baboon and girdled with green leaves. By his
+side--a nobler figure, but still a counterfeit--appeared an Indian
+hunter with feathery crest and wampum-belt. Many of this strange
+company wore foolscaps and had little bells appended to their
+garments, tinkling with a silvery sound responsive to the inaudible
+music of their gleesome spirits. Some youths and maidens were of
+soberer garb, yet well maintained their places in the irregular throng
+by the expression of wild revelry upon their features.
+
+Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad
+smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole. Had a wanderer
+bewildered in the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a
+half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus,
+some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast,
+and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the
+change; but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible
+themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with
+whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.
+
+Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had
+ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud.
+One was a youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow
+pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded
+staff--the ensign of high dignity among the revellers--and his left
+grasped the slender fingers of a fair maiden not less gayly decorated
+than himself. Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy
+curls of each, and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up
+spontaneously there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the
+Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an
+English priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in
+heathen fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By
+the riot of his rolling eye and the pagan decorations of his holy
+garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the very Comus of the
+crew.
+
+"Votaries of the Maypole," cried the flower-decked priest, "merrily
+all day long have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your
+merriest hour, my hearts! Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May,
+whom I, a clerk of Oxford and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently
+to join in holy matrimony.--Up with your nimble spirits, ye
+morrice-dancers, green men and glee-maidens, bears and wolves and
+horned gentlemen! Come! a chorus now rich with the old mirth of Merry
+England and the wilder glee of this fresh forest, and then a dance, to
+show the youthful pair what life is made of and how airily they should
+go through it!--All ye that love the Maypole, lend your voices to the
+nuptial song of the Lord and Lady of the May!"
+
+This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where
+jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival.
+The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at
+sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life,
+beginning the measure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses that
+hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole had been twined for
+them, and would be thrown over both their heads in symbol of their
+flowery union. When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar
+burst from the rout of monstrous figures.
+
+"Begin you the stave, reverend sir," cried they all, "and never did
+the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send
+up."
+
+Immediately a prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with
+practised minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such
+a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the
+sound. But the May-lord--he of the gilded staff--chancing to look into
+his lady's eyes, was wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that
+met his own.
+
+"Edith, sweet Lady of the May," whispered he, reproachfully, "is yon
+wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look so
+sad? Oh, Edith, this is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive
+shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be
+brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing."
+
+"That was the very thought that saddened me. How came it in your mind
+too?" said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high
+treason to be sad at Merry Mount. "Therefore do I sigh amid this
+festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream,
+and fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary and
+their mirth unreal, and that we are no true lord and lady of the May.
+What is the mystery in my heart?"
+
+Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower
+of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers!
+No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were
+sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former
+pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. From
+the moment that they truly loved they had subjected themselves to
+earth's doom of care and sorrow and troubled joy, and had no more a
+home at Merry Mount. That was Edith's mystery. Now leave we the priest
+to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole till the
+last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit and the shadows of the
+forest mingle gloomily in the dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who
+these gay people were.
+
+Two hundred years ago, and more, the Old World and its inhabitants
+became mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the
+West--some to barter glass and such like jewels for the furs of the
+Indian hunter, some to conquer virgin empires, and one stern band to
+pray. But none of these motives had much weight with the colonists of
+Merry Mount. Their leaders were men who had sported so long with life,
+that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these unwelcome guests were led
+astray by the crowd of vanities which they should have put to flight.
+Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on masques, and
+play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the heart's fresh
+gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act
+out their latest day-dream. They gathered followers from all that giddy
+tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men. In their
+train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets; wandering players,
+whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers,
+and mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and
+fairs; in a word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that
+age, but now began to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of
+Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly they
+came across the sea. Many had been maddened by their previous troubles
+into a gay despair; others were as madly gay in the flush of youth, like
+the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever might be the quality of their
+mirth, old and young were gay at Merry Mount. The young deemed
+themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the
+counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully,
+because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a
+lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even
+to be truly blest.
+
+All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted
+hither. The King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of
+Misrule bore potent sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled
+whole acres of the forest to make bonfires, and danced by the
+blaze all night, crowned with garlands, and throwing flowers into
+the flame. At harvest time, though their crop was of the
+smallest, they made an image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and
+wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it home
+triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists of
+Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made
+their true history a poet's tale. Spring decked the hallowed
+emblem with young blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought
+roses of the deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the
+forest; Autumn enriched it with that red and yellow gorgeousness
+which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower; and
+Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles,
+till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam.
+Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it
+a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced round
+it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it
+their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner
+staff of Merry Mount.
+
+Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith
+than those Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a
+settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their
+prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the
+cornfield till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons
+were always at hand to shoot down the straggling savage. When
+they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English
+mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim
+bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their
+festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of
+psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance!
+The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the
+light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was
+round the whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan
+Maypole.
+
+A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult
+woods, each with a horseload of iron armor to burden his
+footsteps, would sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry
+Mount. There were the silken colonists, sporting round their
+Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear to dance, or striving to
+communicate their mirth to the grave Indian, or masquerading in the
+skins of deer and wolves which they had hunted for that especial
+purpose. Often the whole colony were playing at Blindman's Buff,
+magistrates and all with their eyes bandaged, except a single
+scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the
+bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a
+flower-decked corpse with merriment and festive music to his grave.
+But did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times they sang ballads
+and told tales for the edification of their pious visitors, or
+perplexed them with juggling tricks, or grinned at them through
+horse-collars; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of
+their own stupidity and began a yawning-match. At the very least of
+these enormities the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so
+darkly that the revellers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud
+had overcast the sunshine which was to be perpetual there. On the
+other hand, the Puritans affirmed that when a psalm was pealing from
+their place of worship the echo which the forest sent them back seemed
+often like the chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of
+laughter. Who but the fiend and his bond-slaves the crew of Merry
+Mount had thus disturbed them? In due time a feud arose, stern and
+bitter on one side, and as serious on the other as anything could be
+among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the Maypole. The
+future complexion of New England was involved in this important
+quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jurisdiction over
+the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime and
+make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm
+for ever; but should the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate,
+sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the
+forest and late posterity do homage to the Maypole.
+
+After these authentic passages from history we return to the nuptials
+of the Lord and Lady of the May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and
+must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the Maypole a
+solitary sunbeam is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint
+golden tinge blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even that
+dim light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry
+Mount to the evening gloom which has rushed so instantaneously from
+the black surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have
+rushed forth in human shape.
+
+Yes, with the setting sun the last day of mirth had passed from Merry
+Mount. The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag
+lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the
+bells of the morrice-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The
+Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.
+Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their
+foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment when waking thoughts
+start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the
+hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of
+monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a
+dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So
+stern was the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame
+and soul, seemed wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all
+of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the
+Puritan of Puritans: it was Endicott himself.
+
+"Stand off, priest of Baal!" said he, with a grim frown and laying no
+reverent hand upon the surplice. "I know thee, Blackstone![1] Thou art
+the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted
+Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of
+it in thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified
+this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would
+defile it! And first for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of
+thy worship!"
+
+[Footnote 1: Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should
+suspect a mistake here. The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric,
+is not known to have been an immoral man. We rather doubt his identity
+with the priest of Merry Mount.]
+
+And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor
+long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound, it
+showered leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast, and
+finally, with all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic
+of departed pleasures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. As
+it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew darker and the woods
+threw forth a more sombre shadow.
+
+"There!" cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work; "there lies
+the only Maypole in New England. The thought is strong within me that
+by its fall is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirthmakers
+amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott!"
+
+"Amen!" echoed his followers.
+
+But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol. At the
+sound the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure
+of broad mirth, yet at this moment strangely expressive of sorrow and
+dismay.
+
+"Valiant captain," quoth Peter Palfrey, the ancient of the band, "what
+order shall be taken with the prisoners?"
+
+"I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole," replied
+Endicott, "yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again and give
+each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It
+would have served rarely for a whipping-post."
+
+"But there are pine trees enow," suggested the lieutenant.
+
+"True, good ancient," said the leader. "Wherefore bind the heathen
+crew and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece as earnest of
+our future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks to rest
+themselves so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own
+well-ordered settlements where such accommodations may be found.
+Further penalties, such as branding and cropping of ears, shall be
+thought of hereafter."
+
+"How many stripes for the priest?" inquired Ancient Palfrey.
+
+"None as yet," answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the
+culprit. "It must be for the Great and General Court to determine
+whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penalty, may
+atone for his transgressions. Let him look to himself. For such as
+violate our civil order it may be permitted us to show mercy, but woe
+to the wretch that troubleth our religion!"
+
+"And this dancing bear?" resumed the officer. "Must he share the
+stripes of his fellows?"
+
+"Shoot him through the head!" said the energetic Puritan. "I suspect
+witchcraft in the beast."
+
+"Here be a couple of shining ones," continued Peter Palfrey, pointing
+his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. "They seem to be of high
+station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be
+fitted with less than a double share of stripes."
+
+Endicott rested on his sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect
+of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and
+apprehensive, yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure
+affection seeking aid and giving it that showed them to be man and
+wife with the sanction of a priest upon their love. The youth in the
+peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded staff and thrown his arm
+about the Lady of the May, who leaned against his breast too lightly
+to burden him, but with weight enough to express that their destinies
+were linked together for good or evil. They looked first at each other
+and then into the grim captain's face. There they stood in the first
+hour of wedlock, while the idle pleasures of which their companions
+were the emblems had given place to the sternest cares of life,
+personified by the dark Puritans. But never had their youthful beauty
+seemed so pure and high as when its glow was chastened by adversity.
+
+"Youth," said Endicott, "ye stand in an evil case--thou and thy
+maiden-wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both
+have a token to remember your wedding-day."
+
+"Stern man," cried the May-lord, "how can I move thee? Were the means
+at hand, I would resist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
+with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched."
+
+"Not so," replied the immitigable zealot. "We are not wont to show an
+idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.--What
+sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the
+penalty besides his own?"
+
+"Be it death," said Edith, "and lay it all on me."
+
+Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case.
+Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their
+home desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous
+destiny in the shape of the Puritan leader their only guide. Yet the
+deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was
+softened. He smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost
+sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes.
+
+"The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,"
+observed Endicott. "We will see how they comport themselves under
+their present trials ere we burden them with greater. If among the
+spoil there be any garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put
+upon this May-lord and his Lady instead of their glistening vanities.
+Look to it, some of you."
+
+"And shall not the youth's hair be cut?" asked Peter Palfrey, looking
+with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young
+man.
+
+"Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,"
+answered the captain. "Then bring them along with us, but more gently
+than their fellows. There be qualities in the youth which may make him
+valiant to fight and sober to toil and pious to pray, and in the
+maiden that may fit her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing up
+babes in better nurture than her own hath been.--Nor think ye, young
+ones, that they are the happiest, even in our lifetime of a moment,
+who misspend it in dancing round a Maypole."
+
+And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock-foundation
+of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the
+Maypole and threw it with his own gauntleted hand over the heads of
+the Lord and Lady of the May. It was a deed of prophecy. As the moral
+gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gayety, even so was their
+home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to
+it no more. But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest
+roses that had grown there, so in the tie that united them were
+intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys. They went
+heavenward supporting each other along the difficult path which it was
+their lot to tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the
+vanities of Merry Mount.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE BOY.
+
+
+In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called
+Quakers--led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the
+spirit--made their appearance in New England. Their reputation as
+holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them,
+the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further
+intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was
+intended to purge the land of heresy, though more than sufficiently
+vigorous, were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming
+persecution as a divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a
+holy courage unknown to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the
+cross by providing for the peaceable exercise of their religion in a
+distant wilderness. Though it was the singular fact that every nation
+of the earth rejected the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace
+toward all men, the place of greatest uneasiness and peril, and
+therefore in their eyes the most eligible, was the province of
+Massachusetts Bay.
+
+The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our
+pious forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured
+nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were
+attractions as powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor and reward
+would have been for the worldly-minded. Every European vessel brought
+new cargoes of the sect, eager to testify against the oppression which
+they hoped to share; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy
+fines from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous
+journeys through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as
+if conveyed by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened
+almost to madness by the treatment which they received, produced
+actions contrary to the rules of decency as well as of rational
+religion, and presented a singular contrast to the calm and staid
+deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day. The
+command of the Spirit, inaudible except to the soul and not to be
+controverted on grounds of human wisdom, was made a plea for most
+indecorous exhibitions which, abstractedly considered, well deserved
+the moderate chastisement of the rod. These extravagances, and the
+persecution which was at once their cause and consequence, continued
+to increase, till in the year 1659 the government of Massachusetts Bay
+indulged two members of the Quaker sect with the crown of martyrdom.
+
+An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to
+this act, but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon
+the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow
+mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made
+hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his
+influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the
+enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by
+brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less
+deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his
+associates in after-times. The historian of the sect affirms that by
+the wrath of Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the
+"bloody town" of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he
+takes his stand, as it were, among the graves of the ancient
+persecutors, and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook
+them in old age or at the parting-hour. He tells us that they died
+suddenly and violently and in madness, but nothing can exceed the
+bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome disease and "death
+by rottenness" of the fierce and cruel governor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of
+two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from
+the metropolis to the neighboring country-town in which he resided.
+The air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made
+brighter by the rays of a young moon which had now nearly reached the
+verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a
+gray frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the
+outskirts of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay
+between him and his home. The low straw-thatched houses were scattered
+at considerable intervals along the road, and, the country having been
+settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still
+bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn wind
+wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except
+the pine trees and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which
+it was the instrument. The road had penetrated the mass of woods that
+lay nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space,
+when the traveller's ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than
+even that of the wind. It was like the wailing of some one in
+distress, and it seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir
+tree in the centre of a cleared but unenclosed and uncultivated field.
+The Puritan could not but remember that this was the very spot which
+had been made accursed a few hours before by the execution of the
+Quakers, whose bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave
+beneath the tree on which they suffered. He struggled, however,
+against the superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and
+compelled himself to pause and listen.
+
+"The voice is most likely mortal, nor have I cause to tremble if it be
+otherwise," thought he, straining his eyes through the dim moonlight.
+"Methinks it is like the wailing of a child--some infant, it may be,
+which has strayed from its mother and chanced upon this place of
+death. For the ease of mine own conscience I must search this matter
+out." He therefore left the path and walked somewhat fearfully across
+the field. Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and
+trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the
+spectacle of that day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead
+to their loneliness.
+
+The traveller at length reached the fir tree, which from the middle
+upward was covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been
+erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death.
+Under this unhappy tree--which in after-times was believed to drop
+poison with its dew--sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood.
+It was a slender and light-clad little boy who leaned his face upon a
+hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth and wailed bitterly, yet
+in a suppressed tone, as if his grief might receive the punishment of
+crime. The Puritan, whose approach had been unperceived, laid his hand
+upon the child's shoulder and addressed him compassionately.
+
+"You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you
+weep," said he. "But dry your eyes and tell me where your mother
+dwells; I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you
+in her arms tonight."
+
+The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to
+the stranger. It was a pale, bright-eyed countenance, certainly not
+more than six years old, but sorrow, fear and want had destroyed much
+of its infantile expression. The Puritan, seeing the boy's frightened
+gaze and feeling that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to
+reassure him:
+
+"Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were
+to leave you here. What! you do not fear to sit beneath the gallows on
+a new-made grave, and yet you tremble at a friend's touch? Take heart,
+child, and tell me what is your name and where is your home."
+
+"Friend," replied the little boy, in a sweet though faltering voice,
+"they call me Ilbrahim, and my home is here."
+
+The pale, spiritual face, the eyes that seemed to mingle with the
+moonlight, the sweet, airy voice and the outlandish name almost made
+the Puritan believe that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung
+up out of the grave on which he sat; but perceiving that the
+apparition stood the test of a short mental prayer, and remembering
+that the arm which he had touched was lifelike, he adopted a more
+rational supposition. "The poor child is stricken in his intellect,"
+thought he, "but verily his words are fearful in a place like this."
+He then spoke soothingly, intending to humor the boy's fantasy:
+
+"Your home will scarce be comfortable, Ilbrahim, this cold autumn
+night, and I fear you are ill-provided with food. I am hastening to a
+warm supper and bed; and if you will go with me, you shall share
+them."
+
+"I thank thee, friend, but, though I be hungry and shivering with
+cold, thou wilt not give me food nor lodging," replied the boy, in the
+quiet tone which despair had taught him even so young. "My father was
+of the people whom all men hate; they have laid him under this heap of
+earth, and here is my home."
+
+The Puritan, who had laid hold of little Ilbrahim's hand, relinquished
+it as if he were touching a loathsome reptile. But he possessed a
+compassionate heart which not even religious prejudice could harden
+into stone. "God forbid that I should leave this child to perish,
+though he comes of the accursed sect," said he to himself. "Do we not
+all spring from an evil root? Are we not all in darkness till the
+light doth shine upon us? He shall not perish, neither in body nor, if
+prayer and instruction may avail for him, in soul." He then spoke
+aloud and kindly to Ilbrahim, who had again hid his face in the cold
+earth of the grave:
+
+"Was every door in the land shut against you, my child, that you have
+wandered to this unhallowed spot?"
+
+"They drove me forth from the prison when they took my father thence,"
+said the boy, "and I stood afar off watching the crowd of people; and
+when they were gone, I came hither, and found only this grave. I knew
+that my father was sleeping here, and I said, 'This shall be my
+home.'"
+
+"No, child, no, not while I have a roof over my head or a morsel to
+share with you," exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now
+fully excited. "Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm."
+
+The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth as if the cold
+heart beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast. The
+traveller, however, continued to entreat him tenderly, and, seeming to
+acquire some degree of confidence, he at length arose; but his slender
+limbs tottered with weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he
+leaned against the tree of death for support.
+
+"My poor boy, are you so feeble?" said the Puritan. "When did you
+taste food last?"
+
+"I ate of bread and water with my father in the prison," replied
+Ilbrahim, "but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day,
+saying that he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey's end.
+Trouble not thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food
+many times ere now."
+
+The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about
+him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the
+gratuitous cruelty of the instruments in this persecution. In the
+awakened warmth of his feelings he resolved that at whatever risk he
+would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had
+confided to his care. With this determination he left the accursed
+field and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy
+had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his
+progress, and he soon beheld the fire-rays from the windows of the
+cottage which he, a native of a distant clime, had built in the
+Western wilderness. It was surrounded by a considerable extent of
+cultivated ground, and the dwelling was situated in the nook of a
+wood-covered hill, whither it seemed to have crept for protection.
+
+"Look up, child," said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head had
+sunk upon his shoulder; "there is our home."
+
+At the word "home" a thrill passed through the child's frame, but he
+continued silent. A few moments brought them to the cottage door, at
+which the owner knocked; for at that early period, when savages were
+wandering everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were
+indispensable to the security of a dwelling. The summons was answered
+by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity,
+who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the
+door and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Farther back
+in the passageway the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no
+little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father's
+return.
+
+As the Puritan entered he thrust aside his cloak and displayed
+Ilbrahim's face to the female.
+
+"Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
+hands," observed he. "Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear
+ones who have departed from us."
+
+"What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?" she inquired.
+"Is he one whom the wilderness-folk have ravished from some Christian
+mother?"
+
+"No, Dorothy; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness," he
+replied. "The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
+morsel and to drink of his birchen cup, but Christian men, alas! had
+cast him out to die." Then he told her how he had found him beneath
+the gallows, upon his father's grave, and how his heart had prompted
+him like the speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast
+home and be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and
+clothe him as if he were his own child, and to afford him the
+instruction which should counteract the pernicious errors hitherto
+instilled into his infant mind.
+
+Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband,
+and she approved of all his doings and intentions.
+
+"Have you a mother, dear child?" she inquired.
+
+The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply,
+but Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother, who like the
+rest of her sect was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from
+the prison a short time before, carried into the uninhabited
+wilderness and left to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was
+no uncommon method of disposing of the Quakers, and they were
+accustomed to boast that the inhabitants of the desert were more
+hospitable to them than civilized man.
+
+"Fear not, little boy; you shall not need a mother, and a kind one,"
+said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. "Dry your tears,
+Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother."
+
+The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had
+successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim
+would consent to occupy it he knelt down, and as Dorothy listed to his
+simple and affecting prayer she marvelled how the parents that had
+taught it to him could have been judged worthy of death. When the boy
+had fallen asleep, she bent over his pale and spiritual countenance,
+pressed a kiss upon his white brow, drew the bedclothes up about his
+neck, and went away with a pensive gladness in her heart.
+
+Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old
+country. He had remained in England during the first years of the
+Civil War, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons
+under Cromwell. But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to
+develop themselves, he quitted the army of the Parliament and sought a
+refuge from the strife which was no longer holy among the people of
+his persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts. A more worldly
+consideration had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither, for New
+England offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as
+to dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it
+difficult to provide for a wife and increasing family. To this
+supposed impurity of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to
+impute the removal by death of all the children for whose earthly good
+the father had been over-thoughtful. They had left their native
+country blooming like roses, and like roses they had perished in a
+foreign soil. Those expounders of the ways of Providence, who had thus
+judged their brother and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin,
+were not more charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to
+fill up the void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the
+accursed sect. Nor did they fail to communicate their disapprobation
+to Tobias, but the latter in reply merely pointed at the little quiet,
+lovely boy, whose appearance and deportment were indeed as powerful
+arguments as could possibly have been adduced in his own favor. Even
+his beauty, however, and his winning manners sometimes produced an
+effect ultimately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the outer surfaces
+of their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard, affirmed
+that no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their
+antipathy to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of
+divers theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince
+him of the errors of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful
+controversialist, but the feeling of his religion was strong as
+instinct in him, and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the
+faith which his father had died for.
+
+The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the
+child's protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly
+began to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold
+regards of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people
+manifested their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some
+consideration, being a representative to the General Court and an
+approved lieutenant in the train-bands, yet within a week after his
+adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also,
+when walking through a solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice
+from some invisible speaker, and it cried, "What shall be done to the
+backslider? Lo! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine
+cords, and every cord three knots." These insults irritated Pearson's
+temper for the moment; they entered also into his heart, and became
+imperceptible but powerful workers toward an end which his most secret
+thought had not yet whispered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
+Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
+at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this
+measure from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the
+appointed hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had
+wrought for him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent
+years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of
+religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that
+martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and
+Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two
+parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path
+through the leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of
+their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the
+other side; but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had
+descended the hill and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house
+of prayer. Around the door, from which the drummer still sent forth
+his thundering summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including
+several of the oldest members of the congregation, many of the
+middle-aged and nearly all the younger males. Pearson found it
+difficult to sustain their united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy,
+whose mind was differently circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer
+to her and faltered not in her approach. As they entered the door they
+overheard the muttered sentiments of the assemblage; and when the
+reviling voices of the little children smote Ilbrahim's ear, he wept.
+
+The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling,
+the unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit
+offered nothing to excite the devotion which without such external
+aids often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was
+occupied by rows of long cushionless benches, supplying the place of
+pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division impassable except
+by children beneath a certain age.
+
+Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and
+Ilbrahim, being within the years of infancy, was retained under the
+care of the latter. The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their
+rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to
+dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose and turned his
+repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the
+sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a sweet infant of the
+skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the inhabitants of
+this miserable world closed up their impure hearts against him, drew
+back their earth-soiled garments from his touch and said, "We are
+holier than thou."
+
+Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother and retaining fast
+hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might
+befit a person of matured taste and understanding who should find
+himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not
+recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not
+yet commenced, however, when the boy's attention was arrested by an
+event apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her face muffled
+in a hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced slowly
+up the broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim's
+faint color varied, his nerves fluttered; he was unable to turn his
+eyes from the muffled female.
+
+When the preliminary prayer and hymn were over, the minister arose,
+and, having turned the hour-glass which stood by the great Bible,
+commenced his discourse. He was now well stricken in years, a man of
+pale, thin countenance, and his gray hairs were closely covered by a
+black velvet skull-cap. In his younger days he had practically learned
+the meaning of persecution from Archbishop Laud, and he was not now
+disposed to forget the lesson against which he had murmured then.
+Introducing the often-discussed subject of the Quakers, he gave a
+history of that sect and a description of their tenets in which error
+predominated and prejudice distorted the aspect of what was true. He
+adverted to the recent measures in the province, and cautioned his
+hearers of weaker parts against calling in question the just severity
+which God-fearing magistrates had at length been compelled to
+exercise. He spoke of the danger of pity--in some cases a commendable
+and Christian virtue, but inapplicable to this pernicious sect. He
+observed that such was their devilish obstinacy in error that even the
+little children, the sucking babes, were hardened and desperate
+heretics. He affirmed that no man without Heaven's especial warrant
+should attempt their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw
+them from the slough he should himself be precipitated into its lowest
+depths.
+
+The sands of the second hour were principally in the lower half of the
+glass when the sermon concluded. An approving murmur followed, and the
+clergyman, having given out a hymn, took his seat with much
+self-congratulation, and endeavored to read the effect of his
+eloquence in the visages of the people. But while voices from all
+parts of the house were tuning themselves to sing a scene occurred
+which, though not very unusual at that period in the province,
+happened to be without precedent in this parish.
+
+The muffled female, who had hitherto sat motionless in the front rank
+of the audience, now arose and with slow, stately and unwavering step
+ascended the pulpit stairs. The quaverings of incipient harmony were
+hushed and the divine sat in speechless and almost terrified
+astonishment while she undid the door and stood up in the sacred desk
+from which his maledictions had just been thundered. She then divested
+herself of the cloak and hood, and appeared in a most singular array.
+A shapeless robe of sackcloth was girded about her waist with a
+knotted cord; her raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its
+blackness was defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strewn
+upon her head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the
+deathly whiteness of a countenance which, emaciated with want and wild
+with enthusiasm and strange sorrows, retained no trace of earlier
+beauty. This figure stood gazing earnestly on the audience, and there
+was no sound nor any movement except a faint shuddering which every
+man observed in his neighbor, but was scarcely conscious of in
+himself. At length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke for
+the first few moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct
+utterance. Her discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly
+entangled with her reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible
+rhapsody, which, however, seemed to spread its own atmosphere round
+the hearer's soul, and to move his feelings by some influence
+unconnected with the words. As she proceeded beautiful but shadowy
+images would sometimes be seen like bright things moving in a turbid
+river, or a strong and singularly shaped idea leapt forth and seized
+at once on the understanding or the heart. But the course of her
+unearthly eloquence soon led her to the persecutions of her sect, and
+from thence the step was short to her own peculiar sorrows. She was
+naturally a woman of mighty passions, and hatred and revenge now
+wrapped themselves in the garb of piety. The character of her speech
+was changed; her images became distinct though wild, and her
+denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness.
+
+"The governor and his mighty men," she said, "have gathered together,
+taking counsel among themselves and saying, 'What shall we do unto
+this people--even unto the people that have come into this land to put
+our iniquity to the blush?' And, lo! the devil entereth into the
+council-chamber like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled,
+with a dark and twisted countenance and a bright, downcast eye. And he
+standeth up among the rulers; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to
+each; and every man lends his ear, for his word is 'Slay! Slay!' But I
+say unto ye, Woe to them that slay! Woe to them that shed the blood of
+saints! Woe to them that have slain the husband and cast forth the
+child, the tender infant, to wander homeless and hungry and cold till
+he die, and have saved the mother alive in the cruelty of their tender
+mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are they in the delight
+and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their death-hour, whether
+it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and lingering
+pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave, when the
+children's children shall revile the ashes of the fathers! Woe, woe,
+woe, at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the slain in
+this bloody land, and the father, the mother and the child, shall
+await them in a day that they cannot escape! Seed of the faith, seed
+of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know
+not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your voices,
+chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!"
+
+Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
+inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the
+hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience
+generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They
+remained stupefied, stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent
+which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its
+violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the
+usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed
+her in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.
+
+"Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane," he said,
+"Is it to the Lord's house that you come to pour forth the foulness of
+your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and
+remember that the sentence of death is on you--yea, and shall be
+executed, were it but for this day's work."
+
+"I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance," replied
+she, in a depressed, and even mild, tone. "I have done my mission unto
+thee and to thy people; reward me with stripes, imprisonment or death,
+as ye shall be permitted." The weakness of exhausted passion caused
+her steps to totter as she descended the pulpit stairs.
+
+The people, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on the floor
+of the house, whispering among themselves and glancing toward the
+intruder. Many of them now recognized her as the woman who had
+assaulted the governor with frightful language as he passed by the
+window of her prison; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer
+death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into
+the wilderness. The new outrage by which she had provoked her fate
+seemed to render further lenity impossible, and a gentleman in
+military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the
+door of the meetinghouse and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her
+feet press the floor, however, when an unexpected scene occurred. In
+that moment of her peril, when every eye frowned with death, a little
+timid boy threw his arms round his mother.
+
+"I am here, mother; it is I, and I will go with thee to prison," he
+exclaimed.
+
+She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost frightened expression, for
+she knew that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not
+hoped to see his face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one
+of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived
+her in the solitude of the desert or in prison; but when she felt his
+hand warm within her own and heard his little eloquence of childish
+love, she began to know that she was yet a mother.
+
+"Blessed art thou, my son!" she sobbed. "My heart was withered--yea,
+dead with thee and with thy father--and now it leaps as in the first
+moment when I pressed thee to my bosom."
+
+She knelt down and embraced him again and again, while the joy that
+could find no words expressed itself in broken accents, like the
+bubbles gushing up to vanish at the surface of a deep fountain. The
+sorrows of past years and the darker peril that was nigh cast not a
+shadow on the brightness of that fleeting moment. Soon, however, the
+spectators saw a change upon her face as the consciousness of her sad
+estate returned, and grief supplied the fount of tears which joy had
+opened. By the words she uttered it would seem that the indulgence of
+natural love had given her mind a momentary sense of its errors, and
+made her know how far she had strayed from duty in following the
+dictates of a wild fanaticism.
+
+"In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy," she said, "for
+thy mother's path has gone darkening onward, till now the end is
+death. Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were
+tottering, and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for;
+yet I have ill-performed a mother's part by thee in life, and now I
+leave thee no inheritance but woe and shame. Thou wilt go seeking
+through the world, and find all hearts closed against thee and their
+sweet affections turned to bitterness for my sake. My child, my child,
+how many a pang awaits thy gentle spirit, and I the cause of all!"
+
+She hid her face on Ilbrahim's head, and her long raven hair,
+discolored with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a
+veil. A low and interrupted moan was the voice of her heart's anguish,
+and it did not fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their
+involuntary virtue for a sin. Sobs were audible in the female section
+of the house, and every man who was a father drew his hand across his
+eyes.
+
+Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain feeling like the
+consciousness of guilt oppressed him; so that he could not go forth
+and offer himself as the protector of the child. Dorothy, however, had
+watched her husband's eye. Her mind was free from the influence that
+had begun to work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman and
+addressed her in the hearing of all the congregation.
+
+"Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be his mother," she said,
+taking Ilbrahim's hand. "Providence has signally marked out my husband
+to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our roof
+now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him.
+Leave the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his
+welfare."
+
+The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while
+she gazed earnestly in Dorothy's face. Her mild but saddened features
+and neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of
+fireside poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far
+as mortal could be so, in respect to God and man, while the
+enthusiast, in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had
+as evidently violated the duties of the present life and the future by
+fixing her attention wholly on the latter. The two females, as they
+held each a hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory: it was
+rational piety and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a
+young heart.
+
+"Thou art not of our people," said the Quaker, mournfully.
+
+"No, we are not of your people," replied Dorothy, with mildness, "but
+we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you. Doubt
+not that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our
+tender and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own
+children have gone before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no
+longer so," she added, in a faltering tone, "and your son will have
+all my care."
+
+"But will ye lead him in the path which his parents have trodden?"
+demanded the Quaker. "Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his
+father has died for, and for which I--even I--am soon to become an
+unworthy martyr? The boy has been baptized in blood; will ye keep the
+mark fresh and ruddy upon his forehead?"
+
+"I will not deceive you," answered Dorothy. "If your child become our
+child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has
+imparted to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we
+must do toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences,
+and not of yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your
+trust, even in complying with your wishes."
+
+The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and
+then turned her eyes upward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally,
+and the contention of her soul was evident.
+
+"Friend," she said, at length, to Dorothy, "I doubt not that my son
+shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe
+that even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world, for
+surely thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a
+husband. Doth he stand here among this multitude of people? Let him
+come forth, for I must know to whom I commit this most precious
+trust."
+
+She turned her face upon the male auditors, and after a momentary
+delay Tobias Pearson came forth from among them. The Quaker saw the
+dress which marked his military rank, and shook her head; but then she
+noted the hesitating air, the eyes that struggled with her own and
+were vanquished, the color that went and came and could find no
+resting-place. As she gazed an unmirthful smile spread over her
+features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot.
+Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake:
+
+"I hear it, I hear it! The voice speaketh within me and saith, 'Leave
+thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I have
+other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy
+love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.'
+I go, friends, I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence
+trusting that all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands
+there is a labor in the vineyard."
+
+She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and
+clung to his mother with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she
+had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands
+over his head in mental prayer, she was ready to depart.
+
+"Farewell, friends in mine extremity," she said to Pearson and his
+wife; "the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in heaven,
+to be returned a thousandfold hereafter.--And farewell, ye mine
+enemies, to whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a hair of my
+head, nor to stay my footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming
+when ye shall call upon me to witness for ye to this one sin
+uncommitted, and I will rise up and answer."
+
+She turned her steps toward the door, and the men who had stationed
+themselves to guard it withdrew and suffered her to pass. A general
+sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred.
+Sanctified by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the
+people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill and was lost
+behind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to
+renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already
+heard in many lands of Christendom, and she had pined in the cells of
+a Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the
+dungeons of the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the
+followers of the Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy
+and kindness which all the contending sects of our purer religion
+united to deny her. Her husband and herself had resided many months in
+Turkey, where even the sultan's countenance was gracious to them; in
+that pagan land, too, was Ilbrahim's birthplace, and his Oriental name
+was a mark of gratitude for the good deeds of an unbeliever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over
+Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like
+the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a
+piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after
+a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by
+many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their
+house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted
+infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed
+native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth and
+security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in
+the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim's demeanor lost a
+premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he
+became more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with
+freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered
+imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a
+certain unhealthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state
+Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from
+every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of
+happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
+points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety,
+coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the
+family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening
+moody countenances and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of
+the cottage.
+
+On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of
+pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy's prevailing temper
+sometimes yielded to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not
+always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently
+they appeared to flow--though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a
+cause--from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him
+often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household,
+and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the
+slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in
+distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and
+poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely
+forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
+sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he
+would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting
+in the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine
+beautifully round something stronger than itself; but if repulsed or
+torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's
+acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the
+child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a
+butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew
+daily less productive of familiar caresses.
+
+The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant
+and his protectors had not undergone a favorable change, in spite of
+the momentary triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over
+their sympathies. The scorn and bitterness of which he was the object
+were very grievous to Ilbrahim, especially when any circumstance made
+him sensible that the children his equals in age partook of the enmity
+of their parents. His tender and social nature had already overflowed
+in attachments to everything about him, and still there was a residue
+of unappropriated love which he yearned to bestow upon the little ones
+who were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on
+Ilbrahim was accustomed to remain for hours silent and inactive within
+hearing of the children's voices at their play, yet with his usual
+delicacy of feeling he avoided their notice, and would flee and hide
+himself from the smallest individual among them. Chance, however, at
+length seemed to open a medium of communication between his heart and
+theirs; it was by means of a boy about two years older than Ilbrahim,
+who was injured by a fall from a tree in the vicinity of Pearson's
+habitation. As the sufferer's own home was at some distance, Dorothy
+willingly received him under her roof and became his tender and
+careful nurse.
+
+Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy,
+and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting
+to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter
+immediately impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some
+examination to discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of
+the mouth and the irregular, broken line and near approach of the
+eyebrows. Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was an
+almost imperceptible twist of every joint and the uneven prominence of
+the breast, forming a body regular in its general outline, but faulty
+in almost all its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and
+reserved, and the village schoolmaster stigmatized him as obtuse in
+intellect, although at a later period of life he evinced ambition and
+very peculiar talents. But, whatever might be his personal or moral
+irregularities, Ilbrahim's heart seized upon and clung to him from the
+moment that he was brought wounded into the cottage; the child of
+persecution seemed to compare his own fate with that of the sufferer,
+and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had created a sort
+of relationship between them. Food, rest and the fresh air for which
+he languished were neglected; he nestled continually by the bedside of
+the little stranger and with a fond jealousy endeavored to be the
+medium of all the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became
+convalescent Ilbrahim contrived games suitable to his situation or
+amused him by a faculty which he had perhaps breathed in with the air
+of his barbaric birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary
+adventures on the spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible
+succession. His tales were, of course, monstrous, disjointed and
+without aim, but they were curious on account of a vein of human
+tenderness which ran through them all and was like a sweet familiar
+face encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The
+auditor paid much attention to these romances and sometimes
+interrupted them by brief remarks upon the incidents, displaying
+shrewdness above his years, mingled with a moral obliquity which
+grated very harshly against Ilbrahim's instinctive rectitude. Nothing,
+however, could arrest the progress of the latter's affection, and
+there were many proofs that it met with a response from the dark and
+stubborn nature on which it was lavished. The boy's parents at length
+removed him to complete his cure under their own roof.
+
+Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure, but he made
+anxious and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of
+the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant
+summer afternoon the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the
+little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the
+recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score
+of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced
+among the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this
+weary world as they journeyed by the spot marvelled why life,
+beginning in such brightness, should proceed in gloom, and their
+hearts or their imaginations answered them and said that the bliss of
+childhood gushes from its innocence. But it happened that an
+unexpected addition was made to the heavenly little band. It was
+Ilbrahim, who came toward the children with a look of sweet confidence
+on his fair and spiritual face, as if, having manifested his love to
+one of them, he had no longer to fear a repulse from their society. A
+hush came over their mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood
+whispering to each other while he drew nigh; but all at once the devil
+of their fathers entered into the unbreeched fanatics, and, sending up
+a fierce, shrill cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an
+instant he was the centre of a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks
+against him, pelted him with stones and displayed an instinct of
+destruction far more loathsome than the bloodthirstiness of manhood.
+
+The invalid, in the mean while, stood apart from the tumult, crying
+out with a loud voice, "Fear not, Ilbrahim; come hither and take my
+hand," and his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching
+the victim's struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye,
+the foul-hearted little villain lifted his staff and struck Ilbrahim
+on the mouth so forcibly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor
+child's arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of
+blows, but now he dropped them at once. His persecutors beat him down,
+trampled upon him, dragged him by his long fair locks, and Ilbrahim
+was on the point of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever entered
+bleeding into heaven. The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a
+few neighbors, who put themselves to the trouble of rescuing the
+little heretic, and of conveying him to Pearson's door.
+
+Ilbrahim's bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
+accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was
+more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a
+negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had
+previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried
+by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion which had once corresponded
+to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its
+former play of expression--the dance of sunshine reflected from moving
+water--was destroyed by the cloud over his existence; his notice was
+attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to
+find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him than at a
+happier period. A stranger founding his judgment upon these
+circumstances would have said that the dulness of the child's
+intellect widely contradicted the promise of his features, but the
+secret was in the direction of Ilbrahim's thoughts, which were
+brooding within him when they should naturally have been wandering
+abroad. An attempt of Dorothy to revive his former sportiveness was
+the single occasion on which his quiet demeanor yielded to a violent
+display of grief; he burst into passionate weeping and ran and hid
+himself, for his heart had become so miserably sore that even the hand
+of kindness tortured it like fire. Sometimes at night, and probably in
+his dreams, he was heard to cry, "Mother! Mother!" as if her place,
+which a stranger had supplied while Ilbrahim was happy, admitted of no
+substitute in his extreme affliction. Perhaps among the many
+life-weary wretches then upon the earth there was not one who combined
+innocence and misery like this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the
+victim of his own heavenly nature.
+
+While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an
+earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection
+in his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences
+found Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted
+and longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first
+effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened feeling,
+an incipient love for the child's whole sect, but joined to this, and
+resulting, perhaps, from self-suspicion, was a proud and ostentatious
+contempt of their tenets and practical extravagances. In the course of
+much thought, however--for the subject struggled irresistibly into his
+mind--the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident, and
+the points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another
+aspect or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go
+on even while he slept, and that which had been a doubt when he laid
+down to rest would often hold the place of a truth confirmed by some
+forgotten demonstration when he recalled his thoughts in the morning.
+But, while he was thus becoming assimilated to the enthusiasts, his
+contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them, grew very fierce against
+himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a
+sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his
+state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim's misfortune, and the emotions
+consequent upon that event completed the change of which the child had
+been the original instrument.
+
+In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the
+infatuation of their victims had decreased. The dungeons were never
+empty; the streets of almost every village echoed daily with the lash;
+the life of a woman whose mild and Christian spirit no cruelty could
+embitter had been sacrificed, and more innocent blood was yet to
+pollute the hands that were so often raised in prayer. Early after the
+Restoration the English Quakers represented to Charles II. that a
+"vein of blood was open in his dominions," but, though the displeasure
+of the voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not prompt.
+And now the tale must stride forward over many months, leaving Pearson
+to encounter ignominy and misfortune; his wife, to a firm endurance of
+a thousand sorrows; poor Ilbrahim, to pine and droop like a cankered
+rose-bud; his mother, to wander on a mistaken errand, neglectful of
+the holiest trust which can be committed to a woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson's
+habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from
+his broad hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and
+a ruddy light, and large logs dripping with half-melted snow lay ready
+to cast upon the embers. But the apartment was saddened in its aspect
+by the absence of much of the homely wealth which had once adorned it,
+for the exaction of repeated fines and his own neglect of temporal
+affairs had greatly impoverished the owner. And with the furniture of
+peace the implements of war had likewise disappeared; the sword was
+broken, the helm and cuirass were cast away for ever: the soldier had
+done with battles, and might not lift so much as his naked hand to
+guard his head. But the Holy Book remained, and the table on which it
+rested was drawn before the fire, while two of the persecuted sect
+sought comfort from its pages.
+
+He who listened while the other read was the master of the house, now
+emaciated in form and altered as to the expression and healthiness of
+his countenance, for his mind had dwelt too long among visionary
+thoughts and his body had been worn by imprisonment and stripes. The
+hale and weatherbeaten old man who sat beside him had sustained less
+injury from a far longer course of the same mode of life. In person he
+was tall and dignified, and, which alone would have made him hateful
+to the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed
+hat and rested on his shoulders. As the old man read the sacred page
+the snow drifted against the windows or eddied in at the crevices of
+the door, while a blast kept laughing in the chimney and the blaze
+leaped fiercely up to seek it. And sometimes, when the wind struck the
+hill at a certain angle and swept down by the cottage across the
+wintry plain, its voice was the most doleful that can be conceived; it
+came as if the past were speaking, as if the dead had contributed each
+a whisper, as if the desolation of ages were breathed in that one
+lamenting sound.
+
+The Quaker at length closed the book, retaining, however, his hand
+between the pages which he had been reading, while he looked
+steadfastly at Pearson. The attitude and features of the latter might
+have indicated the endurance of bodily pain; he leaned his forehead on
+his hands, his teeth were firmly closed and his frame was tremulous at
+intervals with a nervous agitation.
+
+"Friend Tobias," inquired the old man, compassionately, "hast thou
+found no comfort in these many blessed passages of Scripture?"
+
+"Thy voice has fallen on my ear like a sound afar off and indistinct,"
+replied Pearson, without lifting his eyes. "Yea; and when I have
+hearkened carefully, the words seemed cold and lifeless and intended
+for another and a lesser grief than mine. Remove the book," he added,
+in a tone of sullen bitterness; "I have no part in its consolations,
+and they do but fret my sorrow the more."
+
+"Nay, feeble brother; be not as one who hath never known the light,"
+said the elder Quaker, earnestly, but with mildness. "Art thou he that
+wouldst be content to give all and endure all for conscience' sake,
+desiring even peculiar trials that thy faith might be purified and thy
+heart weaned from worldly desires? And wilt thou sink beneath an
+affliction which happens alike to them that have their portion here
+below and to them that lay up treasure in heaven? Faint not, for thy
+burden is yet light."
+
+"It is heavy! It is heavier than I can bear!" exclaimed Pearson, with
+the impatience of a variable spirit. "From my youth upward I have been
+a man marked out for wrath, and year by year--yea, day after day--I
+have endured sorrows such as others know not in their lifetime. And
+now I speak not of the love that has been turned to hatred, the honor
+to ignominy, the ease and plentifulness of all things to danger, want
+and nakedness. All this I could have borne and counted myself blessed.
+But when my heart was desolate with many losses, I fixed it upon the
+child of a stranger, and he became dearer to me than all my buried
+ones; and now he too must die as if my love were poison. Verily, I am
+an accursed man, and I will lay me down in the dust and lift up my
+head no more."
+
+"Thou sinnest, brother, but it is not for me to rebuke thee, for I
+also have had my hours of darkness wherein I have murmured against the
+cross," said the old Quaker. He continued, perhaps in the hope of
+distracting his companion's thoughts from his own sorrows: "Even of
+late was the light obscured within me, when the men of blood had
+banished me on pain of death and the constables led me onward from
+village to village toward the wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was
+wielding the knotted cords; they sunk deep into the flesh, and thou
+mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my footsteps by the
+blood that followed. As we went on--"
+
+"Have I not borne all this, and have I murmured?" interrupted Pearson,
+impatiently.
+
+"Nay, friend, but hear me," continued the other. "As we journeyed on
+night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of the
+persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven forbid
+that I should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in the
+cottage windows, and I could discern the inmates as they gathered in
+comfort and security, every man with his wife and children by their
+own evening hearth. At length we came to a tract of fertile land. In
+the dim light the forest was not visible around it, and, behold, there
+was a straw-thatched dwelling which bore the very aspect of my home
+far over the wild ocean--far in our own England. Then came bitter
+thoughts upon me--yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul.
+The happiness of my early days was painted to me, the disquiet of my
+manhood, the altered faith of my declining years. I remembered how I
+had been moved to go forth a wanderer when my daughter, the youngest,
+the dearest of my flock, lay on her dying-bed, and--"
+
+"Couldst thou obey the command at such a moment?" exclaimed Pearson,
+shuddering.
+
+"Yea! yea!" replied the old man, hurriedly. "I was kneeling by her
+bedside when the voice spoke loud within me, but immediately I rose
+and took my staff and gat me gone. Oh that it were permitted me to
+forget her woeful look when I thus withdrew my arm and left her
+journeying through the dark valley alone! for her soul was faint and
+she had leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was
+assailed by the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a
+cruel parent; yea, even my daughter with her pale dying features
+seemed to stand by me and whisper, 'Father, you are deceived; go home
+and shelter your gray head.'--O Thou to whom I have looked in my
+furthest wanderings," continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes
+to heaven, "inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the
+unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and
+suffered for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!--But I
+yielded not; I knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the
+scourge bit more fiercely into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I
+went on in peace and joy toward the wilderness."
+
+The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of
+reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale, and his unwonted
+emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat
+in silence, with their faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its
+red embers new scenes of persecution yet to be encountered. The snow
+still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of
+the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed
+upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a
+neighboring apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyes of both
+Quakers to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous gust
+of wind had led his thoughts by a natural association to homeless
+travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation.
+
+"I have wellnigh sunk under my own share of this trial," observed he,
+sighing heavily; "yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so
+the child's mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and
+many, but this will be the sorest of all."
+
+"Fear not for Catharine," replied the old Quaker, "for I know that
+valiant woman and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother's
+heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with
+her faith; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has
+been thus early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and
+she will feel that he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her.
+Blessed, blessed are they that with so little suffering can enter into
+peace!"
+
+The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound:
+it was a quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson's wan
+countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him
+what to dread; the old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his
+glance was firm as that of the tried soldier who awaits his enemy.
+
+"The men of blood have come to seek me," he observed, with calmness.
+"They have heard how I was moved to return from banishment, and now am
+I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long
+looked for. I will open unto them lest they say, 'Lo, he feareth!'"
+
+"Nay; I will present myself before them," said Pearson, with recovered
+fortitude. "It may be that they seek me alone and know not that thou
+abidest with me."
+
+"Let us go boldly, both one and the other," rejoined his companion.
+"It is not fitting that thou or I should shrink."
+
+They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they
+opened, bidding the applicant "Come in, in God's name!" A furious
+blast of wind drove the storm into their faces and extinguished the
+lamp; they had barely time to discern a figure so white from head to
+foot with the drifted snow that it seemed like Winter's self come in
+human shape to seek refuge from its own desolation.
+
+"Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it may," said Pearson.
+"It must needs be pressing, since thou comest on such a bitter night."
+
+"Peace be with this household!" said the stranger, when they stood on
+the floor of the inner apartment.
+
+Pearson started; the elder Quaker stirred the slumbering embers of the
+fire till they sent up a clear and lofty blaze. It was a female voice
+that had spoken; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry,
+in that comfortable light.
+
+"Catharine, blessed woman," exclaimed the old man, "art thou come to
+this darkened land again? Art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as
+in former years? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and
+from the dungeon hast thou come forth triumphant, but strengthen,
+strengthen now thy heart, Catharine, for Heaven will prove thee yet
+this once ere thou go to thy reward."
+
+"Rejoice, friends!" she replied. "Thou who hast long been of our
+people, and thou whom a little child hath led to us, rejoice! Lo, I
+come, the messenger of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is
+over-past. The heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in
+gentleness toward us, and he hath sent forth his letters to stay the
+hands of the men of blood. A ship's company of our friends hath
+arrived at yonder town, and I also sailed joyfully among them."
+
+As Catharine spoke her eyes were roaming about the room in search of
+him for whose sake security was dear to her. Pearson made a silent
+appeal to the old man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task
+assigned him.
+
+"Sister," he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone, "thou
+tellest us of his love manifested in temporal good, and now must we
+speak to thee of that selfsame love displayed in chastenings.
+Hitherto, Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome
+and difficult path and leading an infant by the hand; fain wouldst
+thou have looked heavenward continually, but still the cares of that
+little child have drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth.
+Sister, go on rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede
+thine own no more."
+
+But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled. She shook like a
+leaf; she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her
+hair. The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his
+eye upon hers as if to repress any outbreak of passion.
+
+"I am a woman--I am but a woman; will He try me above my strength?"
+said Catharine, very quickly and almost in a whisper. "I have been
+wounded sore; I have suffered much--many things in the body, many in
+the mind; crucified in myself and in them that were dearest to me.
+Surely," added she, with a long shudder, "he hath spared me in this
+one thing." She broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence:
+"Tell me, man of cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast
+me down never to rise again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his
+hand?--And thou to whom I committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled
+thy trust? Give me back the boy well, sound, alive--alive--or earth
+and heaven shall avenge me!"
+
+The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint--the very
+faint--voice of a child.
+
+On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest and to
+Dorothy that Ilbrahim's brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its
+close. The two former would willingly have remained by him to make use
+of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to
+the time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing
+traveller's reception in the world whither he goes, may at least
+sustain him in bidding adieu to earth. But, though Ilbrahim uttered no
+complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked upon him; so that
+Dorothy's entreaties and their own conviction that the child's feet
+might tread heaven's pavement and not soil it had induced the two
+Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and,
+except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have
+been thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm
+began to rise, something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy's
+mind and to render his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing
+wind lingered to shake the casement, he strove to turn his head toward
+it; if the door jarred to and fro upon its hinges, he looked long and
+anxiously thitherward; if the heavy voice of the old man as he read
+the Scriptures rose but a little higher, the child almost held his
+dying-breath to listen; if a snowdrift swept by the cottage with a
+sound like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that
+some visitant should enter. But after a little time he relinquished
+whatever secret hope had agitated him and with one low complaining
+whisper turned his cheek upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy
+with his usual sweetness and besought her to draw near him; she did
+so, and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his, grasping it with a
+gentle pressure, as if to assure himself that he retained it. At
+intervals, and without disturbing the repose of his countenance, a
+very faint trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a mild
+but somewhat cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver.
+
+As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the
+borders of eternity, Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern
+the near though dim delightfulness of the home he was about to reach;
+she would not have enticed the little wanderer back, though she
+bemoaned herself that she must leave him and return. But just when
+Ilbrahim's feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice
+behind him, and it recalled him a few, few paces of the weary path
+which he had travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features she
+perceived that their placid expression was again disturbed. Her own
+thoughts had been so wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and
+of human speech were lost to her; but when Catharine's shriek pierced
+through the room, the boy strove to raise himself.
+
+"Friend, she is come! Open unto her!" cried he.
+
+In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside; she drew Ilbrahim
+to her bosom, and he nestled there with no violence of joy, but
+contentedly as if he were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into her
+face, and, reading its agony, said with feeble earnestness,
+
+"Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now;" and with these words the
+gentle boy was dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The king's mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual
+in preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities,
+trusting in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the
+supposed instability of the royal government, shortly renewed their
+severities in all other respects. Catharine's fanaticism had become
+wilder by the sundering of all human ties; and wherever a scourge was
+lifted, there was she to receive the blow; and whenever a dungeon was
+unbarred, thither she came to cast herself upon the floor. But in
+process of time a more Christian spirit--a spirit of forbearance,
+though not of cordiality or approbation--began to pervade the land in
+regard to the persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims
+eyed her rather in pity than in wrath, when the matrons fed her with
+the fragments of their children's food and offered her a lodging on a
+hard and lowly bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their
+sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast,--then did Catharine
+return to Pearson's dwelling, and made that her home.
+
+As if Ilbrahim's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his
+gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true
+religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same
+griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made
+the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement,
+she became a subject of not deep but general interest--a being on whom
+the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every
+one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to
+experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which
+are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a
+long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent
+sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim's
+green and sunken grave.
+
+
+
+
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
+Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker
+settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had
+a neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on
+each side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden
+tobacco-stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare and
+was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none
+the worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them say, would
+rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he
+beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used
+to court by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock, knowing
+well that the country-lasses of New England are generally great
+performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my
+story, the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always
+itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.
+
+After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler--whose name
+was Dominicus Pike--had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece
+of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little
+gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a
+morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An
+opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a
+sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of
+the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart.
+Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a
+bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a
+weary yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the
+freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do
+the same all day.
+
+"Good-morning, mister," said Dominicus, when within speaking-distance.
+"You go a pretty good jog. What's the latest news at Parker's Falls?"
+
+The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and
+answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker's Falls,
+which, as being the limit of his own day's journey, the pedler had
+naturally mentioned in his inquiry.
+
+"Well, then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, "let's have the latest news
+where you did come from. I'm not particular about Parker's Falls. Any
+place will answer."
+
+Being thus importuned, the traveller--who was as ill-looking a fellow
+as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods--appeared to
+hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news
+or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on the
+step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he
+might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.
+
+"I do remember one little trifle of news," said he. "Old Mr.
+Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight
+o'clock last night by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to
+the branch of a St. Michael's pear tree where nobody would find him
+till the morning."
+
+As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger
+betook himself to his journey again with more speed than ever, not
+even turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish
+cigar and relate all the particulars. The pedler whistled to his mare
+and went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr.
+Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him
+many a bunch of long nines and a great deal of pig-tail, lady's twist
+and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which
+the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a
+straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o'clock
+the preceding night, yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the
+morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham's own family
+had but just discovered his corpse hanging on the St. Michael's pear
+tree. The stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots, to
+travel at such a rate.
+
+"Ill-news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike, "but this
+beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
+President's message."
+
+The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a
+mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend
+did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and
+country-store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish
+wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself
+invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
+with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline till it
+became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of
+corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader, and a former
+clerk of his to whom Dominicus related the facts testified that the
+old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about
+nightfall with the money and valuable papers of the store in his
+pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham's
+catastrophe, hinting--what the pedler had discovered in his own
+dealings with him--that he was a crusty old fellow as close as a vise.
+His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping
+school in Kimballton.
+
+What with telling the news for the public good and driving bargains
+for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose
+to put up at a tavern about five miles short of Parker's Falls. After
+supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the
+bar-room and went through the story of the murder, which had grown so
+fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as
+twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for
+gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer who had arrived on
+horseback a short time before and was now seated in a corner, smoking
+his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately,
+brought his chair right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in
+the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever
+smelt.
+
+"Will you make affidavit," demanded he, in the tone of a
+country-justice taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham
+of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last and
+found hanging on his great pear tree yesterday morning?"
+
+"I tell the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus, dropping
+his half-burnt cigar. "I don't say that I saw the thing done, so I
+can't take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that way."
+
+"But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that if Squire Higginbotham
+was murdered night before last I drank a glass of bitters with his
+ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
+store as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
+little business for him on the road. He didn't seem to know any more
+about his own murder than I did."
+
+"Why, then it can't be a fact!" exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
+
+"I guess he'd have mentioned, if it was," said the old farmer; and he
+removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in
+the mouth.
+
+Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no
+heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself
+with a glass of gin and water and went to bed, where all night long he
+dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree.
+
+To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would
+have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham's), Dominicus rose in
+the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart and
+trotted swiftly away toward Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy
+road and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have
+encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to
+bear it, but he met neither ox-team, light wagon, chaise, horseman nor
+foot-traveller till, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came
+trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder, on the
+end of a stick.
+
+"Good-morning, mister," said the pedler, reining in his mare. "If you
+come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, maybe you can tell me the
+real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old
+fellow actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a
+nigger?"
+
+Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the
+stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this
+sudden question the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow
+hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus
+replied:
+
+"No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him
+last night at eight o'clock; I came away at seven. His folks can't
+have looked for him in the orchard yet."
+
+Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself and,
+though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace
+which would have kept the pedler's mare on a smart trot. Dominicus
+stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been
+committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it
+in all its circumstances on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham's
+corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the
+mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he was hanging
+in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the
+unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with
+the stranger's surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a
+hue-and-cry after him as an accomplice in the murder, since a murder,
+it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
+
+"But let the poor devil go," thought the pedler. "I don't want his
+black blood on my head, and hanging the nigger wouldn't unhang Mr.
+Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman? It's a sin, I know, but I
+should hate to have him come to life a second time and give me the
+lie."
+
+With these meditations Dominicus Pike drove into the street of
+Parker's Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as
+three cotton-factories and a slitting-mill can make it. The machinery
+was not in motion and but a few of the shop doors unbarred when he
+alighted in the stable-yard of the tavern and made it his first
+business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His second duty, of
+course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe to the hostler.
+He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too positive as to the date
+of the direful fact, and also to be uncertain whether it were
+perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto or by the son of Erin alone.
+Neither did he profess to relate it on his own authority or that of
+any one person, but mentioned it as a report generally diffused.
+
+The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and
+became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had
+originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker's Falls as
+any citizen of the place, being part-owner of the slitting-mill and a
+considerable stockholder in the cotton-factories. The inhabitants felt
+their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such was the excitement
+that the Parker's Falls _Gazette_ anticipated its regular day of
+publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and a column
+of double pica emphasized with capitals and headed "HORRID MURDER OF
+MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!" Among other dreadful details, the printed account
+described the mark of the cord round the dead man's neck and stated
+the number of thousand dollars of which he had been robbed; there was
+much pathos, also, about the affliction of his niece, who had gone
+from one fainting-fit to another ever since her uncle was found
+hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree with his pockets inside out.
+The village poet likewise commemorated the young lady's grief in
+seventeen stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and in
+consideration of Mr. Higginbotham's claims on the town determined to
+issue handbills offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the
+apprehension of his murderers and the recovery of the stolen property.
+
+Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker's Falls, consisting of
+shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory-girls, mill-men
+and schoolboys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible
+loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the
+cotton-machines, which refrained from their usual din out of respect
+to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown,
+his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult.
+
+Our friend Dominicus in his vanity of heart forgot his intended
+precautions, and, mounting on the town-pump, announced himself as the
+bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a
+sensation. He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had
+just begun a new edition of the narrative with a voice like a
+field-preacher when the mail-stage drove into the village street. It
+had travelled all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton at
+three in the morning.
+
+"Now we shall hear all the particulars!" shouted the crowd.
+
+The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern followed by a
+thousand people; for if any man had been minding his own business till
+then, he now left it at sixes and sevens to hear the news. The pedler,
+foremost in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom had been
+startled from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the centre of a
+mob. Every man assailing them with separate questions, all propounded
+at once, the couple were struck speechless, though one was a lawyer
+and the other a young lady.
+
+"Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about old
+Mr. Higginbotham!" bawled the mob. "What is the coroner's verdict? Are
+the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham's niece come out of her
+fainting-fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!"
+
+The coachman said not a word except to swear awfully at the hostler
+for not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had
+generally his wits about him even when asleep; the first thing he did
+after learning the cause of the excitement was to produce a large red
+pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely polite young
+man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as
+glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a
+fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such
+a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a
+love-tale from it as a tale of murder.
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies," said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the
+mill-men and the factory-girls, "I can assure you that some
+unaccountable mistake--or, more probably, a wilful falsehood
+maliciously contrived to injure Mr. Higginbotham's credit--has excited
+this singular uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o'clock
+this morning, and most certainly should have been informed of the
+murder had any been perpetrated. But I have proof nearly as strong as
+Mr. Higginbotham's own oral testimony in the negative. Here is a note
+relating to a suit of his in the Connecticut courts which was
+delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten
+o'clock last evening."
+
+So saying, the lawyer, exhibited the date and signature of the note,
+which irrefragably proved either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham
+was alive when he wrote it, or, as some deemed the more probable case
+of two doubtful ones, that he was so absorbed in worldly business as
+to continue to transact it even after his death. But unexpected
+evidence was forthcoming. The young lady, after listening to the
+pedler's explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and
+put her curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern door, making a
+modest signal to be heard.
+
+"Good people," said she, "I am Mr. Higginbotham's niece."
+
+A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy
+and bright--that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the
+authority of the Parker's Falls _Gazette_, to be lying at death's
+door in a fainting-fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted all along
+whether a young lady would be quite so desperate at the hanging of a
+rich old uncle.
+
+"You see," continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, "that this
+strange story is quite unfounded as to myself, and I believe I may
+affirm it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham. He
+has the kindness to give me a home in his house, though I contribute
+to my own support by teaching a school. I left Kimballton this morning
+to spend the vacation of commencement-week with a friend about five
+miles from Parker's Falls. My generous uncle, when he heard me on the
+stairs, called me to his bedside and gave me two dollars and fifty
+cents to pay my stage-fare, and another dollar for my extra expenses.
+He then laid his pocketbook under his pillow, shook hands with me, and
+advised me to take some biscuit in my bag instead of breakfasting on
+the road. I feel confident, therefore, that I left my beloved relative
+alive, and trust that I shall find him so on my return."
+
+The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so
+sensible and well worded, and delivered with such grace and propriety,
+that everybody thought her fit to be preceptress of the best academy
+in the State. But a stranger would have supposed that Mr. Higginbotham
+was an object of abhorrence at Parker's Falls and that a thanksgiving
+had been proclaimed for his murder, so excessive was the wrath of the
+inhabitants on learning their mistake. The mill-men resolved to bestow
+public honors on Dominicus Pike, only hesitating whether to tar and
+feather him, ride him on a rail or refresh him with an ablution at the
+town-pump, on the top of which he had declared himself the bearer of
+the news. The selectmen, by advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting
+him for a misdemeanor in circulating unfounded reports, to the great
+disturbance of the peace of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus
+either from mob-law or a court of justice but an eloquent appeal made
+by the young lady in his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt
+gratitude to his benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out
+of town under a discharge of artillery from the schoolboys, who found
+plenty of ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he
+turned his head to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham's
+niece a ball of the consistence of hasty-pudding hit him slap in the
+mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His whole person was so
+bespattered with the like filthy missiles that he had almost a mind to
+ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the town-pump;
+for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been a deed of
+charity.
+
+However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud--an
+emblem of all stains of undeserved opprobrium--was easily brushed off
+when dry. Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he
+refrain from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had excited.
+The handbills of the selectmen would cause the commitment of all the
+vagabonds in the State, the paragraph in the Parker's Falls _Gazette_
+would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in
+the London newspapers, and many a miser would tremble for his
+moneybags and life on learning the catastrophe of Mr. Higginbotham.
+The pedler meditated with much fervor on the charms of the young
+schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke nor looked
+so like an angel as Miss Higginbotham while defending him from the
+wrathful populace at Parker's Falls.
+
+Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along
+determined to visit that place, though business had drawn, him out of
+the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of
+the supposed murder he continued to revolve the circumstances in his
+mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed.
+Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveller,
+it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
+evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact, and there was
+a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly
+questioned. When to this singular combination of incidents it was
+added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's character
+and habits of life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael's
+pear tree, near which he always passed at nightfall, the
+circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted
+whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's
+direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries
+along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had
+in his service an Irishman of doubtful character whom he had hired
+without a recommendation, on the score of economy.
+
+"May I be hanged myself," exclaimed Dominicus Pike, aloud, on reaching
+the top of a lonely hill, "if I'll believe old Higginbotham is
+unhanged till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his own
+mouth. And, as he's a real shaver, I'll have the minister, or some
+other responsible man, for an endorser."
+
+It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton
+turnpike, about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name. His
+little mare was fast bringing him up with a man on horseback who
+trotted through the gate a few rods in advance of him, nodded to the
+toll-gatherer and kept on towards the village. Dominicus was
+acquainted with the toll-man, and while making change the usual
+remarks on the weather passed between them.
+
+"I suppose," said the pedler, throwing back his whiplash to bring it
+down like a feather on the mare's flank, "you have not seen anything
+of old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?"
+
+"Yes," answered the toll-gatherer; "he passed the gate just before you
+drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the
+dusk. He's been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff's
+sale there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat
+with me, but to-night he nodded, as if to say, 'Charge my toll,' and
+jogged on; for, wherever he goes, he must always be at home by eight
+o'clock."
+
+"So they tell me," said Dominicus.
+
+"I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,"
+continued the toll-gatherer. "Says I to myself tonight, 'He's more
+like a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.'"
+
+The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just
+discern the horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to
+recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham, but through the evening
+shadows and amid the dust from the horse's feet the figure appeared
+dim and unsubstantial, as if the shape of the mysterious old man were
+faintly moulded of darkness and gray light.
+
+Dominicus shivered. "Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other
+world by way of the Kimballton turnpike," thought he. He shook the
+reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the rear of
+the gray old shadow till the latter was concealed by a bend of the
+road. On reaching this point the pedler no longer saw the man on
+horseback, but found himself at the head of the village street, not
+far from a number of stores and two taverns clustered round the
+meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a gate, the
+boundary of a wood-lot beyond which lay an orchard, farther still a
+mowing-field, and last of all a house. These were the premises of Mr.
+Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had
+been left in the background by the Kimballton turnpike.
+
+Dominicus knew the place, and the little mare stopped short by
+instinct, for he was not conscious of tightening the reins. "For the
+soul of me, I cannot get by this gate!" said he, trembling. "I never
+shall be my own man again till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is
+hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree." He leaped from the cart, gave
+the rein a turn round the gate-post, and ran along the green path of
+the wood-lot as if Old Nick were chasing behind. Just then the village
+clock tolled eight, and as each deep stroke fell Dominicus gave a
+fresh bound and flew faster than before, till, dim in the solitary
+centre of the orchard, he saw the fated pear tree. One great branch
+stretched from the old contorted trunk across the path and threw the
+darkest shadow on that one spot. But something seemed to struggle
+beneath the branch.
+
+The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of
+peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful
+emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed forward, prostrated
+a sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip, and found--not,
+indeed, hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree, but trembling beneath
+it with a halter round his neck--the old identical Mr. Higginbotham.
+
+"Mr. Higginbotham," said Dominicus, tremulously, "you're an honest
+man, and I'll take your word for it. Have you been hanged, or not?"
+
+If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the
+simple machinery by which this "coming event" was made to cast its
+"shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr.
+Higginbotham; two of them successively lost courage and fled, each
+delaying the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in
+the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of
+fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of
+Dominicus Pike.
+
+It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into high
+favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress and
+settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves the
+interest. In due time the old gentleman capped the climax of his
+favors by dying a Christian death in bed; since which melancholy
+event, Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton and established a
+large tobacco-manufactory in my native village.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE ANNIE'S RAMBLE.
+
+
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+
+The town-crier has rung his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie
+stands on her father's doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the
+loud voice is talking about. Let me listen too. Oh, he is telling the
+people that an elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with
+horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to
+town and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them.
+Perhaps little Annie would like to go? Yes, and I can see that the
+pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street with the green
+trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine and the pavements
+and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept them
+with her broom. She feels that impulse to go strolling away--that
+longing after the mystery of the great world--which many children
+feel, and which I felt in my childhood. Little Annie shall take a
+ramble with me. See! I do but hold out my hand, and like some bright
+bird in the sunny air, with her blue silk frock fluttering upward from
+her white pantalets, she comes bounding on tiptoe across the street.
+
+Smooth back your brown curls, Annie, and let me tie on your bonnet,
+and we will set forth. What a strange couple to go on their rambles
+together! One walks in black attire, with a measured step and a heavy
+brow and his thoughtful eyes bent down, while the gay little girl
+trips lightly along as if she were forced to keep hold of my hand lest
+her feet should dance away from the earth. Yet there is sympathy
+between us. If I pride myself on anything, it is because I have a
+smile that children love; and, on the other hand, there are few grown
+ladies that could entice me from the side of little Annie, for I
+delight to let my mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless
+child. So come, Annie; but if I moralize as we go, do not listen to
+me: only look about you and be merry.
+
+Now we turn the corner. Here are hacks with two horses and
+stage-coaches with four thundering to meet each other, and trucks and
+carts moving at a slower pace, being heavily laden with barrels from
+the wharves; and here are rattling gigs which perhaps will be smashed
+to pieces before our eyes. Hitherward, also, comes a man trundling a
+wheelbarrow along the pavement. Is not little Annie afraid of such a
+tumult? No; she does not even shrink closer to my side, but passes on
+with fearless confidence, a happy child amidst a great throng of grown
+people who pay the same reverence to her infancy that they would to
+extreme old age. Nobody jostles her: all turn aside to make way for
+little Annie; and, what is most singular, she appears conscious of her
+claim to such respect. Now her eyes brighten with pleasure. A
+street-musician has seated himself on the steps of yonder church and
+pours forth his strains to the busy town--a melody that has gone
+astray among the tramp of footsteps, the buzz of voices and the war of
+passing wheels. Who heeds the poor organ-grinder? None but myself and
+little Annie, whose feet begin to move in unison with the lively tune,
+as if she were loth that music should be wasted without a dance. But
+where would Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes or
+the rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age, some feeble
+with disease; some are so lean that their bones would rattle, and
+others of such ponderous size that their agility would crack the
+flagstones; but many, many have leaden feet because their hearts are
+far heavier than lead. It is a sad thought that I have chanced upon.
+What a company of dancers should we be! For I too am a gentleman of
+sober footsteps, and therefore, little Annie, let us walk sedately on.
+
+It is a question with me whether this giddy child or my sage self have
+most pleasure in looking at the shop-windows. We love the silks of
+sunny hue that glow within the darkened premises of the spruce
+dry-goods men; we are pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver and
+the chased gold, the rings of wedlock and the costly love-ornaments,
+glistening at the window of the jeweller; but Annie, more than I,
+seeks for a glimpse of her passing figure in the dusty looking-glasses
+at the hardware-stores. All that is bright and gay attracts us both.
+
+Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood as well as
+present partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the
+fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner--those pies with such
+white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich
+mince with whole plums intermixed, or piquant apple delicately
+rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty
+pyramid; those sweet little circlets sweetly named kisses; those dark
+majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress,
+mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered with sugar! Then
+the mighty treasures of sugarplums, white and crimson and yellow, in
+large glass vases, and candy of all varieties, and those little
+cockles--or whatever they are called--much prized by children for
+their sweetness, and more for the mottoes which they enclose, by
+love-sick maids and bachelors! Oh, my mouth waters, little Annie, and
+so doth yours, but we will not be tempted except to an imaginary
+feast; so let us hasten onward devouring the vision of a plum-cake.
+
+Here are pleasures, as some people would say, of a more exalted kind,
+in the window of a bookseller. Is Annie a literary lady? Yes; she is
+deeply read in Peter Parley's tomes and has an increasing love for
+fairy-tales, though seldom met with nowadays, and she will subscribe
+next year to the _Juvenile Miscellany_. But, truth to tell, she
+is apt to turn away from the printed page and keep gazing at the
+pretty pictures, such as the gay-colored ones which make this
+shop-window the continual loitering-place of children. What would
+Annie think if, in the book which I mean to send her on New Year's
+day, she should find her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco
+with gilt edges, there to remain till she become a woman grown with
+children of her own to read about their mother's childhood? That would
+be very queer.
+
+Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand,
+till suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town. Oh,
+my stars! Is this a toyshop, or is it fairy-land? For here are gilded
+chariots in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by
+side, while their courtiers on these small horses should gallop in
+triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair. Here, too, are
+dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of those same princely
+personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest hall of
+their palace--full five feet high--and behold their nobles feasting
+adown the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen
+should sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here
+stands a turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly
+heathen as he is, and next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at
+Annie and myself. Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot in
+red-and-blue uniforms, with drums, fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of
+noiseless music; they have halted on the shelf of this window after
+their weary march from Liliput. But what cares Annie for soldiers? No
+conquering queen is she--neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine; her
+whole heart is set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a
+fashionable stare. This is the little girl's true plaything. Though
+made of wood, a doll is a visionary and ethereal personage endowed by
+childish fancy with a peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of
+romance, an actor and a sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the
+chief inhabitant of that wild world with which children ape the real
+one. Little Annie does not understand what I am saying, but looks
+wishfully at the proud lady in the window. We will invite her home
+with us as we return.--Meantime, good-bye, Dame Doll! A toy yourself,
+you look forth from your window upon many ladies that are also toys,
+though they walk and speak, and upon a crowd in pursuit of toys,
+though they wear grave visages. Oh, with your never-closing eyes, had
+you but an intellect to moralize on all that flits before them, what a
+wise doll would you be!--Come, little Annie, we shall find toys
+enough, go where we may.
+
+Now we elbow our way among the throng again. It is curious in the most
+crowded part of a town to meet with living creatures that had their
+birthplace in some far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in
+the wilderness of men. Look up, Annie, at that canary-bird hanging out
+of the window in his cage. Poor little fellow! His golden feathers are
+all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he would have glistened twice as
+brightly among the summer islands, but still he has become a citizen
+in all his tastes and habits, and would not sing half so well without
+the uproar that drowns his music. What a pity that he does not know
+how miserable he is! There is a parrot, too, calling out, "Pretty
+Poll! Pretty Poll!" as we pass by. Foolish bird, to be talking about
+her prettiness to strangers, especially as she is not a pretty Poll,
+though gaudily dressed in green and yellow! If she had said "Pretty
+Annie!" there would have been some sense in it. See that gray squirrel
+at the door of the fruit-shop whirling round and round so merrily
+within his wire wheel! Being condemned to the treadmill, he makes it
+an amusement. Admirable philosophy!
+
+Here comes a big, rough dog--a countryman's dog--in search of his
+master, smelling at everybody's heels and touching little Annie's hand
+with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have
+patted him.--Success to your search, Fidelity!--And there sits a great
+yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat,
+gazing at this transitory world with owl's eyes, and making pithy
+comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.--Oh,
+sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a pair of
+philosophers.
+
+Here we see something to remind us of the town-crier and his
+ding-dong-bell. Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air,
+pictured all over with wild beasts, as if they had met together to
+choose a king, according to their custom in the days of AEsop. But they
+are choosing neither a king nor a President, else we should hear a
+most horrible snarling! They have come from the deep woods and the
+wild mountains and the desert sands and the polar snows only to do
+homage to my little Annie. As we enter among them the great elephant
+makes us a bow in the best style of elephantine courtesy, bending
+lowly down his mountain bulk, with trunk abased and leg thrust out
+behind. Annie returns the salute, much to the gratification of the
+elephant, who is certainly the best-bred monster in the caravan. The
+lion and the lioness are busy with two beef-bones. The royal tiger,
+the beautiful, the untamable, keeps pacing his narrow cage with a
+haughty step, unmindful of the spectators or recalling the fierce
+deeds of his former life, when he was wont to leap forth upon such
+inferior animals from the jungles of Bengal.
+
+Here we see the very same wolf--do not go near him, Annie!--the
+selfsame wolf that devoured little Red Riding-Hood and her
+grandmother. In the next cage a hyena from Egypt who has doubtless
+howled around the pyramids and a black bear from our own forests are
+fellow-prisoners and most excellent friends. Are there any two living
+creatures who have so few sympathies that they cannot possibly be
+friends? Here sits a great white bear whom common observers would call
+a very stupid beast, though I perceive him to be only absorbed in
+contemplation; he is thinking of his voyages on an iceberg, and of his
+comfortable home in the vicinity of the north pole, and of the little
+cubs whom he left rolling in the eternal snows. In fact, he is a bear
+of sentiment. But oh those unsentimental monkeys! The ugly, grinning,
+aping, chattering, ill-natured, mischievous and queer little brutes!
+Annie does not love the monkeys; their ugliness shocks her pure,
+instinctive delicacy of taste and makes her mind unquiet because it
+bears a wild and dark resemblance to humanity. But here is a little
+pony just big enough for Annie to ride, and round and round he gallops
+in a circle, keeping time with his trampling hoofs to a band of music.
+And here, with a laced coat and a cocked hat, and a riding-whip in his
+hand--here comes a little gentleman small enough to be king of the
+fairies and ugly enough to be king of the gnomes, and takes a flying
+leap into the saddle. Merrily, merrily plays the music, and merrily
+gallops the pony, and merrily rides the little old gentleman.--Come,
+Annie, into the street again; perchance we may see monkeys on
+horseback there.
+
+Mercy on us! What a noisy world we quiet people live in! Did Annie
+ever read the cries of London city? With what lusty lungs doth yonder
+man proclaim that his wheelbarrow is full of lobsters! Here comes
+another, mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast
+from a tin horn, as much as to say, "Fresh fish!" And hark! a voice on
+high, like that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing
+that some chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome
+caverns into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But,
+well-a-day, we hear a shrill voice of affliction--the scream of a
+little child, rising louder with every repetition of that smart,
+sharp, slapping sound produced by an open hand on tender flesh. Annie
+sympathizes, though without experience of such direful woe.
+
+Lo! the town-crier again, with some new secret for the public ear.
+Will he tell us of an auction, or of a lost pocket-book or a show of
+beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than
+any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in
+his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried
+motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the
+sounds are scattered forth in quick succession far and near.
+
+Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
+
+Now he raises his clear loud voice above all the din of the town. It
+drowns the buzzing talk of many tongues and draws each man's mind from
+his own business; it rolls up and down the echoing street, and ascends
+to the hushed chamber of the sick, and penetrates downward to the
+cellar kitchen where the hot cook turns from the fire to listen. Who
+of all that address the public ear, whether in church or court-house
+or hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town-crier!
+What saith the people's orator?
+
+"Strayed from her home, a LITTLE GIRL of five years old, in a blue
+silk frock and white pantalets, with brown curling hair and hazel
+eyes. Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother--"
+
+Stop, stop, town-crier! The lost is found.--Oh, my pretty Annie, we
+forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair and
+has sent the town-crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting
+old and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go
+my hand? Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go forget not to
+thank Heaven, my Annie, that after wandering a little way into the
+world you may return at the first summons with an untainted and
+unwearied heart, and be a happy child again. But I have gone too far
+astray for the town-crier to call me back.
+
+Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit throughout my
+ramble with little Annie. Say not that it has been a waste of precious
+moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk and a reverie of
+childish imaginations about topics unworthy of a grown man's notice.
+Has it been merely this? Not so--not so. They are not truly wise who
+would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of
+aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple
+thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth for little cause or
+none, their grief soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us
+is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost
+forgotten and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as
+yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
+to call ourselves young any more,--then it is good to steal away from
+the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
+hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of
+still fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
+struggle onward and do our part in life--perhaps as fervently as ever,
+but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
+wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!
+
+
+
+
+WAKEFIELD.
+
+
+In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,
+of a man--let us call him Wakefield--who absented himself for a long
+time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very
+uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be
+condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
+from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record
+of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
+found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
+London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in
+the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
+friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
+dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home
+every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
+great a gap in his matrimonial felicity--when his death was reckoned
+certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his
+wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood--he entered the
+door one evening quietly as from a day's absence, and became a loving
+spouse till death.
+
+This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the
+purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is
+one, I think, which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We
+know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly,
+yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least,
+it has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that
+the story must be true and a conception of its hero's character.
+Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent
+in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own
+meditation; or if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years
+of Wakefield's vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be
+a pervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done
+up neatly and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always
+its efficacy and every striking incident its moral.
+
+What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own
+idea and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his
+matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm,
+habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most
+constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest
+wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so;
+his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that tended to no
+purpose or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
+energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper
+meaning of the term, made no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold
+but not depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with
+riotous thoughts nor perplexed with originality, who could have
+anticipated that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place
+among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked
+who was the man in London the surest to perform nothing to-day which
+should be remembered on the morrow, they would have thought of
+Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She,
+without having analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet
+selfishness that had rusted into his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort
+of vanity, the most uneasy attribute about him; of a disposition to
+craft which had seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping
+of petty secrets hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she
+called a little strangeness sometimes in the good man. This latter
+quality is indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
+
+Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk
+of an October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat
+covered with an oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a
+small portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he
+is to take the night-coach into the country. She would fain inquire
+the length of his journey, its object and the probable time of his
+return, but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates
+him only by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the
+return-coach nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days,
+but, at all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening.
+Wakefield, himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is
+before him. He holds out his hand; she gives her own and meets his
+parting kiss in the matter-of-course way of a ten years' matrimony,
+and forth goes the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to
+perplex his good lady by a whole week's absence. After the door has
+closed behind him, she perceives it thrust partly open and a vision of
+her husband's face through the aperture, smiling on her and gone in a
+moment. For the time this little incident is dismissed without a
+thought, but long afterward, when she has been more years a widow than
+a wife, that smile recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of
+Wakefield's visage. In her many musings she surrounds the original
+smile with a multitude of fantasies which make it strange and awful;
+as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look
+is frozen on his pale features; or if she dreams of him in heaven,
+still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its
+sake, when all others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts
+whether she is a widow.
+
+But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along
+the street ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass
+of London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us
+follow close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous
+turns and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the
+fireside of a small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next
+street to his own and at his journey's end. He can scarcely trust his
+good-fortune in having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at
+one time he was delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted
+lantern, and again there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind
+his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he
+heard a voice shouting afar and fancied that it called his name.
+Doubtless a dozen busybodies had been watching him and told his wife
+the whole affair.
+
+Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this
+great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy
+bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee
+home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself
+even for a little week from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she
+for a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided
+from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true
+wife for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human
+affections--not that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close
+again.
+
+Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed,
+Wakefield lies down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads
+forth his arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed
+bed, "No," thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him; "I will not
+sleep alone another night." In the morning he rises earlier than usual
+and sets himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his
+loose and rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very
+singular step with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without
+being able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The
+vagueness of the project and the convulsive effort with which he
+plunges into the execution of it are equally characteristic of a
+feeble-minded man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as
+he may, and finds himself curious to know the progress of matters at
+home--how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and,
+briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which
+he was a central object will be affected by his removal. A morbid
+vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But how is
+he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this
+comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next
+street to his home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach
+had been whirling him away all night. Yet should he reappear, the
+whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly
+puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving
+to cross the head of the street and send one hasty glance toward his
+forsaken domicile. Habit--for he is a man of habits--takes him by the
+hand and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at
+the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon
+the step.--Wakefield, whither are you going?
+
+At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of
+the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries
+away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn
+his head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of
+him? Will not the whole household--the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the
+smart maid-servant and the dirty little footboy--raise a hue-and-cry
+through London streets in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master?
+Wonderful escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but
+is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice such as
+affects us all when, after a separation of months or years, we again
+see some hill or lake or work of art with which we were friends of
+old. In ordinary cases this indescribable impression is caused by the
+comparison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the
+reality. In Wakefield the magic of a single night has wrought a
+similar transformation, because in that brief period a great moral
+change has been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before
+leaving the spot he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife
+passing athwart the front window with her face turned toward the head
+of the street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with
+the idea that among a thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must
+have detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be
+somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal-fire of his
+lodgings.
+
+So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial
+conception and the stirring up of the man's sluggish temperament to
+put it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural
+train. We may suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying
+a new wig of reddish hair and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion
+unlike his customary suit of brown, from a Jew's old-clothes bag. It
+is accomplished: Wakefield is another man. The new system being now
+established, a retrograde movement to the old would be almost as
+difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.
+Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionally
+incident to his temper and brought on at present by the inadequate
+sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of
+Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to
+death. Well, twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each
+time with a heavier step, a paler cheek and more anxious brow, and in
+the third week of his non-appearance he detects a portent of evil
+entering the house in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker
+is muffled. Toward nightfall comes the chariot of a physician and
+deposits its big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence
+after a quarter of an hour's visit he emerges, perchance the herald of
+a funeral. Dear woman! will she die?
+
+By this time Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling,
+but still lingers away from his wife's bedside, pleading with his
+conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught
+else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks
+she gradually recovers. The crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps,
+but quiet, and, let him return soon or late, it will never be feverish
+for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the mist of Wakefield's mind
+and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf
+divides his hired apartment from his former home. "It is but in the
+next street," he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world.
+Hitherto he has put off' his return from one particular day to
+another; henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined--not
+to-morrow; probably next week; pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have
+nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the
+self-banished Wakefield.
+
+Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen
+pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays
+its strong hand on every deed which we do and weaves its consequences
+into an iron tissue of necessity.
+
+Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for ten years or so to
+haunt around his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be
+faithful to his wife with all the affection of which his heart is
+capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be
+remarked, he has lost the perception of singularity in his conduct.
+
+Now for a scene. Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a
+man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless
+observers, yet bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no
+common fate for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his
+low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and
+lustreless, sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener
+seem to look inward. He bends his head and moves with an indescribable
+obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the
+world. Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you
+will allow that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men from
+Nature's ordinary handiwork--have produced one such here. Next,
+leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the
+opposite direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of
+life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church.
+She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either
+died away or have become so essential to her heart that they would be
+poorly exchanged for joy. Just as the lean man and well-conditioned
+woman are passing a slight obstruction occurs and brings these two
+figures directly in contact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the
+crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder; they stand face to face,
+staring into each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation thus
+Wakefield meets his wife. The throng eddies away and carries them
+asunder. The sober widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to
+church, but pauses in the portal and throws a perplexed glance along
+the street. She passes in, however, opening her prayer-book as she
+goes.
+
+And the man? With so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands
+to gaze after him he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and
+throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break out;
+his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength; all the
+miserable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance, and
+he cries out passionately, "Wakefield, Wakefield! You are mad!"
+Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so
+moulded him to itself that, considered in regard to his
+fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to
+possess his right mind. He had contrived--or, rather, he had
+happened--to dissever himself from the world, to vanish, to give up
+his place and privileges with living men without being admitted among
+the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in
+the bustle of the city as of old, but the crowd swept by and saw him
+not; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at
+his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the
+affection of the other. It was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to
+retain his original share of human sympathies and to be still involved
+in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on
+them. It would be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect
+of such circumstances on his heart and intellect separately and in
+unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be conscious of it,
+but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the truth, indeed,
+would come, but only for the moment, and still he would keep saying,
+"I shall soon go back," nor reflect that he had been saying so for
+twenty years.
+
+I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear in the
+retrospect scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at
+first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no more than
+an interlude in the main business of his life. When, after a little
+while more, he should deem it time to re-enter his parlor, his wife
+would clap her hands for joy on beholding the middle-aged Mr.
+Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close of our
+favorite follies, we should be young men--all of us--and till
+Doomsday.
+
+One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is
+taking his customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his
+own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter
+down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his
+umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the
+parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and
+fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque
+shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin and the
+broad waist form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with
+the up-flickering and down-sinking blaze almost too merrily for the
+shade of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall,
+and is driven by the unmannerly gust full into Wakefield's face and
+bosom. He is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand
+wet and shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm
+him and his own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes
+which doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their
+bedchamber? No; Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the
+steps--heavily, for twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came
+down, but he knows it not.--Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole
+home that is left you? Then step into your grave.--The door opens. As
+he passes in we have a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize
+the crafty smile which was the precursor of the little joke that he
+has ever since been playing off at his wife's expense. How
+unmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman! Well, a good night's rest
+to Wakefield!
+
+This happy event--supposing it to be such--could only have occurred at
+an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the
+threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which
+shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the
+seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely
+adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that
+by stepping aside for a moment a man exposes himself to a fearful risk
+of losing his place for ever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it
+were, the outcast of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP.
+
+
+(SCENE, _the corner of two principal streets_,[1] _the_ TOWN-PUMP
+_talking through its nose_.)
+
+
+Noon by the north clock! Noon by the east! High noon, too, by these
+hot sunbeams, which full, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almost
+make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly,
+we public characters have a tough time of it! And among all the
+town-officers chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains for a
+single year the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed in
+perpetuity upon the town-pump? The title of "town-treasurer" is
+rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has.
+The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I
+provide bountifully for the pauper without expense to him that pays
+taxes. I am at the head of the fire department and one of the
+physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace all
+water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some
+of the duties of the town-clerk by promulgating public notices when
+they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief
+person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable
+pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright
+and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I
+stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all
+day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market,
+stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, and at night I hold a
+lantern over my head both to show where I am and keep people out of
+the gutters. At this sultry noontide I am cupbearer to the parched
+populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist.
+Like a dramseller on the mall at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and
+sundry in my plainest accents and at the very tiptop of my voice.
+
+[Footnote 1: Essex and Washington streets, Salem.]
+
+Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up,
+gentlemen! Walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the
+unadulterated ale of Father Adam--better than Cognac, Hollands,
+Jamaica, strong beer or wine of any price; here it is by the hogshead
+or the single glass, and not a cent to pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk
+up, and help yourselves!
+
+It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they
+come.--A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff and away again, so as to keep
+yourselves in a nice cool sweat.--You, my friend, will need another
+cupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as
+it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score
+of miles to-day, and like a wise man have passed by the taverns and
+stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat
+without and fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder or
+melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink
+and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the
+fiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup of
+mine.--Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great strangers
+hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a
+closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent.
+Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot
+gullet and is converted quite to steam in the miniature Tophet which
+you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an
+honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a
+dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so
+delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the
+flavor of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, remember
+that I keep a constant supply at the old stand.--Who next?--Oh, my
+little friend, you are let loose from school and come hither to scrub
+your blooming face and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule,
+and other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the town-pump? Take
+it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your
+heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now!
+There, my dear child! put down the cup and yield your place to this
+elderly gentleman who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones that I
+suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so
+much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for
+people who have no wine-cellars.--Well, well, sir, no harm done, I
+hope? Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe
+shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen
+love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the
+town-pump. This thirsty dog with his red tongue lolling out does not
+scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs and laps eagerly out
+of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again!--Jowler, did your
+worship ever have the gout?
+
+Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends, and
+while my spout has a moment's leisure I will delight the town with a
+few historical remniscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome
+shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn
+earth in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement.
+The water was as bright and clear and deemed as precious as liquid
+diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial till
+the fatal deluge of the firewater burst upon the red men and swept
+their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his
+followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long
+beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark.
+Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here out
+of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm and
+laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it
+was the watering-place, and, as it were, the washbowl, of the
+vicinity, whither all decent folks resorted to purify their visages
+and gaze at them afterward--at least, the pretty maidens did--in the
+mirror which it made. On Sabbath-days, whenever a babe was to be
+baptized, the sexton filled his basin here and placed it on the
+communion-table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the
+site of yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after another
+was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and
+waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as
+if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally the
+fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides and cart-loads
+of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming
+a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its
+refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the
+forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the course
+of time a town-pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring;
+and when the first decayed, another took its place, and then another,
+and still another, till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve
+you with my iron goblet. Drink and be refreshed. The water is as pure
+and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red sagamore beneath
+the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured
+under these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick
+buildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as this wasted and
+long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues
+of cold water--too little valued since your fathers' days--be
+recognized by all.
+
+Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence and
+spout forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for this
+teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or
+somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than
+the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on
+the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened
+with a gallon or two apiece and they can afford time to breathe it in
+with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around
+the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.
+
+But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the
+remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of
+modesty if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own
+multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you
+think of me, the better men and women you will find yourselves. I
+shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days, though on
+that account alone I might call myself the household god of a hundred
+families. Far be it from me, also, to hint, my respectable friends, at
+the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to
+keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight
+bells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the
+town-pump and found me always at my post firm amid the confusion and
+ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth
+while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma as the
+physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the
+nauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so, since the
+days of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial
+influence on mankind.
+
+No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede
+to me--if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a
+class--of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such
+spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of
+the vast portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from the
+fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall
+be my great confederate. Milk and water--the TOWN-PUMP and the Cow!
+Such is the glorious copartnership that shall tear down the
+distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the
+cider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolize
+the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then
+Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched
+where her squalid form may shelter herself. Then Disease, for lack of
+other victims, shall gnaw its own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do
+not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now the frenzy of
+hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire
+to son and rekindled in every generation by fresh draughts of liquid
+flame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of
+passion cannot but grow cool, and war--the drunkenness of
+nations--perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war of
+households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy--a
+calm bliss of temperate affections--shall pass hand in hand through
+life and lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close. To them the
+past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of
+such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces
+shall express what their spirits were and are to be by a lingering
+smile of memory and hope.
+
+Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised
+orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers
+undergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to
+themselves.--Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to
+wet my whistle.--Thank you, sir!--My dear hearers, when the world
+shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect
+your useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make a
+bonfire in honor of the town-pump. And when I shall have decayed like
+my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain
+richly sculptured take my place upon this spot. Such monuments should
+be erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of the
+distinguished champions of my cause. Now, listen, for something very
+important is to come next.
+
+There are two or three honest friends of mine--and true friends I know
+they are--who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do
+put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow
+upon the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.--I pray
+you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to
+get tipsy with zeal for temperance and take up the honorable cause of
+the town-pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy-bottle?
+Or can the excellent qualities of cold water be no otherwise
+exemplified than by plunging slapdash into hot water and woefully
+scalding yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral
+warfare which you are to wage--and, indeed, in the whole conduct of
+your lives--you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have
+never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and
+manifold disquietudes, of the world around me to reach that deep, calm
+well of purity which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out
+that soul, it is to cool earth's fever or cleanse its stains.
+
+One o'clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as
+well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance
+with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband
+while drawing her water, as Rachel did of old!--Hold out your vessel,
+my dear! There it is, full to the brim; so now run home, peeping at
+your sweet image in the pitcher as you go, and forget not in a glass
+of my own liquor to drink "SUCCESS TO THE TOWN-PUMP."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE.[1]
+
+A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
+Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after
+a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
+thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
+one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing
+for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was
+strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a
+rude hut of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that
+had drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower
+bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their
+number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies
+by the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no
+satisfaction at the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary
+region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay
+between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above
+their heads was that bleak verge where the hills throw off their
+shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either robe themselves in clouds or
+tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been
+too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the
+mountain-stream talked with the wind.
+
+[Footnote 1: The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant
+tale is founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately
+wrought up in prose. Sullivan, in his history of Maine, written since
+the Revolution, remarks that even then the existence of the Great
+Carbuncle was not entirely discredited.]
+
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and
+welcomed one another to the hut where each man was the host and all
+were the guests of the whole company. They spread their individual
+supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a
+general repast; at the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship
+was perceptible among the party, though repressed by the idea that the
+renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again
+in the morning. Seven men and one young woman, they warmed themselves
+together at the fire, which extended its bright wall along the whole
+front of their wigwam. As they observed the various and contrasted
+figures that made up the assemblage, each man looking like a
+caricature of himself in the unsteady light that flickered over him,
+they came mutually to the conclusion that an odder society had never
+met in city or wilderness, on mountain or plain.
+
+The eldest of the group--a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man some sixty
+years of age--was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of
+dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the bear
+had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those
+ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom in their early
+youth the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the
+passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew
+him as "the Seeker," and by no other name. As none could remember when
+he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the
+Saco that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had
+been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time,
+still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at
+eve. Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing
+a high-crowned hat shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond
+the sea--a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a
+mummy by continually stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling
+unwholesome fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It
+was told of him--whether truly or not--that at the commencement of his
+studies he had drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted
+it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment,
+and had never been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was
+Master Ichabod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston,
+and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a
+ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole
+hour after prayer-time every morning and evening in wallowing naked
+among an immense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the
+earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall
+notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly
+distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by
+a prodigious pair of spectacles which were supposed to deform and
+discolor the whole face of nature to this gentleman's perception. The
+fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity,
+as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully
+pined away, which was no more than natural if, as some people
+affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning mist and a slice of the
+densest cloud within his reach, sauced with moonshine whenever he
+could get it. Certain it is that the poetry which flowed from him had
+a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of the party was a young man
+of haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his
+plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the
+rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely on the jewelled
+pommel of his sword. This was the lord De Vere, who when at home was
+said to spend much of his time in the burial-vault of his dead
+progenitors rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all the
+earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust; so
+that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his
+whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic
+garb, and by his side a blooming little person in whom a delicate
+shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young
+wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew--two
+homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair who seemed
+strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had
+been set agog by the Great Carbuncle.
+
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
+sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
+object that of whatever else they began to speak their closing words
+were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
+the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
+traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
+and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
+could only be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago
+as when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it
+blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years
+till now that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a
+hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains,
+awoke at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a
+meteor, so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They
+spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the
+spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success
+from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its
+source a light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun.
+It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every
+other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
+scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one.
+As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian
+traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those
+who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher
+hills or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it
+hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing
+to believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or
+perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might
+naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the
+intricacies of forest, valley and mountain.
+
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
+looked round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object
+of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+
+"So, fellow-pilgrims," said he, "here we are, seven wise men and one
+fair damsel, who doubtless is as wise as any graybeard of the company.
+Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
+now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
+with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch
+it.--What says our friend in the bearskin? How mean you, good sir, to
+enjoy the prize which you have been seeking the Lord knows how long
+among the Crystal Hills?"
+
+"How enjoy it!" exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. "I hope for no
+enjoyment from it--that folly has past, long ago! I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has
+become a fate upon me, in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength--the
+energy of my soul--the warmth of my blood, and the pith and marrow of my
+bones! Were I to turn my back upon it, I should fall down dead, on the
+hither side of the Notch, which is the gate-way of this mountain region.
+Yet, not to have my wasted life time back again, would I give up my
+hopes of the Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I shall bear it to a
+certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie
+down and die, and keep it buried with me for ever."
+
+"Oh, wretch, regardless of the interests of science!" cried Doctor
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. "Thou art not worthy to
+behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
+ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose
+for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle.
+Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good people,
+that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I shall
+return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to its
+first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
+powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
+will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design to
+melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
+various methods, I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
+the result of my labours upon the world, in a folio volume."
+
+"Excellent!" quoth the man with the spectacles. "Nor need you hesitate,
+learned Sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
+the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to concoct
+a Great Carbuncle of his own."
+
+"But, verily," said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, "for mine own part, I
+object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to
+reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, Sirs, I
+have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular
+traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my
+credit to great hazard, and furthermore, have put myself to peril of
+death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all this without
+daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for the
+Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the evil
+one. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul,
+body, reputation and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?"
+
+"Not I, pious Master Pigsnort," said the man with the spectacles. "I
+never laid such a great folly to thy charge."
+
+"Truly, I hope not," said the merchant. "Now, as touching this Great
+Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it,
+but, be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will
+surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an
+incalculable sum; wherefore I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
+shipboard and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into
+heathendom if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
+dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the
+earth, that he may place it among his crown-jewels. If any of ye have
+a wiser plan, let him expound it."
+
+"That have I, thou sordid man!" exclaimed the poet. "Dost thou desire
+nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this
+ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For
+myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my
+attic-chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London. There night and
+day will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be
+diffused throughout my intellectual powers and gleam brightly in every
+line of poesy that I indite. Thus long ages after I am gone the
+splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name."
+
+"Well said, Master Poet!" cried he of the spectacles. "Hide it under
+thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes and make
+thee look like a jack-o'-lantern!"
+
+"To think," ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather to himself than his
+companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
+intercourse--"to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
+of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grubb street! Have not
+I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter
+ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it
+flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits
+of armor, the banners and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and
+keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other
+adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it and make
+it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never on the diadem
+of the White Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so
+honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres."
+
+"It is a noble thought," said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer.
+"Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral
+lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship's progenitors
+more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle-hall."
+
+"Nay, forsooth," observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in
+hand with his bride, "the gentleman has bethought himself of a
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
+for a like purpose."
+
+"How, fellow?" exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise. "What castle-hall
+hast thou to hang it in?"
+
+"No castle," replied Matthew, "but as neat a cottage as any within
+sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I,
+being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great
+Carbuncle because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings
+and it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they
+visit us! It will shine through the house, so that we may pick up a
+pin in any corner, and will set all the windows a-glowing as if there
+were a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant,
+when we awake in the night, to be able to see one another's faces!"
+
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of
+the young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable
+stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud
+to adorn his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had
+sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such
+an expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew asked him rather
+peevishly what he himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
+
+"The Great Carbuncle!" answered the cynic, with ineffable scorn. "Why,
+you blockhead, there is no such thing in _rerum natura_. I have
+come three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every
+peak of these mountains and poke my head into every chasm for the sole
+purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less
+an ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug."
+
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
+adventurers to the Crystal Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so
+impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
+was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
+the darkness instead of heavenward, and who, could they but extinguish
+the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight
+gloom their chiefest glory.
+
+As the cynic spoke several of the party were startled by a gleam of
+red splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains
+and the rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with an illumination
+unlike that of their fire, on the trunks and black boughs of the
+forest-trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard
+nothing, and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The
+stars--those dial-points of heaven--now warned the adventurers to
+close their eyes on the blazing logs and open them in dreams to the
+glow of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
+corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
+a curtain of curiously-woven twigs such as might have hung in deep
+festoons around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
+wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking.
+She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke
+from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of
+one another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant and with one happy
+smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
+consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
+recollect where they were than the bride peeped through the
+interstices of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of the
+hut was deserted.
+
+"Up, dear Matthew!" cried she, in haste. "The strange folk are all
+gone. Up this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!"
+
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty
+prize which had lured them thither that they had slept peacefully all
+night and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine,
+while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish
+wakefulness or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize
+their dreams with the curliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah
+after their calm rest were as light as two young deer, and merely
+stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the
+Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food ere they turned their
+faces to the mountain-side. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal
+affection as they toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength
+from the mutual aid which they afforded.
+
+After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe and
+the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bough, they reached the upper
+verge of the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course.
+The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto
+shut in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of
+wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine that rose
+immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness
+which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths
+rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude.
+
+"Shall we go on?" said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist
+both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to
+it.
+
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels,
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
+world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+
+"Let us climb a little higher," whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
+turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+
+"Come, then," said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing
+her along with him; for she became timid again the moment that he grew
+bold.
+
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
+treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines
+which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
+reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments
+of naked rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn reared by giants
+in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
+breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentred in
+their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed
+no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them within the
+verge of the forest-trees, and sent a farewell glance after her
+children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never
+been. But soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark
+the mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the
+vast landscape and sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest
+mountain-peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally
+the vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the
+appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden,
+but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth
+which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth
+again--more intensely, alas! than beneath a clouded sky they had ever
+desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their
+desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain,
+concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated--at least, for
+them--the whole region of visible space. But they drew closer together
+with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud
+should snatch them from each other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would
+have been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and
+heaven as they could find foothold if Hannah's strength had not begun
+to fail, and with that her courage also. Her breath grew short. She
+refused to burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered
+against his side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort.
+At last she sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity.
+
+"We are lost, dear Matthew," said she, mournfully; "we shall never
+find our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been
+in our cottage!"
+
+"Dear heart, we will yet be happy there," answered Matthew. "Look! In
+this direction the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its aid I
+can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back,
+love, and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle."
+
+"The sun cannot be yonder," said Hannah, with despondence. "By this
+time it must be noon; if there could ever be any sunshine here, it
+would come from above our heads."
+
+"But look!" repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. "It is
+brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?"
+
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
+through the mist and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
+continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
+with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
+mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
+started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely
+the effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old
+chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on they
+saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on
+the very border of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly
+beautiful, spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been
+scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its
+surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed
+their eyes, with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid
+splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the
+enchanted lake.
+
+For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery and found the
+long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms
+around each other and trembled at their own success, for as the
+legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory they felt
+themselves marked out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful.
+Often from childhood upward they had seen it shining like a distant
+star, and now that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their
+hearts. They seemed changed to one another's eyes in the red
+brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire
+to the lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back
+before its power. But with their next glance they beheld an object
+that drew their attention even from the mighty stone. At the base of
+the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure
+of a man with his arms extended in the act of climbing and his face
+turned upward as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred
+not, no more than if changed to marble.
+
+"It is the Seeker," whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
+husband's arm. "Matthew, he is dead."
+
+"The joy of success has killed him," replied Matthew, trembling
+violently. "Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
+death."
+
+"'The Great Carbuncle'!" cried a peevish voice behind them. "The great
+humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me."
+
+They turned their heads, and there was the cynic with his prodigious
+spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
+the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
+Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all
+the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
+radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet
+as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be
+convinced that there was the least glimmer there.
+
+"Where is your great humbug?" he repeated. "I challenge you to make me
+see it."
+
+"There!" said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
+turning the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. "Take off those
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it."
+
+Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic's sight in
+at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people
+gaze at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them
+from his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the
+Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep,
+shuddering groan, he dropped his head and pressed both hands across
+his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was in very truth no light of
+the Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
+itself, for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects
+through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a
+single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
+vision, had blinded him for ever.
+
+"Matthew," said Hannah, clinging to him, "let us go hence."
+
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling down, supported her in
+his arms while he threw some of the thrillingly-cold water of the
+enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not
+renovate her courage.
+
+"Yes, dearest," cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
+breast; "we will go hence and return to our humble cottage. The
+blessed sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our
+window. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and
+be happy in its light. But never again will we desire more light than
+all the world may share with us."
+
+"No," said his bride, "for how could we live by day or sleep by night
+in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle?"
+
+Out of the hollow of their hands they drank each a draught from the
+lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly
+lip. Then, lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered
+not a word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched
+heart, they began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left the shore,
+till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell
+glance toward the cliff and beheld the vapors gathering in dense
+volumes, through which the gem burned duskily.
+
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
+on to tell that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up
+the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake
+himself again to his warehouse, near the town-dock, in Boston. But as
+he passed through the Notch of the mountains a war-party of Indians
+captured our unlucky merchant and carried him to Montreal, there
+holding him in bondage till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had
+woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long
+absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the
+rest of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a
+sixpence-worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned
+to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he
+ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible and burnt
+with the blowpipe, and published the result of his experiments in one
+of the heaviest folios of the day. And for all these purposes the gem
+itself could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a
+somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice which he
+found in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it
+corresponded in all points with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The
+critics say that, if his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it
+retained all the coldness of the ice. The lord De Vere went back to
+his ancestral hall, where he contented himself with a wax-lighted
+chandelier, and filled in due course of time another coffin in the
+ancestral vault. As the funeral torches gleamed within that dark
+receptacle, there was no need of the Great Carbuncle to show the
+vanity of earthly pomp.
+
+The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world
+a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light
+for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long he
+would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
+his face eastward at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a
+pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumination of Saint
+Peter's church, and finally perished in the Great Fire of London, into
+the midst of which he had thrust himself with the desperate idea of
+catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
+heaven.
+
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of
+telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward
+the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full
+credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the
+ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that from the hour when
+two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel
+which would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned. When
+our pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone with
+particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition
+that as the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the
+forehead of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake, and that at
+noontide the Seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its
+quenchless gleam.
+
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and
+say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
+lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that many
+a mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a wondrous light around their
+summits, and was lured by the faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim
+of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROPHETIC PICTURES.[1]
+
+
+"But this painter!" cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. "He not only
+excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all
+other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives
+lectures in anatomy to Dr. Boylston. In a word, he will meet the
+best-instructed man among us on his own ground. Moreover, he is a
+polished gentleman, a citizen of the world--yes, a true cosmopolite;
+for he will speak like a native of each clime and country on the
+globe, except our own forests, whither he is now going. Nor is all
+this what I most admire in him."
+
+[Footnote 1: This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart related
+in Dunlap's _History of the Arts of Designs_--a most entertaining
+book to the general reader, and a deeply-interesting one, we should
+think, to the artist.]
+
+"Indeed!" said Elinor, who had listened with a women's interest to the
+description of such a man. "Yet this is admirable enough."
+
+"Surely it is," replied her lover, "but far less so than his natural
+gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that
+all men--and all women too, Elinor--shall find a mirror of themselves
+in this wonderful painter. But the greatest wonder is yet to be told."
+
+"Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these," said Elinor,
+laughing, "Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are you
+telling me of a painter, or a wizard?"
+
+"In truth," answered he, "that question might be asked much more
+seriously than you suppose. They say that he paints not merely a man's
+features, but his mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments and
+passions and throws them upon the canvas like sunshine, or perhaps, in
+the portraits of dark-souled men, like a gleam of infernal fire. It is
+an awful gift," added Walter, lowering his voice from its tone of
+enthusiasm. "I shall be almost afraid to sit to him."
+
+"Walter, are you in earnest?" exclaimed Elinor.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look
+which you now wear," said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed.
+"There! it is passing away now; but when you spoke, you seemed
+frightened to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" answered Elinor, hastily. "You paint my face with
+your own fantasies. Well, come for me tomorrow, and we will visit this
+wonderful artist."
+
+But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a
+remarkable expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face
+of his mistress. It was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance
+with what should have been the feelings of a maiden on the eve of
+wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of her heart.
+
+"A look!" said Elinor to herself. "No wonder that it startled him if
+it expressed what I sometimes feel. I know by my own experience how
+frightful a look may be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of it
+at the time; I have seen nothing of it since; I did but dream it;" and
+she busied herself about the embroidery of a ruff in which she meant
+that her portrait should be taken.
+
+The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native
+artists who at a later period than this borrowed their colors from the
+Indians and manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts.
+Perhaps, if he could have revoked his life and prearranged his
+destiny, he might have chosen to belong to that school without a
+master in the hope of being at least original, since there were no
+works of art to imitate nor rules to follow. But he had been born and
+educated in Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or
+beauty of conception and every touch of the master-hand in all the
+most famous pictures in cabinets and galleries and on the walls of
+churches till there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn.
+Art could add nothing to its lessons, but Nature might. He had,
+therefore, visited a world whither none of his professional brethren
+had preceded him, to feast his eyes on visible images that were noble
+and picturesque, yet had never been transferred to canvas. America was
+too poor to afford other temptations to an artist of eminence, though
+many of the colonial gentry on the painter's arrival had expressed a
+wish to transmit their lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill.
+Whenever such proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the
+applicant and seemed to look him through and through. If he beheld
+only a sleek and comfortable visage, though there were a gold-laced
+coat to adorn the picture and golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly
+rejected the task and the reward; but if the face were the index of
+anything uncommon in thought, sentiment or experience, or if he met a
+beggar in the street with a white beard and a furrowed brow, or if
+sometimes a child happened to look up and smile, he would exhaust all
+the art on them that he denied to wealth.
+
+Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an
+object of general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the
+technical merit of his productions, yet there were points in regard to
+which the opinion of the crowd was as valuable as the refined judgment
+of the amateur. He watched the effect that each picture produced on
+such untutored beholders, and derived profit from their remarks, while
+they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature herself as him
+who seemed to rival her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was
+tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it
+an offence against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of
+the Creator, to bring into existence such lively images of his
+creatures. Others, frightened at the art which could raise phantoms at
+will and keep the form of the dead among the living, were inclined to
+consider the painter as a magician, or perhaps the famous Black Man of
+old witch-times plotting mischief in a new guise. These foolish
+fancies were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior
+circles his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising
+like smoke-wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused
+by the varied knowledge and talents which he made subservient to his
+profession.
+
+Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to
+obtain their portraits as the first of what, they doubtless hoped,
+would be a long series of family pictures. The day after the
+conversation above recorded they visited the painter's rooms. A
+servant ushered them into an apartment where, though the artist
+himself was not visible, there were personages whom they could hardly
+forbear greeting with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the whole
+assembly were but pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the
+idea of life and intellect from such striking counterfeits. Several of
+the portraits were known to them either as distinguished characters of
+the day or their private acquaintances. There was Governor Burnett,
+looking as if he had just received an undutiful communication from the
+House of Representatives and were inditing a most sharp response. Mr.
+Cooke hung beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy and somewhat
+puritanical, as befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir
+William Phipps eyed them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an
+imperious old dame not unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a
+very young man, wore the expression of warlike enterprise which long
+afterward made him a distinguished general. Their personal friends
+were recognized at a glance. In most of the pictures the whole mind
+and character were brought out on the countenance and concentrated
+into a single look; so that, to speak paradoxically, the originals
+hardly resembled themselves so strikingly as the portraits did.
+
+Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had
+almost vanished into the darkening canvas. There was also a pale but
+unfaded Madonna who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now
+regarded the lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to
+worship too.
+
+"How singular a thought," observed Walter Ludlow, "that this beautiful
+face has been beautiful for above two hundred years! Oh, if all beauty
+would endure so well! Do you not envy her, Elinor?"
+
+"If earth were heaven, I might," she replied. "But, where all things
+fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade!"
+
+"This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he
+be," continued Walter; "he troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly at
+us."
+
+"Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks," said Elinor.
+
+The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that
+had been recently commenced. After a little inspection they began to
+recognize the features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman,
+growing into shape and life, as it were, out of a cloud.
+
+"Kind old man!" exclaimed Elinor. "He gazes at me as if he were about
+to utter a word of paternal advice."
+
+"And at me," said Walter, "as if he were about to shake his head and
+rebuke me for some suspected iniquity. But so does the original. I
+shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before
+him to be married."
+
+They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the
+painter, who had been some moments in the room and had listened to a
+few of their remarks. He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well
+worthy of his own pencil. Indeed, by the picturesque though careless
+arrangement of his rich dress, and perhaps because his soul dwelt
+always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat like a portrait
+himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the artist
+and his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the
+canvas to salute them.
+
+Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the
+object of their visit. While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart
+his figure and Elinor's with so happy an effect that they also seemed
+living pictures of youth and beauty gladdened by bright fortune. The
+artist was evidently struck.
+
+"My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston
+must be brief," said he, thoughtfully; then, after an observant
+glance, he added, "But your wishes shall be gratified though I
+disappoint the chief-justice and Madame Oliver. I must not lose this
+opportunity for the sake of painting a few ells of broadcloth and
+brocade."
+
+The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into
+one picture and represent them engaged in some appropriate action.
+This plan would have delighted the lovers, but was necessarily
+rejected because so large a space of canvas would have been unfit for
+the room which it was intended to decorate. Two half-length portraits
+were therefore fixed upon. After they had taken leave, Walter Ludlow
+asked Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an influence over
+their fates the painter was about to acquire.
+
+"The old women of Boston affirm," continued he, "that after he has
+once got possession of a person's face and figure he may paint him in
+any act or situation whatever, and the picture will be prophetic. Do
+you believe it?"
+
+"Not quite," said Elinor, smiling. "Yet if he has such magic, there is
+something so gentle in his manner that I am sure he will use it well."
+
+It was the painter's choice to proceed with both the portraits at the
+same time, assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he
+sometimes used, that the faces threw light upon each other.
+Accordingly, he gave now a touch to Walter and now to Elinor, and the
+features of one and the other began to start forth so vividly that it
+appeared as if his triumphant art would actually disengage them from
+the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade they beheld their
+phantom selves, but, though the likeness promised to be perfect, they
+were not quite satisfied with the expression: it seemed more vague
+than in most of the painter's works. He, however, was satisfied with
+the prospect of success, and, being much interested in the lovers,
+employed his leisure moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon
+sketch of their two figures. During their sittings he engaged them in
+conversation and kindled up their faces with characteristic traits,
+which, though continually varying, it was his purpose to combine and
+fix. At length he announced that at their next visit both the
+portraits would be ready for delivery.
+
+"If my pencil will but be true to my conception in the few last
+touches which I meditate," observed he, "these two pictures will be my
+very best performances. Seldom indeed has an artist such subjects."
+While speaking he still bent his penetrative eye upon them, nor
+withdrew it till they had reached the bottom of the stairs.
+
+Nothing in the whole circle of human vanities takes stronger hold of
+the imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why
+should it be so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the
+andirons, the mirror-like water, and all other reflecting surfaces,
+continually present us with portraits--or, rather, ghosts--of
+ourselves which we glance at and straightway forget them. But we
+forget them only because they vanish. It is the idea of duration--of
+earthly immortality--that gives such a mysterious interest to our own
+portraits.
+
+Walter and Elinor were not insensible to this feeling, and hastened to
+the painter's room punctually at the appointed hour to meet those
+pictured shapes which were to be their representatives with posterity.
+The sunshine flashed after them into the apartment, but left it
+somewhat gloomy as they closed the door. Their eyes were immediately
+attracted to their portraits, which rested against the farthest wall
+of the room. At the first glance through the dim light and the
+distance, seeing themselves in precisely their natural attitudes and
+with all the air that they recognized so well, they uttered a
+simultaneous exclamation of delight.
+
+"There we stand," cried Walter, enthusiastically, "fixed in sunshine
+for ever. No dark passions can gather on our faces."
+
+"No," said Elinor, more calmly; "no dreary change can sadden us."
+
+This was said while they were approaching and had yet gained only an
+imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them,
+busied himself at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his
+visitors to form their own judgment as to his perfected labors. At
+intervals he sent a glance from beneath his deep eyebrows, watching
+their countenances in profile with his pencil suspended over the
+sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of the other's
+picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without
+uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward, then back, viewing
+Elinor's portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.
+
+"Is there not a change?" said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone.
+"Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid the longer I look. It is
+certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress, the
+features, all are the same, and yet something is altered."
+
+"Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?" inquired the
+painter, now drawing near with irrepressible interest.
+
+"The features are perfect Elinor," answered Walter, "and at the first
+glance the expression seemed also hers; but I could fancy that the
+portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it. The
+eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression.
+Nay, it is grief and terror. Is this like Elinor?"
+
+"Compare the living face with the pictured one," said the painter.
+
+Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and
+absorbed, fascinated, as it were, in contemplation of Walter's
+portrait, Elinor's face had assumed precisely the expression of which
+he had just been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before
+a mirror, she could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the
+picture itself been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her
+present aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared
+quite unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover.
+
+"Elinor," exclaimed Walter, in amazement, "what change has come over
+you?"
+
+She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her
+hand, and thus attracted her notice; then with a sudden tremor she
+looked from the picture to the face of the original.
+
+"Do you see no change in your portrait?" asked she.
+
+"In mine? None," replied Walter, examining it. "But let me see. Yes;
+there is a slight change--an improvement, I think, in the picture,
+though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than
+yesterday, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes and
+about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look, it
+becomes very decided."
+
+While he was intent on these observations Elinor turned to the
+painter. She regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid
+her with sympathy and commiseration, though wherefore she could but
+vaguely guess.
+
+"That look!" whispered she, and shuddered. "How came it there?"
+
+"Madam," said the painter, sadly, taking her hand and leading her
+apart, "in both these pictures I have painted what I saw. The
+artist--the true artist--must look beneath the exterior. It is his
+gift--his proudest, but often a melancholy one--to see the inmost
+soul, and by a power indefinable even to himself to make it glow or
+darken upon the canvas in glances that express the thought and
+sentiment of years. Would that I might convince myself of error in the
+present instance!"
+
+They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands
+almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched
+cottages, old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume,
+and all such picturesque vagaries of an artist's idle moments. Turning
+them over with seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures
+was disclosed.
+
+"If I have failed," continued he--"if your heart does not see itself
+reflected in your own portrait, if you have no secret cause to trust
+my delineation of the other--it is not yet too late to alter them. I
+might change the action of these figures too. But would it influence
+the event?" He directed her notice to the sketch.
+
+A thrill ran through Elinor's frame; a shriek was upon her lips, but
+she stifled it with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who
+hide thoughts of fear and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from
+the table, she perceived that Walter had advanced near enough to have
+seen the sketch, though she could not determine whether it had caught
+his eye.
+
+"We will not have the pictures altered," said she, hastily. "If mine
+is sad, I shall but look the gayer for the contrast."
+
+"Be it so," answered the painter, bowing. "May your griefs be such
+fanciful ones that only your pictures may mourn for them! For your
+joys, may they be true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely
+face till it quite belie my art!"
+
+After the marriage of Walter and Elinor the pictures formed the two
+most splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side,
+separated by a narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly,
+yet always returning the gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen
+who professed a knowledge of such subjects reckoned these among the
+most admirable specimens of modern portraiture, while common observers
+compared them with the originals, feature by feature, and were
+rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third
+class--neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people
+of natural sensibility--that the pictures wrought their strongest
+effect. Such persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming
+interested, would return day after day and study these painted faces
+like the pages of a mystic volume. Walter Ludlow's portrait attracted
+their earliest notice. In the absence of himself and his bride they
+sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter had intended
+to throw upon the features, all agreeing that there was a look of
+earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was less
+diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor's picture. They differed,
+indeed, in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the
+gloom that dwelt upon her face, but agreed that it was gloom and alien
+from the natural temperament of their youthful friend. A certain
+fanciful person announced as the result of much scrutiny that both
+these pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy
+strength of feeling in Elinor's countenance bore reference to the more
+vivid emotion--or, as he termed it, the wild passion--in that of
+Walter. Though unskilled in the art, he even began a sketch in which
+the action of the two figures was to correspond with their mutual
+expression.
+
+It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor's face was
+assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render
+her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the
+other hand, instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had
+given him on the canvas, became reserved and downcast, with no outward
+flashes of emotion, however it might be smouldering within. In course
+of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple silk wrought with
+flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the pictures,
+under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim
+them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the
+silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her
+presence.
+
+Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to
+the north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look
+over the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New
+England's loftiest mountain. But he did not profane that scene by the
+mockery of his art. He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake
+George, making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till
+not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He
+had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had
+flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as
+soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous
+cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery
+except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face,
+instinct with thought, passion or suffering. With store of such his
+adventurous ramble had enriched him. The stern dignity of Indian
+chiefs, the dusky loveliness of Indian girls, the domestic life of
+wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle beneath gloomy pine trees, the
+frontier fortress with its garrison, the anomaly of the old French
+partisan bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy deserts,--such were
+the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The glow of perilous
+moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles of fierce power, love,
+hate, grief, frenzy--in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old
+earth--had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was
+filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which
+genius would transmute into its own substance and imbue with
+immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had
+sought so far was found.
+
+But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its
+overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the
+companions of his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing
+purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of humankind.
+He had no aim, no pleasure, no sympathies, but what were ultimately
+connected with his art. Though gentle in manner and upright in intent
+and action, he did not possess kindly feelings; his heart was cold: no
+living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm. For
+these two beings, however, he had felt in its greatest intensity the
+sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his
+pencil. He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight and
+pictured the result upon their features with his utmost skill, so as
+barely to fall short of that standard which no genius ever reached,
+his own severe conception. He had caught from the duskiness of the
+future--at least, so he fancied--a fearful secret, and had obscurely
+revealed it on the portraits. So much of himself--of his imagination
+and all other powers--had been lavished on the study of Walter and
+Elinor that he almost regarded them as creations of his own, like the
+thousands with which he had peopled the realms of Picture. Therefore
+did they flit through the twilight of the woods, hover on the mist of
+waterfalls, look forth from the mirror of the lake, nor melt away in
+the noontide sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries
+of life nor pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits,
+each with an unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from
+the caverns of the soul. He could not recross the Atlantic till he had
+again beheld the originals of those airy pictures.
+
+"O glorious Art!" Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the
+street. "Thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable
+forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The
+dead live again; thou recallest them to their old scenes and givest
+their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and
+immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeting moments of history. With
+thee there is no past, for at thy touch all that is great becomes for
+ever present, and illustrious men live through long ages in the
+visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. O
+potent Art! as thou bringest the faintly-revealed past to stand in
+that narrow strip of sunlight which we call 'now,' canst thou summon
+the shrouded future to meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I
+not thy prophet?"
+
+Thus with a proud yet melancholy fervor did he almost cry aloud as he
+passed through the toilsome street among people that knew not of his
+reveries nor could understand nor care for them. It is not good for
+man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him
+by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires and
+hopes will become extravagant and he the semblance--perhaps the
+reality--of a madman. Reading other bosoms with an acuteness almost
+preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of his own.
+
+"And this should be the house," said he, looking up and down the front
+before he knocked. "Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it
+will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it
+is framed within them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest
+tints--the faces of the portraits, the figures and action of the
+sketch!"
+
+He knocked.
+
+"The portraits--are they within?" inquired he of the domestic; then,
+recollecting himself, "Your master and mistress--are they at home?"
+
+"They are, sir," said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
+picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,
+"and the portraits too."
+
+The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door
+with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was
+empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes
+were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured
+representatives, who had long been the objects of so singular an
+interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
+
+They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing
+before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich
+and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel
+with one hand, while the other grasped that of his bride. The
+pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished
+splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across the room rather
+than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been
+almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had
+successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of
+time into a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made
+it the very expression of the portrait. Walter's face was moody and
+dull or animated only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness
+for their momentary illumination. He looked from Elinor to her
+portrait, and thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he
+finally stood absorbed.
+
+The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him
+on its progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his
+mind. Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied
+itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which he had
+foreshadowed?
+
+Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as
+with his own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil
+influence that the painter had cast upon the features. Gradually his
+eyes kindled, while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of his
+face her own assumed a look of terror; and when, at last, he turned
+upon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was complete.
+
+"Our fate is upon us!" howled Walter. "Die!"
+
+Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground,
+and aimed it at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude
+of each the painter beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture,
+with all its tremendous coloring, was finished.
+
+"Hold, madman!" cried he, sternly.
+
+He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the
+wretched beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny
+as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician
+controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.
+
+"What!" muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce excitement
+into sullen gloom. "Does Fate impede its own decree?"
+
+"Wretched lady," said the painter, "did I not warn you?"
+
+"You did," replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the
+quiet grief which it had disturbed. "But I loved him."
+
+Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one or all
+our deeds be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate
+and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires,
+and none be turned aside by the prophetic pictures.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID SWAN.
+
+A FANTASY.
+
+
+We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually
+influence our course through life and our final destiny. There are
+innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close
+upon us, yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their
+near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our
+minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would
+be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford
+us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a
+page from the secret history of David Swan.
+
+We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of
+twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston,
+where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him
+behind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New
+Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary
+school education with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy.
+After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's
+day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down
+in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the
+stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a
+little tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst, and such
+a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any
+wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty
+lips and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon
+some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up in a striped cotton
+handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet
+rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday, and his grassy
+lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring
+murmured drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the
+blue sky overhead, and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within
+its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he
+did not dream of.
+
+While he lay sound asleep in the shade other people were wide awake,
+and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback and in all sorts of
+vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither
+to the right hand nor the left and knew not that he was there; some
+merely glanced that way without admitting the slumberer among their
+busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept, and several
+whose hearts were brimming full of scorn ejected their venomous
+superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was
+near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the
+young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw
+him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening's
+discourse as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside.
+
+But censure, praise, merriment, scorn and indifference were all
+one--or, rather, all nothing--to David Swan. He had slept only a few
+moments when a brown carriage drawn by a handsome pair of horses
+bowled easily along and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of
+David's resting-place. A linch-pin had fallen out and permitted one of
+the wheels to slide off. The damage was slight and occasioned merely a
+momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were
+returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant
+were replacing the wheel the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves
+beneath the maple trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain and
+David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest
+sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the
+gout would allow, and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk
+gown lest David should start up all of a sudden.
+
+"How soundly he sleeps!" whispered the old gentleman. "From what a
+depth he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on
+without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income, for
+it would suppose health and an untroubled mind."
+
+"And youth besides," said the lady. "Healthy and quiet age does not
+sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his than our wakefulness."
+
+The longer they looked, the more did this elderly couple feel
+interested in the unknown youth to whom the wayside and the maple
+shade were as a secret chamber with the rich gloom of damask curtains
+brooding over him. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon
+his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside so as to
+intercept it, and, having done this little act of kindness, she began
+to feel like a mother to him.
+
+"Providence seems to have laid him here," whispered she to her
+husband, "and to have brought us hither to find him, after our
+disappointment in our cousin's son. Methinks I can see a likeness to
+our departed Henry. Shall we waken him?"
+
+"To what purpose?" said the merchant, hesitating. "We know nothing of
+the youth's character."
+
+"That open countenance!" replied his wife, in the same hushed voice,
+yet earnestly. "This innocent sleep!"
+
+While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's heart did not throb,
+nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least
+token of interest. Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let
+fall a burden of gold. The old merchant had lost his only son, and had
+no heir to his wealth except a distant relative with whose conduct he
+was dissatisfied. In such cases people sometimes do stranger things
+than to act the magician and awaken a young man to splendor who fell
+asleep in poverty.
+
+"Shall we not waken him?" repeated the lady, persuasively.
+
+"The coach is ready, sir," said the servant, behind.
+
+The old couple started, reddened and hurried away, mutually wondering
+that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very
+ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage and
+occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for
+unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap.
+
+The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two when a pretty
+young girl came along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how
+her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry
+kind of motion that caused--is there any harm in saying it?--her
+garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth--if silk it
+were--was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the
+maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring.
+Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a
+gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose too, she was about to
+make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A
+monster of a bee had been wandering overhead--buzz, buzz, buzz--now
+among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now
+lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the
+eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As
+free-hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with
+her handkerchief, brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the
+maple shade. How sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with
+quickened breath and a deeper blush she stole a glance at the youthful
+stranger for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air.
+
+"He is handsome!" thought she, and blushed redder yet.
+
+How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him that,
+shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder and allow him
+to perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile
+of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul,
+according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his
+own, and whom in all his vague but passionate desires he yearned to
+meet. Her only could he love with a perfect love, him only could she
+receive into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly
+blushing in the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its happy
+lustre would never gleam upon his life again.
+
+"How sound he sleeps!" murmured the girl. She departed, but did not
+trip along the road so lightly as when she came.
+
+Now, this girl's father was a thriving country merchant in the
+neighborhood, and happened at that identical time to be looking out
+for just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside
+acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become the father's
+clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here, again, had good
+fortune--the best of fortunes--stolen so near that her garments
+brushed against him, and he knew nothing of the matter.
+
+The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the
+maple shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were
+drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had
+a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their
+living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of
+other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of
+villainy on a game of cards which was to have been decided here under
+the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues
+whispered to his fellow:
+
+"Hist! Do you see that bundle under his head?"
+
+The other villain nodded, winked and leered.
+
+"I'll bet you a horn of brandy," said the first, "that the chap has
+either a pocketbook or a snug little hoard of small change stowed away
+amongst his shirts. And if not there, we will find it in his
+pantaloons pocket."
+
+"But how if he wakes?" said the other.
+
+His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a
+dirk and nodded.
+
+"So be it!" muttered the second villain.
+
+They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the
+dagger toward his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath
+his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled and ghastly with guilt and
+fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken
+for fiends should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains glanced
+aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as
+reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect,
+even when asleep on his mother's breast.
+
+"I must take away the bundle," whispered one.
+
+"If he stirs, I'll strike," muttered the other.
+
+But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the
+maple trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then
+at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
+
+"Pshaw!" said one villain. "We can do nothing now. The dog's master
+must be close behind."
+
+"Let's take a drink and be off," said the other.
+
+The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew
+forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single
+discharge. It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed
+upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with
+so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness
+that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few
+hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the
+recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their
+souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
+slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung
+over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was
+withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's
+repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which
+many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred, now moved his lips
+without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres
+of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder
+along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David's
+slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his
+ideas about him.
+
+"Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?" shouted he.
+
+"Room on top!" answered the driver.
+
+Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so
+much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He
+knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its
+waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor
+that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all
+in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we
+hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.
+Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and
+unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path,
+there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render
+foresight even partially available?
+
+
+
+
+SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.
+
+
+So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with
+wearied knees--earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
+far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith,
+where man never breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal
+azure melts away from the eye and appears only a deepened shade of
+nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What
+clouds are gathering in the golden west with direful intent against
+the brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon? They are
+ponderous air-ships, black as death and freighted with the tempest,
+and at intervals their thunder--the signal-guns of that unearthly
+squadron--rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps
+of fleecy vapor--methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole
+day long--seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired
+pilgrims through the sky. Perhaps--for who can tell?--beautiful
+spirits are disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye
+with the brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light and
+laughing faces fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or where
+the floating mass so imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament
+a slender foot and fairy limb resting too heavily upon the frail
+support may be thrust through and suddenly withdrawn, while longing
+fancy follows them in vain. Yonder, again, is an airy archipelago
+where the sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space.
+Every one of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in
+radiance which the slightest pressure might disengage in silvery
+profusion like water wrung from a sea-maid's hair. Bright they are as
+a young man's visions, and, like them, would be realized in dullness,
+obscurity and tears. I will look on them no more.
+
+In three parts of the visible circle whose centre is this spire I
+discern cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving
+lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising
+ground that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the
+sea, stretching away toward a viewless boundary, blue and calm except
+where the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface and is
+gone. Hitherward a broad inlet penetrates far into the land; on the
+verge of the harbor formed by its extremity is a town, and over it am
+I, a watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. Oh that the multitude of
+chimneys could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray in smoky
+whispers the secrets of all who since their first foundation have
+assembled at the hearths within! Oh that the Limping Devil of Le Sage
+would perch beside me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of
+roofs, uncover every chamber and make me familiar with their
+inhabitants! The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a
+spiritualized Paul Pry hovering invisible round man and woman,
+witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing
+brightness from their felicity and shade from their sorrow, and
+retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of these things are
+possible; and if I would know the interior of brick walls or the
+mystery of human bosoms, I can but guess.
+
+Yonder is a fair street extending north and south. The stately
+mansions are placed each on its carpet of verdant grass, and a long
+flight of steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental
+trees--the broadleafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending,
+the graceful but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the
+names--grow thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the
+sun are intercepted by these green citizens and by the houses, so that
+one side of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole
+extent there is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper
+end, and he, unless distance and the medium of a pocket spyglass do
+him more than justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He saunters
+slowly forward, slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending
+his eyes upon the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a
+glance before him. Certainly he has a pensive air. Is he in doubt or
+in debt? Is he--if the question be allowable--in love? Does he strive
+to be melancholy and gentlemanlike, or is he merely overcome by the
+heat? But I bid him farewell for the present. The door of one of the
+houses--an aristocratic edifice with curtains of purple and gold
+waving from the windows--is now opened, and down the steps come two
+ladies swinging their parasols and lightly arrayed for a summer
+ramble. Both are young, both are pretty; but methinks the left-hand
+lass is the fairer of the twain, and, though she be so serious at this
+moment, I could swear that there is a treasure of gentle fun within
+her. They stand talking a little while upon the steps, and finally
+proceed up the street. Meantime, as their faces are now turned from
+me, I may look elsewhere.
+
+Upon that wharf and down the corresponding street is a busy contrast
+to the quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has
+its centre there, and many a man is wasting the summer afternoon in
+labor and anxiety, in losing riches or in gaining them, when he would
+be wiser to flee away to some pleasant country village or shaded lake
+in the forest or wild and cool sea-beach. I see vessels unlading at
+the wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground abundantly
+as at the bottom of the sea--that market whence no goods return, and
+where there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of
+sales. Here the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and
+sailors ply the block and tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying
+their toil with cries long-drawn and roughly melodious till the bales
+and puncheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance a group of
+gentlemen are assembled round the door of a warehouse. Grave seniors
+be they, and I would wager--if it were safe, in these times, to be
+responsible for any one--that the least eminent among them might vie
+with old Vincentio, that incomparable trafficker of Pisa. I can even
+select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly personage in
+somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair the superfluous whiteness of
+which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are
+wafted on some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and
+his name, I will venture to say, though I know it not, is a familiar
+sound among the far-separated merchants of Europe and the Indies.
+
+But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking
+again to the long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls
+have encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the
+recognition, he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my
+taste in regard to his companions by placing himself on the inner side
+of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a
+steeple-top the part of Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged the golden
+apple.
+
+In two streets converging at right angles toward my watch-tower I
+distinguish three different processions. One is a proud array of
+voluntary soldiers in bright uniform, resembling, from the height
+whence I look down, the painted veterans that garrison the windows of
+a toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart. Their regular advance, their
+nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets and musket-barrels,
+the roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon
+piercing through,--these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful
+though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
+ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping
+a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously
+aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as
+slight differences are scarcely perceptible from a church-spire, one
+might be tempted to ask, "Which are the boys?" or, rather, "Which the
+men?" But, leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which,
+though sadder in outward show, may excite identical reflections in the
+thoughtful mind. It is a funeral--a hearse drawn by a black and bony
+steed and covered by a dusty pall, two or three coaches rumbling over
+the stones, their drivers half asleep, a dozen couple of careless
+mourners in their every-day attire. Such was not the fashion of our
+fathers when they carried a friend to his grave. There is now no
+doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King
+of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and
+philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a
+proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the
+military boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full
+in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that
+regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to
+the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their
+ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive
+curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the
+steeple and pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the
+lightning glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the
+thunder rattles heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid.
+Verily, the shower is near, and I tremble for the young man and the
+girls, who have now disappeared from the long and shady street.
+
+How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
+beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment
+befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life
+and the recent dead are in the chambers of these many mansions. The
+full of hope, the happy, the miserable and the desperate dwell
+together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over
+which my eyes roam so coldly guilt is entering into hearts that are
+still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue; guilt is on the very
+edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is
+done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad
+thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them
+distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the
+raindrops are descending.
+
+The clouds within a little time have gathered over all the sky,
+hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the
+earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts,
+quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, travelling slowly
+after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through
+the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies to rebel
+against the approaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the funeral
+has already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry homeward--all
+that have a home--while a few lounge by the corners or trudge on
+desperately at their leisure. In a narrow lane which communicates with
+the shady street I discern the rich old merchant putting himself to
+the top of his speed lest the rain should convert his hair-powder to a
+paste. Unhappy gentleman! By the slow vehemence and painful moderation
+wherewith he journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its
+thrilling tenderness in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid
+pace, come three other of my acquaintance, the two pretty girls and
+the young man unseasonably interrupted in their walk. Their footsteps
+are supported by the risen dust, the wind lends them its velocity,
+they fly like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestuous
+breeze. The ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that
+any one were at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward,
+laughing in the angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has
+chanced. At the corner where the narrow lane enters into the street
+they come plump against the old merchant, whose tortoise-motion has
+just brought him to that point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the
+darkness of the whole air gathers speedily upon his visage, and there
+is a pause on both sides. Finally he thrusts aside the youth with
+little courtesy, seizes an arm of each of the two girls, and plods
+onward like a magician with a prize of captive fairies. All this is
+easy to be understood. How disconsolate the poor lover stands,
+regardless of the rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his
+well-fashioned habiliments, till he catches a backward glance of mirth
+from a bright eye, and turns away with whatever comfort it conveys!
+
+The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm
+lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the
+chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous
+shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops
+descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke.
+There is a rush and roar as of a river through the air, and muddy
+streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam
+into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa
+sink. I love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult
+which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning
+wrinkling on my brow and the thunder muttering its first awful
+syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to
+the sea, where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad
+expanse of blackness or boils up in far-distant points like snowy
+mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at
+the green plain and little hills of the country, over which the giant
+of the storm is striding in robes of mist, and at the town whose
+obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and,
+turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author's
+prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A
+little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams
+find a passage and go rejoicing through the tempest, and on yonder
+darkest cloud, born like hallowed hopes of the glory of another world
+and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS.
+
+
+In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen's reveries
+were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met
+together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful in
+form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an
+untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her
+years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of
+ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit that even
+the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary
+term of human existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortal
+could observe them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down
+in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically
+circular, two or three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that
+a stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines
+were numerous upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of the
+intermediate hollow, within which there was nothing but the brown
+grass of October and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen long
+ago and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One of
+these masses of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close
+beside a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin.
+Such scenes as this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of
+a power of evil and his plighted subjects, and here at midnight or on
+the dim verge of evening they were said to stand round the mantling
+pool disturbing its putrid waters in the performance of an impious
+baptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding
+the three hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their sides into
+the hollow.
+
+"Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone,
+"according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
+me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here."
+
+As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance
+like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast
+her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return
+with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.
+
+"I am stranger in this land, as you know," said she, at length.
+"Whence I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me with
+whom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for
+ever. There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I
+have come hither to inquire of their welfare."
+
+"And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the
+ends of the earth?" cried the old woman, peering into the lady's face.
+"Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold, and
+the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wish
+be granted."
+
+"I will do your bidding though I die," replied the lady, desperately.
+
+The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw
+aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companion
+to draw near.
+
+"Kneel down," she said, "and lay your forehead on my knees."
+
+She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling
+burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of her
+garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old
+woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, so
+that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer,
+in the midst of which she started and would have arisen.
+
+"Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon
+me!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself
+and was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar in
+infancy and unforgotten through many wanderings and in all the
+vicissitudes of her heart and fortune, were mingling with the accents
+of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct--not
+rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book
+which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening
+light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices
+strengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and the
+conversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed like
+himself became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those
+strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three
+hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a
+chamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular
+vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of the
+embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vivid
+as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old
+people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful,
+and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a
+wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her and
+leaving shame and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave.
+They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of
+their talk their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind
+sweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted
+her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.
+
+"A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked the
+old woman, smiling in the lady's face.
+
+"And did you also hear them?" exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
+humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
+
+"Yea, and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman, "wherefore
+cover thy face quickly."
+
+Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer
+that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pauses
+of her breath strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually
+increasing, so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew.
+Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound and were succeeded by
+the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a
+wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming
+altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.
+Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the
+scourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and
+became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish
+every soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly
+into funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed
+up like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the
+fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this
+wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken
+career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious
+voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his
+feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company
+whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought
+an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted
+their laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of
+woman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home
+and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the
+shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow,
+fitful and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine trees
+on those three lonely hills.
+
+The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her
+face.
+
+"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a
+mad-house?" inquired the latter.
+
+"True, true!" said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within its
+walls, but misery, misery without."
+
+"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.
+
+"There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied the
+lady, faintly.
+
+"Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get
+thee hence before the hour be past."
+
+The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep
+shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were
+rising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
+weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of
+a bell stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that had
+travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die
+in the air. The lady shook upon her companion's knees as she heard
+that boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into the
+tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower
+and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall
+and to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom
+appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly,
+slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on
+the ground, so that the ear could measure the length of their
+melancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading the
+burial-service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
+breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud, still
+there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women
+and from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged
+hearts of her parents, the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondness
+of her husband, the mother who had sinned against natural affection
+and left her child to die. The sweeping sound of the funeral train
+faded away like a thin vapor, and the wind, that just before had
+seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned sadly round the verge of the
+hollow between three hills. But when the old woman stirred the
+kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.
+
+"Here has been a sweet hour's sport!" said the withered crone,
+chuckling to herself.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY.
+
+A SKETCH OF TRANSITORY LIFE.
+
+
+Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the
+current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no
+undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged
+thoroughfare of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the
+observer to run about the earth, to leave the track of his footsteps
+far and wide, to mingle himself with the action of numberless
+vicissitudes, and, finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing
+spirit on all that he has seen and felt. But there are natures too
+indolent or too sensitive to endure the dust, the sunshine or the
+rain, the turmoil of moral and physical elements, to which all the
+wayfarers of the world expose themselves. For such a man how pleasant
+a miracle could life be made to roll its variegated length by the
+threshold of his own hermitage, and the great globe, as it were,
+perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before his eyes
+without whirling him onward in its course! If any mortal be favored
+with a lot analogous to this, it is the toll-gatherer. So, at least,
+have I often fancied while lounging on a bench at the door of a small
+square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a
+long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea,
+while above, like the life-blood through a great artery, the travel of
+the north and east is continually throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid
+bench, I amuse myself with a conception, illustrated by numerous
+pencil-sketches in the air, of the toll-gatherer's day.
+
+In the morning--dim, gray, dewy summer's morn--the distant roll of
+ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend's slumbers,
+creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and
+gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change
+from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing
+wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The
+timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman
+stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by
+the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is
+seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten
+miles long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels, and
+the huge hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but
+half awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing
+from the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused
+clatter of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried
+onward at the same headlong, restless rate all through the quiet
+night. The bridge resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on
+without a pause, merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the
+sleepy passengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a
+cordial in the briny air. The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and
+they forget how wearily the darkness toiled away. And behold now the
+fervid day in his bright chariot, glittering aslant over the waves,
+nor scorning to throw a tribute of his golden beams on the
+toll-gatherer's little hermitage. The old man looks eastward, and (for
+he is a moralizer) frames a simile of the stage-coach and the sun.
+
+While the world is rousing itself we may glance slightly at the scene
+of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood--a spot not
+of earth, but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound
+among the massive beams beneath. Over the door is a weatherbeaten
+board inscribed with the rates of toll in letters so nearly effaced
+that the gilding of the sunshine can hardly make them legible. Beneath
+the window is a wooden bench on which a long succession of weary
+wayfarers have reposed themselves. Peeping within-doors, we perceive
+the whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and
+advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a
+wandering caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer,
+glorified by the early sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may
+announce, of quiet soul and thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, who
+of the wisdom which the passing world scatters along the wayside has
+gathered a reasonable store.
+
+Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon
+the sky. Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer's
+practised ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number
+of its wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with
+their iron tramp. Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth
+betimes to take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his
+wife with their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between
+them. The bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes
+and carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty
+with yesterday's journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled
+with a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse
+and driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a
+whole summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the
+frolicsome maidens! Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged
+man who as he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to
+stick upon the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a
+manufacturer of pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a
+horseman clad in black, with a meditative brow, as of one who,
+whithersoever his steed might bear him, would still journey through a
+mist of brooding thought. He is a country preacher going to labor at a
+protracted meeting. The next object passing townward is a butcher's
+cart canopied with its arch of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a
+"sauceman" driving a wagon full of new potatoes, green ears of corn,
+beets, carrots, turnips and summer squashes, and next two wrinkled,
+withered witch-looking old gossips in an antediluvian chaise drawn by
+a horse of former generations and going to peddle out a lot of
+huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a wheelbarrow-load of
+lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly onward, covered with
+green canvas and conveying the contributions of a whole herd of cows,
+in large tin canisters.
+
+But let all these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that
+causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the
+travellers brought sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome
+influence all along the road. It is a barouche of the newest style,
+the varnished panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the
+landscape, and show a picture, likewise, of our friend with his visage
+broadened, so that his meditative smile is transformed to grotesque
+merriment. Within sits a youth fresh as the summer morn, and beside
+him a young lady in white with white gloves upon her slender hands and
+a white veil flowing down over her face. But methinks her blushing
+cheek burns through the snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in
+front. And who are these on whom, and on all that appertains to them,
+the dust of earth seems never to have settled? Two lovers whom the
+priest has blessed this blessed morn and sent them forth, with one of
+the bride-maids, on the matrimonial tour.--Take my blessing too, ye
+happy ones! May the sky not frown upon you nor clouds bedew you with
+their chill and sullen rain! May the hot sun kindle no fever in your
+hearts! May your whole life's pilgrimage be as blissful as this first
+day's journey, and its close be gladdened with even brighter
+anticipations than those which hallow your bridal-night! They pass,
+and ere the reflection of their joy has faded from his face another
+spectacle throws a melancholy shadow over the spirit of the observing
+man. In a close carriage sits a fragile figure muffled carefully and
+shrinking even from the mild breath of summer. She leans against a
+manly form, and his arm enfolds her as if to guard his treasure from
+some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when he shall strive to
+embrace that loved one, he will press only desolation to his heart.
+
+And now has Morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sun
+rolls blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his
+face with. The horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave
+their glistening sides in short quick pantings when the reins are
+tightened at the toll-house. Glisten, too, the faces of the
+travellers. Their garments are thickly bestrewn with dust; their
+whiskers and hair look hoary; their throats are choked with the dusty
+atmosphere which they have left behind them. No air is stirring on the
+road. Nature dares draw no breath lest she should inhale a stifling
+cloud of dust. "A hot and dusty day!" cry the poor pilgrims as they
+wipe their begrimed foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the
+river bears along with it.--"Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!" answers the
+sympathetic toll-gatherer. They start again to pass through the fiery
+furnace, while he re-enters his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with
+a pail of briny water from the stream beneath. He thinks within
+himself that the sun is not so fierce here as elsewhere, and that the
+gentle air doth not forget him in these sultry days. Yes, old friend,
+and a quiet heart will make a dog-day temperate. He hears a weary
+footstep, and perceives a traveller with pack and staff, who sits down
+upon the hospitable bench and removes the hat from his wet brow. The
+toll-gatherer administers a cup of cold water, and, discovering his
+guest to be a man of homely sense, he engages him in profitable talk,
+uttering the maxims of a philosophy which he has found in his own
+soul, but knows not how it came there. And as the wayfarer makes ready
+to resume his journey he tells him a sovereign remedy for blistered
+feet.
+
+Now comes the noontide hour--of all the hours, nearest akin to
+midnight, for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the
+world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest
+epoch of the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary
+things. The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner
+laden with wood from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably right
+athwart the bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a throng of
+impatient travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig with
+the top thrown back, both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of
+forecastle oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly-dressed
+gentleman and lady, he from a tailor's shop-board and she from a
+milliner's back room--the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what
+are the haughtiest of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's
+day? Here is a tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all
+beholders like a travelling meteor or opposition sun, and on the other
+side a seller of spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in
+several dozen of stone bottles. Here conic a party of ladies on
+horseback, in green ridings habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there
+a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a
+multitude nous clatter of their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a
+hand-organ on his shoulder, and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On
+this side, heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train
+of wagons conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a
+company of summer soldiers marching from village to village on a
+festival campaign, attended by the "brass band." Now look at the
+scene, and it presents an emblem of the mysterious confusion, the
+apparently insolvable riddle, in which individuals, or the great world
+itself, seem often to be involved. What miracle shall set all things
+right again?
+
+But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm;
+the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge
+vacant from end to end. "And thus," muses the toll-gatherer, "have I
+found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at
+a stand." The sage old man!
+
+Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor
+across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly
+among the timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff
+the freshening breeze. One or two let down long lines and haul up
+flapping flounders or cunners or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others,
+and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on
+their cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed
+floating upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily
+along the bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.--Rest,
+rest, thou weary world! for to-morrow's round of toil and pleasure
+will be as wearisome as to-day's has been, yet both shall bear thee
+onward a day's march of eternity.--Now the old toll-gatherer looks
+seaward and discerns the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the
+stars, too, kindling in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and,
+mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole
+procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has
+witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful
+soul to muse upon.
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN.
+
+
+At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a
+hundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival--a September
+morning, but warm and bright as any in July--I rambled into a wood of
+oaks with a few walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade
+above my head. The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and
+clumps of young saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track
+which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of
+grass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb
+of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played
+like a goldfish in the water.
+
+From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
+a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of
+which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated
+hue--reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse
+sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate
+the spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water
+violently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain or
+breaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living
+creature were about to emerge--the naiad of the spring, perhaps, in
+the shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss,
+a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How
+would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her
+sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples
+and throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her
+hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with
+morning dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful
+housewife, to clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy
+wood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left by
+cattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like
+a treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he
+would find only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spot
+where he had seen her.
+
+Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should have
+been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
+mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo!
+another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct
+in all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect
+of a fair young girl with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression
+laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance,
+till it seemed just what a fountain would be if, while dancing merrily
+into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through the
+dim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy
+twigs, the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was
+diffused among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness
+and became a glory round that head so beautiful.
+
+My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus
+tenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was
+the face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or
+faded into nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.
+
+My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend where
+that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,
+waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest
+motion, or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus
+have I often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in
+hopes to wile it back. Deep were my musings as to the race and
+attributes of that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the
+daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under
+the lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that
+one moment and then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain,
+or fairy or woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of
+some forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good
+truth, had a lovely girl with a warm heart and lips that would bear
+pressure stolen softly behind me and thrown her image into the spring?
+
+I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a
+spell upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the haunted
+spring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling and the
+sunbeam glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog,
+the hermit of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled
+snout and made himself invisible--all except a pair of long
+legs--beneath a stone. Methought he had a devilish look. I could have
+slain him as an enchanter who kept the mysterious beauty imprisoned in
+the fountain.
+
+Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and the
+church-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees
+insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of
+radiance hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadow
+falling to the east. The afternoon being far declined, the sunshine
+was almost pensive and the shade almost cheerful; glory and gloom were
+mingled in the placid light, as if the spirits of the Day and Evening
+had met in friendship under those trees and found themselves akin. I
+was admiring the picture when the shape of a young girl emerged from
+behind the clump of oaks. My heart knew her: it was the vision, but so
+distant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbued
+with the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that my
+spirit sunk within me, sadder than before. How could I ever reach her?
+
+While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves. In
+a moment the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching a
+portion of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearing
+like a mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance. A
+rainbow vivid as Niagara's was painted in the air. Its southern limb
+came down before the group of trees and enveloped the fair vision as
+if the hues of heaven were the only garment for her beauty. When the
+rainbow vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no longer there.
+Was her existence absorbed in nature's loveliest phenomenon, and did
+her pure frame dissolve away in the varied light? Yet I would not
+despair of her return, for, robed in the rainbow, she was the emblem
+of Hope.
+
+Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded to the
+parting moment. By the spring and in the wood and on the hill and
+through the village, at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magic
+hour of sunset, when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but
+in vain. Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared not
+in them. I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro or sat
+in solitude like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven and could
+take no more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner world where my
+thoughts lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of them.
+Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a
+romance, conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others
+and my own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy
+and despair had their end in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of my
+early youth with manhood's colder gift, the power of expression, your
+hearts, sweet ladies, should flutter at my tale.
+
+In the middle of January I was summoned home. The day before my
+departure, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the vision, I
+found that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and
+a glare of winter sunshine on the hill of the rainbow. "Let me hope,"
+thought I, "or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the whole
+world as desolate as this snowy hill." Most of the day was spent in
+preparing for the journey, which was to commence at four o'clock the
+next morning. About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, I
+descended from my chamber to the sitting-room to take leave of the old
+clergyman and his family with whom I had been an inmate. A gust of
+wind blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry.
+
+According to their invariable custom--so pleasant a one when the fire
+blazes cheerfully--the family were sitting in the parlor with no other
+light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman's scanty
+stipend compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation of
+his fires was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would
+smoulder away from morning till night with a dull warmth and no flame.
+This evening the heap of tan was newly put on and surmounted with
+three sticks of red oak full of moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine
+that had not yet kindled. There was no light except the little that
+came sullenly from two half-burnt brands, without even glimmering on
+the andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister's arm-chair,
+and also where his wife sat with her knitting-work, and how to avoid
+his two daughters--one a stout country lass, and the other a
+consumptive girl. Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next
+to that of the son, a learned collegian who had come home to keep
+school in the village during the winter vacation. I noticed that there
+was less room than usual to-night between the collegian's chair and
+mine.
+
+As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for
+some time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the
+regular click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times the fire
+threw out a brief and dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man's
+glasses and hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint
+to portray the individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts?
+Dreamy as the scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in which
+departed people who had known and loved each other here would hold
+communion in eternity? We were aware of each other's presence, not by
+sight nor sound nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it
+not be so among the dead?
+
+The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing a
+remark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous
+and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice
+that made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded.
+Had I ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so
+many old recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things
+familiar yet unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her
+features who had spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor?
+Whom had my heart recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened to catch
+her gentle breathing, and strove by the intensity of my gaze to
+picture forth a shape where none was visible.
+
+Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow,
+and where the darkness had been, there was she--the vision of the
+fountain. A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow
+and appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze
+and be gone. Yet her cheek was rosy and lifelike, and her features, in
+the bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my
+recollection of them. She knew me. The mirthful expression that had
+laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance when I beheld her
+faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and dimpling there now. One
+moment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the heap of tan upon
+the kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of the
+light, and gave her back to me no more!
+
+Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be
+revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire and
+had left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and
+returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an
+angel, it is what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein
+consists the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids,
+to make angels of yourselves.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY'S SHOW-BOX.
+
+A MORALITY.
+
+
+What is guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast
+interest whether the soul may contract such stains in all their depth
+and flagrancy from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved
+upon, but which physically have never had existence. Must the fleshly
+hand and visible frame of man set its seal to the evil designs of the
+soul, in order to give them their entire validity against the sinner?
+Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly
+tribunal, will guilty thoughts--of which guilty deeds are no more than
+shadows,--will these draw down the full weight of a condemning
+sentence in the supreme court of eternity? In the solitude of a
+midnight chamber or in a desert afar from men or in a church while the
+body is kneeling the soul may pollute itself even with those crimes
+which we are accustomed to deem altogether carnal. If this be true, it
+is a fearful truth.
+
+Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary example. A venerable
+gentleman--one Mr. Smith--who had long been regarded as a pattern of
+moral excellence was warming his aged blood with a glass or two of
+generous wine. His children being gone forth about their worldly
+business and his grandchildren at school, he sat alone in a deep
+luxurious arm-chair with his feet beneath a richly-carved mahogany
+table. Some old people have a dread of solitude, and when better
+company may not be had rejoice even to hear the quiet breathing of a
+babe asleep upon the carpet. But Mr. Smith, whose silver hair was the
+bright symbol of a life unstained except by such spots as are
+inseparable from human nature--he had no need of a babe to protect him
+by its purity, nor of a grown person to stand between him and his own
+soul. Nevertheless, either manhood must converse with age, or
+womanhood must soothe him with gentle cares, or infancy must sport
+around his chair, or his thoughts will stray into the misty region of
+the past and the old man be chill and sad. Wine will not always cheer
+him.
+
+Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the
+brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures
+entering the room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and
+aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back;
+and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an
+inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her
+arm; and lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in a dusky
+mantle which concealed both face and form. But Mr. Smith had a shrewd
+idea that it was Conscience. How kind of Fancy, Memory and Conscience
+to visit the old gentleman just as he was beginning to imagine that
+the wine had neither so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as
+when himself and the liquor were less aged! Through the dim length of
+the apartment, where crimson curtains muffled the glare of sunshine
+and created a rich obscurity, the three guests drew near the
+silver-haired old man. Memory, with a finger between the leaves of her
+huge volume, placed herself at his right hand; Conscience, with her
+face still hidden in the dusky mantle, took her station on the left,
+so as to be next his heart; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon
+the table with the magnifying-glass convenient to his eye.
+
+We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many
+pictures which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box
+with the semblances of living scenes. One was a moonlight picture, in
+the background a lowly dwelling, and in front, partly shadowed by a
+tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two youthful figures,
+male and female. The young man stood with folded arms, a haughty smile
+upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his eye as he glanced downward
+at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate at his feet, evidently
+sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly allowed her
+to lift her clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not
+lift. But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on which it was
+depicted, nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed,
+appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man. He was the
+personification of triumphant scorn.
+
+Now, strange to say, as old Mr. Smith peeped through the
+magnifying-glass, which made the objects start out from the canvas
+with magical deception, he began to recognize the farmhouse, the tree
+and both the figures of the picture. The young man in times long past
+had often met his gaze within the looking-glass; the girl was the very
+image of his first love--his cottage-love, his Martha Burroughs. Mr.
+Smith was scandalized. "Oh, vile and slanderous picture!" he exclaims.
+"When have I triumphed over ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded in
+her teens to David Tomkins, who won her girlish love and long enjoyed
+her affection as a wife? And ever since his death she has lived a
+reputable widow!"
+
+Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling
+them to and fro with uncertain fingers, until among the earlier pages
+she found one which had reference to this picture. She reads it close
+to the old gentleman's ear: it is a record merely of sinful thought
+which never was embodied in an act, but, while Memory is reading,
+Conscience unveils her face and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr.
+Smith. Though not a death-blow, the torture was extreme.
+
+The exhibition proceeded. One after another Fancy displayed her
+pictures, all of which appeared to have been painted by some malicious
+artist on purpose to vex Mr. Smith. Not a shadow of proof could have
+been adduced in any earthly court that he was guilty of the slightest
+of those sins which were thus made to stare him in the face. In one
+scene there was a table set out, with several bottles and glasses half
+filled with wine, which threw back the dull ray of an expiring lamp.
+There had been mirth and revelry until the hand of the clock stood
+just at midnight, when Murder stepped between the boon-companions. A
+young man had fallen on the floor, and lay stone dead with a ghastly
+wound crushed into his temple, while over him, with a delirium of
+mingled rage and horror in his countenance, stood the youthful
+likeness of Mr. Smith. The murdered youth wore the features of Edward
+Spencer. "What does this rascal of a painter mean?" cries Mr. Smith,
+provoked beyond all patience. "Edward Spencer was my earliest and
+dearest friend, true to me as I to him through more than half a
+century. Neither I nor any other ever murdered him. Was he not alive
+within five years, and did he not, in token of our long friendship,
+bequeath me his gold-headed cane and a mourning-ring?"
+
+Again had Memory been turning over her volume, and fixed at length
+upon so confused a page that she surely must have scribbled it when
+she was tipsy. The purport was, however, that while Mr. Smith and
+Edward Spencer were heating their young blood with wine a quarrel had
+flashed up between them, and Mr. Smith, in deadly wrath, had flung a
+bottle at Spencer's head. True, it missed its aim and merely smashed a
+looking-glass; and the next morning, when the incident was imperfectly
+remembered, they had shaken hands with a hearty laugh. Yet, again,
+while Memory was reading, Conscience unveiled her face, struck a
+dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith and quelled his remonstrance with her
+iron frown. The pain was quite excruciating.
+
+Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch, and
+in colors so faint and pale, that the subjects could barely be
+conjectured. A dull, semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the
+surface of the canvas, into which the figures seemed to vanish while
+the eye sought most earnestly to fix them. But in every scene, however
+dubiously portrayed, Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own
+lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror. After poring several
+minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable
+pictures, he began to see that the painter had intended to represent
+him, now in the decline of life, as stripping the clothes from the
+backs of three half-starved children. "Really, this puzzles me!" quoth
+Mr. Smith, with the irony of conscious rectitude. "Asking pardon of
+the painter, I pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave. A
+man of my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their
+clothes! Ridiculous!"
+
+But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a
+page which with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear. It was not
+altogether inapplicable to the misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had
+been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries, on the ground of
+a legal quibble, to commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children,
+joint-heirs to a considerable estate. Fortunately, before he was quite
+decided, his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice.
+As Memory ceased to read Conscience again thrust aside her mantle, and
+would have struck her victim with the envenomed dagger only that he
+struggled and clasped his hands before his heart. Even then, however,
+he sustained an ugly gash.
+
+Why should we follow Fancy through the whole series of those awful
+pictures? Painted by an artist of wondrous power and terrible
+acquaintance with the secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the
+never-perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr.
+Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to
+nothingness, give valid evidence against him at the day of judgment?
+Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly
+penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture and left
+the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too
+keen to be endured, bellowed aloud with impatient agony, and suddenly
+discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a
+silver-haired and highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the
+crimsoned-curtained room, with no box of pictures on the table, but
+only a decanter of most excellent Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed
+to fester with the venom of the dagger.
+
+Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might have argued the
+matter with Conscience and alleged many reasons wherefore she should
+not smite him so pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should
+be somewhat in the following fashion. A scheme of guilt, till it be
+put in execution, greatly resembles a train of incidents in a
+projected tale. The latter, in order to produce a sense of reality in
+the reader's mind, must be conceived with such proportionate strength
+by the author as to seem in the glow of fancy more like truth, past,
+present or to come, than purely fiction. The prospective sinner, on
+the other hand, weaves his plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a
+perfect certainty that it will be executed. There is a dreaminess
+diffused about his thoughts; in a dream, as it were, he strikes the
+death-blow into his victim's heart and starts to find an indelible
+blood-stain on his hand. Thus a novel-writer or a dramatist, in
+creating a villain of romance and fitting him with evil deeds, and the
+villain of actual life in projecting crimes that will be perpetrated,
+may almost meet each other halfway between reality and fancy. It is
+not until the crime is accomplished that Guilt clenches its gripe upon
+the guilty heart and claims it for his own. Then, and not before, sin
+is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance,
+grows a thousandfold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it
+considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil.
+At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon
+their notice and its results are dimly seen, they can bear to
+contemplate it. They may take the steps which lead to crime, impelled
+by the same sort of mental action as in working out a mathematical
+problem, yet be powerless with compunction at the final moment. They
+knew not what deed it was that they deemed themselves resolved to do.
+In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full
+resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very moment of
+execution. Let us hope, therefore, that all the dreadful consequences
+of sin will not be incurred unless the act have set its seal upon the
+thought.
+
+Yet, with the slight fancy-work which we have framed, some sad and
+awful truths are interwoven. Man must not disclaim his brotherhood
+even with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart
+has surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity. He must
+feel that when he shall knock at the gate of heaven no semblance of an
+unspotted life can entitle him to entrance there. Penitence must kneel
+and Mercy come from the footstool of the throne, or that golden gate
+will never open.
+
+
+
+
+DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT.
+
+
+That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable
+friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded
+gentlemen--Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne--and a
+withered gentlewoman whose name was the widow Wycherly. They were all
+melancholy old creatures who had been unfortunate in life, and whose
+greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their
+graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous
+merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now
+little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best
+years and his health and substance in the pursuit of sinful pleasures
+which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout and divers
+other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined
+politician, a man of evil fame--or, at least, had been so till time
+had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation and made
+him obscure instead of infamous. As for the widow Wycherly, tradition
+tells us that she was a great beauty in her day, but for a long while
+past she had lived in deep seclusion on account of certain scandalous
+stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is
+a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old
+gentlemen--Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne--were
+early lovers of the widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of
+cutting each other's throats for her sake. And before proceeding
+farther I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests
+were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves, as is not
+infrequently the case with old people when worried either by present
+troubles or woeful recollections.
+
+"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be
+seated, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little
+experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."
+
+If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very
+curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber festooned with
+cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood
+several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with
+rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with
+little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a
+bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities,
+Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult
+cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a
+tall and narrow oaken closet with its door ajar, within which
+doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a
+looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished
+gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it
+was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients
+dwelt within its verge and would stare him in the face whenever he
+looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented
+with the full-length portrait of a young lady arrayed in the faded
+magnificence of silk, satin and brocade, and with a visage as faded as
+her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the
+point of marriage with this young lady, but, being affected with some
+slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions
+and died on the bridal-evening. The greatest curiosity of the study
+remains to be mentioned: it was a ponderous folio volume bound in
+black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on
+the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well
+known to be a book of magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted
+it merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its
+closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the
+floor and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror,
+while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned and said, "Forbear!"
+
+Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a
+small round table as black as ebony stood in the centre of the room,
+sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate
+workmanship. The sunshine came through the window between the heavy
+festoons of two faded damask curtains and fell directly across this
+vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen
+visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne-glasses
+were also on the table.
+
+"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your
+aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"
+
+Now, Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman whose eccentricity
+had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these
+fables--to my shame be it spoken--might possibly be traced back to
+mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale
+should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the
+stigma of a fiction-monger.
+
+When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed
+experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of
+a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the
+microscope, or some similar nonsense with which he was constantly in
+the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply
+Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned with the same
+ponderous folio bound in black leather which common report affirmed to
+be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume
+and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a
+rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one
+brownish hue and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in
+the doctor's hands.
+
+"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh--"this same withered and
+crumbling flower--blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me
+by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to wear it in
+my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured
+between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible
+that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said the widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head.
+"You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever
+bloom again."
+
+"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase and threw the
+faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly
+on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture.
+Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and
+dried petals stirred and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if
+the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber, the slender stalk
+and twigs of foliage became green, and there was the rose of half a
+century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to
+her lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its delicate red
+leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or
+three dewdrops were sparkling.
+
+"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's
+friends--carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles
+at a conjurer's show. "Pray, how was it effected?"
+
+"Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth?" asked Dr. Heidegger,
+"which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or
+three centuries ago?"
+
+"But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?" said the widow Wycherly.
+
+"No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right
+place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is
+situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from
+Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias
+which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as
+violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of
+mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see
+in the vase."
+
+"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the
+doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human
+frame?"
+
+"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr.
+Heidegger.--"And all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
+much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
+For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
+hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
+merely watch the progress of the experiment."
+
+While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four
+champagne-glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was
+apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles
+were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses and bursting
+in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
+perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and
+comfortable properties, and, though utter sceptics as to its
+rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
+Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.
+
+"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be
+well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
+draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time
+through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be
+if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of
+virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"
+
+The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer except by a
+feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea that,
+knowing how closely Repentance treads behind the steps of Error, they
+should ever go astray again.
+
+"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing; "I rejoice that I have so well
+selected the subjects of my experiment."
+
+With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
+if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it,
+could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
+woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or
+pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and
+always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat
+stooping round the doctor's table without life enough in their souls
+or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again.
+They drank off the water and replaced their glasses on the table.
+
+Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
+the party--not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
+generous wine--together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
+brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
+suffusion on their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them
+look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some
+magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
+inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their
+brows. The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a
+woman again.
+
+"Give us more of this wondrous water," cried they, eagerly. "We are
+younger, but we are still too old. Quick! give us more!"
+
+"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the
+experiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time
+growing old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an
+hour. But the water is at your service." Again he filled their glasses
+with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase
+to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own
+grandchildren.
+
+While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor's four
+guests snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the
+contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was
+passing down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their
+whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened
+among their silvery locks: they sat around the table three gentlemen
+of middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.
+
+"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes
+had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting
+from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.
+
+The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were
+not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the
+mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet
+her gaze.
+
+Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that
+the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating
+qualities--unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a
+lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of
+years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but
+whether relating to the past, present or future could not easily be
+determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these
+fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about
+patriotism, national glory and the people's right; now he muttered
+some perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful whisper, so
+cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the
+secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a
+deeply-deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his
+well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling
+forth a jolly bottle-song and ringing his glass in symphony with the
+chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the widow
+Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved
+in a calculation of dollars and cents with which was strangely
+intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by
+harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the widow
+Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her
+own image and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all
+the world besides. She thrust her face close to the glass to see
+whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed
+vanished; she examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from
+her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last,
+turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the
+table.
+
+"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass."
+
+"Certainly, my dear madam--certainly," replied the complaisant doctor.
+"See! I have already filled the glasses."
+
+There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this wonderful
+water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the
+surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds.
+
+It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than
+ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase
+and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable
+figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair
+with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very
+Father Time whose power had never been disputed save by this fortunate
+company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of
+Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious
+visage. But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot
+through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age,
+with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was
+remembered only as the trouble of a dream from which they had joyously
+awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost and without which
+the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded
+pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They
+felt like new-created beings in a new-created universe.
+
+"We are young! We are young!" they cried, exultingly.
+
+Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
+characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all. They
+were a group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant
+frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their
+gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which
+they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their
+old-fashioned attire--the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of
+the young men and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One
+limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of
+spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the
+black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an
+arm-chair and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr.
+Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully and leaped about the room.
+
+The widow Wycherly--if so fresh a damsel could be called a
+widow--tripped up to the doctor's chair with a mischievous merriment
+in her rosy face.
+
+"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me;"
+and then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what
+a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.
+
+"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I am old and
+rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago. But either of these
+gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."
+
+"Dance with me, Clara," cried Colonel Killigrew.
+
+"No, no! I will be her partner," shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
+
+"She promised me her hand fifty years ago," exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.
+
+They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his
+passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third
+buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the
+widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her
+warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to
+disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never
+was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching
+beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the
+duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still
+wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the
+three old, gray, withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the
+skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their
+burning passions proved them so.
+
+Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither
+granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to
+interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize,
+they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to
+and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand
+fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream
+across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old
+in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect
+fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of
+Dr. Heidegger.
+
+"Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!" exclaimed the doctor.
+"I really must protest against this riot."
+
+They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were
+calling them back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and
+darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in
+his carved armchair holding the rose of half a century, which he had
+rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion
+of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats--the more readily
+because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they
+were.
+
+"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the
+light of the sunset clouds. "It appears to be fading again."
+
+And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower
+continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the
+doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops
+of moisture which clung to its petals.
+
+"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he,
+pressing the withered rose to his withered lips.
+
+While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy
+head and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange
+dullness--whether of the body or spirit they could not tell--was
+creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and
+fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a
+deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had
+the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were
+they now four aged people sitting with their old friend Dr. Heidegger?
+
+"Are we grown old again so soon?" cried they, dolefully.
+
+In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more
+transient than that of wine; the delirium which it created had
+effervesced away. Yes, they were old again. With a shuddering impulse
+that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands
+before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it
+could be no longer beautiful.
+
+"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, "and, lo! the
+Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not;
+for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to
+bathe my lips in it--no, though its delirium were for years instead of
+moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me."
+
+But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.
+They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida and quaff at
+morning, noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.
+
+
+
+
+LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE-HOUSE.
+
+  I.--HOWE'S MASQUERADE.
+ II.--EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT.
+III.--LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE.
+ IV.--OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+HOWE'S MASQUERADE.
+
+
+One afternoon last summer, while walking along Washington street, my
+eye was attracted by a sign-board protruding over a narrow archway
+nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign represented the front
+of a stately edifice which was designated as the "OLD PROVINCE HOUSE,
+kept by Thomas Waite." I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose,
+long entertained, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old
+royal governors of Massachusetts, and, entering the arched passage
+which penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few
+steps transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small
+and secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the
+square front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted
+by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with
+his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the
+weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this
+attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a
+cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's
+watch over the city.
+
+The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to
+have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red
+freestone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron
+ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a
+balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to
+that beneath. These letters and figures--"16 P.S. 79"--are wrought
+into the ironwork of the balcony, and probably express the date of the
+edifice, with the initials of its founder's name.
+
+A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on
+the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this
+apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levees
+with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the counsellors,
+the judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of
+the province thronged to do them honor. But the room in its present
+condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled
+wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from
+the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
+block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never
+visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches
+which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most
+venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with
+Dutch tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture,
+and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat
+beside this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue
+tile. A bar in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles,
+cigar-boxes and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump
+and a soda-fount, extends along one side of the room.
+
+At my entrance an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest
+which satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold
+good liquor, though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by
+the old governors. After sipping a glass of port-sangaree prepared by
+the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy
+successor and representative of so many historic personages to conduct
+me over their time-honored mansion. He readily complied, but, to
+confess the truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my
+imagination in order to find aught that was interesting in a house
+which, without its historic associations, would have seemed merely
+such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of decent city
+boarders and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers, which were
+probably spacious in former times, are now cut up by partitions and
+subdivided into little nooks, each affording scanty room for the
+narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger: The great
+staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature
+of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house
+by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square
+landing-place, whence the ascent is continued toward the cupola. A
+carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing
+dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted
+and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the
+military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have
+trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola which afforded them so
+wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The
+cupola is an octagon with several windows, and a door opening upon the
+roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may
+have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the
+tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of
+Washington's besieging army, although the buildings since erected in
+the vicinity have shut out almost every object save the steeple of the
+Old South, which seems almost within arm's length. Descending from the
+cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak
+framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and
+thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials
+of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the mansion,
+are still as sound as ever, but, the floors and other interior parts
+being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole and build a
+new house within the ancient frame-and brickwork. Among other
+inconveniences of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that any
+jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of the
+ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that beneath it.
+
+We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony where in
+old times it was doubtless the custom of the king's representative to
+show himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up
+hats with stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days the
+front of the Province House looked upon the street, and the whole site
+now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present
+court-yard, was laid out in grass-plats overshadowed by trees and
+bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic edifice
+hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one
+of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses sewing and
+chatting and laughing, with now and then a careless glance toward the
+balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the
+elderly gentleman above mentioned--the smack of whose lips had spoken
+so favorably for Mr. Waite's good liquor--was still lounging in his
+chair. He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor
+of the house who might be supposed to have his regular score at the
+bar, his summer seat at the open window and his prescriptive corner at
+the winter's fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to
+address him with a remark calculated to draw forth his historical
+reminiscences, if any such were in his mind, and it gratified me to
+discover that, between memory and tradition, the old gentleman was
+really possessed of some very pleasant gossip about the Province
+House. The portion of his talk which chiefly interested me was the
+outline of the following legend. He professed to have received it at
+one or two removes from an eye-witness, but this derivation, together
+with the lapse of time, must have afforded opportunities for many
+variations of the narrative; so that, despairing of literal and
+absolute truth, I have not scrupled to make such further changes as
+seemed conducive to the reader's profit and delight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At one of the entertainments given at the province-house during the
+latter part of the siege of Boston there passed a scene which has
+never yet been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the British
+army and the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected
+within the beleaguered town, had been invited to a masqued ball, for
+it was the policy for Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger
+of the period and the desperate aspect of the siege under an
+ostentation of festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest
+members of the provincial court circle might be believed, was the most
+gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the
+government. The brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with
+figures that seemed to have stepped from the dark canvas of historic
+portraits or to have flitted forth from the magic pages of romance, or
+at least to have flown hither from one of the London theatres without
+a change of garments. Steeled knights of the Conquest, bearded
+statesmen of Queen Elizabeth and high-ruffed ladies of her court were
+mingled with characters of comedy, such as a parti-colored Merry
+Andrew jingling his cap and bells, a Falstaff almost as provocative of
+laughter as his prototype, and a Don Quixote with a bean-pole for a
+lance and a pot-lid for a shield.
+
+But the broadest merriment was excited by a group of figures
+ridiculously dressed in old regimentals which seemed to have been
+purchased at a military rag-fair or pilfered from some receptacle of
+the cast-off clothes of both the French and British armies. Portions
+of their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and
+the coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by
+sword, ball or bayonet as long ago as Wolfe's victory. One of these
+worthies--a tall, lank figure brandishing a rusty sword of immense
+longitude--purported to be no less a personage than General George
+Washington, and the other principal officers of the American army,
+such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented
+by similar scarecrows. An interview in the mock-heroic style between
+the rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief was received
+with immense applause, which came loudest of all from the loyalists of
+the colony.
+
+There was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, eying these
+antics sternly and scornfully at once with a frown and a bitter smile.
+It was an old man formerly of high station and great repute in the
+province, and who had been a very famous soldier in his day. Some
+surprise had been expressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe's known
+Whig principles, though now too old to take an active part in the
+contest, should have remained in Boston during the siege, and
+especially that he should consent to show himself in the mansion of
+Sir William Howe. But thither he had come with a fair granddaughter
+under his arm, and there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood
+this stern old figure, the best-sustained character in the masquerade,
+because so well representing the antique spirit of his native land.
+The other guests affirmed that Colonel Joliffe's black puritanical
+scowl threw a shadow round about him, although, in spite of his sombre
+influence, their gayety continued to blaze higher, like--an ominous
+comparison--the flickering brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little
+while to burn.
+
+Eleven strokes full half an hour ago had pealed from the clock of the
+Old South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new
+spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited which should put a
+fitting close to the splendid festivities of the night.
+
+"What new jest has Your Excellency in hand?" asked the Reverend Mather
+Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had not kept him from the
+entertainment. "Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than
+beseems my cloth at your Homeric confabulation with yonder ragamuffin
+general of the rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must
+throw off my clerical wig and band."
+
+"Not so, good Dr. Byles," answered Sir William Howe; "if mirth were a
+crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new
+foolery, I know no more about it than yourself--perhaps not so much.
+Honestly, now, doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of
+some of your countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade?"
+
+"Perhaps," slyly remarked the granddaughter of Colonel Joliffe, whose
+high spirit had been stung by many taunts against New England--"perhaps
+we are to have a masque of allegorical figures--Victory with trophies
+from Lexington and Bunker Hill, Plenty with her overflowing horn to
+typify the present abundance in this good town, and Glory with a
+wreath for His Excellency's brow."
+
+Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one
+of his darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard.
+He was spared the necessity of a retort by a singular interruption. A
+sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a
+full band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing,
+not such a festal strain as was suited to the occasion, but a slow
+funeral-march. The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets
+poured forth a wailing breath which at once hushed the merriment of
+the auditors, filling all with wonder and some with apprehension. The
+idea occurred to many that either the funeral procession of some great
+personage had halted in front of the province-house, or that a corpse
+in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to be
+borne from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe
+called in a stern voice to the leader of the musicians, who had
+hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies.
+The man was drum-major to one of the British regiments.
+
+"Dighton," demanded the general, "what means this foolery? Bid your
+band silence that dead march, or, by my word, they shall have
+sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, sirrah!"
+
+"Please, Your Honor," answered the drum-major, whose rubicund visage
+had lost all its color, "the fault is none of mine. I and my band are
+all here together, and I question whether there be a man of us that
+could play that march without book. I never heard it but once before,
+and that was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King George II."
+
+"Well, well!" said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure; "it is
+the prelude to some masquerading antic. Let it pass."
+
+A figure now presented itself, but among the many fantastic masks that
+were dispersed through the apartments none could tell precisely from
+whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge
+and having the aspect of a steward or principal domestic in the
+household of a nobleman or great English landholder. This figure
+advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and, throwing both its
+leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side and looked back toward
+the grand staircase, as if expecting some person to descend. At the
+same time, the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful summons.
+The eyes of Sir William Howe and his guests being directed to the
+staircase, there appeared on the uppermost landing-place, that was
+discernible from the bottom, several personages descending toward the
+door. The foremost was a man of stern visage, wearing a
+steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap beneath it, a dark cloak and huge
+wrinkled boots that came halfway up his legs. Under his arm was a
+rolled-up banner which seemed to be the banner of England, but
+strangely rent and torn; he had a sword in his right hand and grasped
+a Bible in his left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of
+dignity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descended a beard, a gown of
+wrought velvet and a doublet and hose of black satin; he carried a
+roll of manuscript in his hand. Close behind these two came a young
+man of very striking countenance and demeanor with deep thought and
+contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his
+eye; his garb, like that of his predecessors, was of an antique
+fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon his ruff. In the same
+group with these were three or four others, all men of dignity and
+evident command, and bearing themselves like personages who were
+accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. It was the idea of the
+beholders that these figures went to join the mysterious funeral that
+had halted in front of the province-house, yet that supposition seemed
+to be contradicted by the air of triumph with which they waved their
+hands as they crossed the threshold and vanished through the portal.
+
+"In the devil's name, what is this?" muttered Sir William Howe to a
+gentleman beside him. "A procession of the regicide judges of King
+Charles the martyr?"
+
+"These," said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence almost for the first
+time that evening--"these, if I interpret them aright, are the
+Puritan governors, the rulers of the old original democracy of
+Massachusetts--Endicott with the banner from which he had torn the
+symbol of subjection, and Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane and Dudley,
+Haynes, Bellingham and Leverett."
+
+"Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his ruff?" asked Miss
+Joliffe.
+
+"Because in after-years," answered her grandfather, "he laid down the
+wisest head in England upon the block for the principles of liberty."
+
+"Will not Your Excellency order out the guard?" whispered Lord Percy,
+who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general.
+"There may be a plot under this mummery."
+
+"Tush! we have nothing to fear," carelessly replied Sir William Howe.
+"There can be no worse treason in the matter than a jest, and that
+somewhat of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best
+policy would be to laugh it off. See! here come more of these gentry."
+
+Another group of characters had now partly descended the staircase.
+The first was a venerable and white-bearded patriarch who cautiously
+felt his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and
+stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man's
+shoulder, came a tall soldier-like figure equipped with a plumed cap
+of steel, a bright breastplate and a long sword, which rattled against
+the stairs. Next was seen a stout man dressed in rich and courtly
+attire, but not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion
+of a seaman's walk, and, chancing to stumble on the staircase, he
+suddenly grew wrathful and was heard to mutter an oath. He was
+followed by a noble-looking personage in a curled wig such as are
+represented in the portraits of Queen Anne's time and earlier, and the
+breast of his coat was decorated with an embroidered star. While
+advancing to the door he bowed to the right hand and to the left in a
+very gracious and insinuating style, but as he crossed the threshold,
+unlike the early Puritan governors, he seemed to wring his hands with
+sorrow.
+
+"Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. Byles," said Sir William
+Howe. "What worthies are these?"
+
+"If it please Your Excellency, they lived somewhat before my day,"
+answered the doctor; "but doubtless our friend the colonel has been
+hand and glove with them."
+
+"Their living faces I never looked upon," said Colonel Joliffe,
+gravely; "although I have spoken face to face with many rulers of this
+land, and shall greet yet another with an old man's blessing ere I
+die. But we talk of these figures. I take the venerable patriarch to
+be Bradstreet, the last of the Puritans, who was governor at ninety or
+thereabouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, as any New
+England schoolboy will tell you, and therefore the people cast him
+down from his high seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William Phipps,
+shepherd, cooper, sea-captain and governor. May many of his countrymen
+rise as high from as low an origin! Lastly, you saw the gracious earl
+of Bellamont, who ruled us under King William."
+
+"But what is the meaning of it all?" asked Lord Percy.
+
+"Now, were I a rebel," said Miss Joliffe, half aloud, "I might fancy
+that the ghosts of these ancient governors had been summoned to form
+the funeral procession of royal authority in New England."
+
+Several other figures were now seen at the turn of the staircase. The
+one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty
+expression of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was
+evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long
+continuance in high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a
+greater than himself. A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet
+and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn
+by the duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubicund tinge, which,
+together with the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover
+of the wine-cup and good-fellowship; notwithstanding which tokens, he
+appeared ill at ease, and often glanced around him as if apprehensive
+of some secret mischief. Next came a portly gentleman wearing a coat
+of shaggy cloth lined with silken velvet; he had sense, shrewdness and
+humor in his face and a folio volume under his arm, but his aspect was
+that of a man vexed and tormented beyond all patience and harassed
+almost to death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a dignified
+person dressed in a purple velvet suit with very rich embroidery; his
+demeanor would have possessed much stateliness, only that a grievous
+fit of the gout compelled him to hobble from stair to stair with
+contortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the
+staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him
+steadfastly until the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, made
+a gesture of anguish and despair and vanished into the outer gloom,
+whither the funeral music summoned him.
+
+"Governor Belcher--my old patron--in his very shape and dress!" gasped
+Dr. Byles. "This is an awful mockery."
+
+"A tedious foolery, rather," said Sir William Howe, with an air of
+indifference. "But who were the three that preceded him?"
+
+"Governor Dudley, a cunning politician; yet his craft once brought him
+to a prison," replied Colonel Joliffe. "Governor Shute, formerly a
+colonel under Marlborough, and whom the people frightened out of the
+province, and learned Governor Burnett, whom the legislature tormented
+into a mortal fever."
+
+"Methinks they were miserable men--these royal governors of
+Massachusetts," observed Miss Joliffe. "Heavens! how dim the light
+grows!"
+
+It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which illuminated the
+staircase now burned dim and duskily; so that several figures which
+passed hastily down the stairs and went forth from the porch appeared
+rather like shadows than persons of fleshly substance.
+
+Sir William Howe and his guests stood at the doors of the contiguous
+apartments watching the progress of this singular pageant with various
+emotions of anger, contempt or half-acknowledged fear, but still with
+an anxious curiosity. The shapes which now seemed hastening to join
+the mysterious procession were recognized rather by striking
+peculiarities of dress or broad characteristics of manner than by any
+perceptible resemblance of features to their prototypes. Their faces,
+indeed, were invariably kept in deep shadow, but Dr. Byles and other
+gentlemen who had long been familiar with the successive rulers of the
+province were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, of Pownall, of
+Sir Francis Bernard and of the well-remembered Hutchinson, thereby
+confessing that the actors, whoever they might be, in this spectral
+march of governors had succeeded in putting on some distant
+portraiture of the real personages. As they vanished from the door,
+still did these shadows toss their arms into the gloom of night with a
+dread expression of woe. Following the mimic representative of
+Hutchinson came a military figure holding before his face the cocked
+hat which he had taken from his powdered head, but his epaulettes and
+other insignia of rank were those of a general officer, and something
+in his mien reminded the beholders of one who had recently been master
+of the province-house and chief of all the land.
+
+"The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking-glass!" exclaimed Lord
+Percy, turning pale.
+
+"No, surely," cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysterically; "it could not
+be Gage, or Sir William would have greeted his old comrade in arms.
+Perhaps he will not suffer the next to pass unchallenged."
+
+"Of that be assured, young lady," answered Sir William Howe, fixing
+his eyes with a very marked expression upon the immovable visage of
+her grandfather. "I have long enough delayed to pay the ceremonies of
+a host to these departing guests; the next that takes his leave shall
+receive due courtesy."
+
+A wild and dreary burst of music came through the open door. It seemed
+as it the procession, which had been gradually filling up its ranks,
+were now about to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing
+trumpets and roll of the muffled drums were a call to some loiterer to
+make haste. Many eyes, by an irresistible impulse, were turned upon
+Sir William Howe, as if it were he whom the dreary music summoned to
+the funeral of departed power.
+
+"See! here comes the last," whispered Miss Joliffe, pointing her
+tremulous finger to the staircase.
+
+A figure had come into view as if descending the stairs, although so
+dusky was the region whence it emerged some of the spectators fancied
+that they had seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself amid the
+gloom. Downward the figure came with a stately and martial tread, and,
+reaching the lowest stair, was observed to be a tall man booted and
+wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn up around the face so as
+to meet the napped brim of a laced hat; the features, therefore, were
+completely hidden. But the British officers deemed that they had seen
+that military cloak before, and even recognized the frayed embroidery
+on the collar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which
+protruded from the folds of the cloak and glittered in a vivid gleam
+of light. Apart from these trifling particulars there were
+characteristics of gait and bearing which impelled the wondering
+guests to glance from the shrouded figure to Sir William Howe, as if
+to satisfy themselves that their host had not suddenly vanished from
+the midst of them. With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they saw
+the general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak
+before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor.
+
+"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" cried he. "You pass no farther."
+
+The figure, without blenching a hair's-breadth from the sword which
+was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of
+the cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators
+to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen
+enough. The sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild
+amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the
+figure and let fall his sword upon the floor. The martial shape again
+drew the cloak about his features and passed on, but, reaching the
+threshold with his back toward the spectators, he was seen to stamp
+his foot and shake his clenched hands in the air. It was afterward
+affirmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that selfsame gesture of
+rage and sorrow when for the last time, and as the last royal
+governor, he passed through the portal of the province-house.
+
+"Hark! The procession moves," said Miss Joliffe.
+
+The music was dying away along the street, and its dismal strains were
+mingled with the knell of midnight from the steeple of the Old South
+and with the roar of artillery which announced that the beleaguered
+army of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height than
+before. As the deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear Colonel
+Joliffe raised himself to the full height of his aged form and smiled
+sternly on the British general.
+
+"Would Your Excellency inquire further into the mystery of the
+pageant?" said he.
+
+"Take care of your gray head!" cried Sir William Howe, fiercely,
+though with a quivering lip. "It has stood too long on a traitor's
+shoulders."
+
+"You must make haste to chop it off, then," calmly replied the
+colonel, "for a few hours longer, and not all the power of Sir William
+Howe, nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall.
+The empire of Britain in this ancient province is at its last gasp
+to-night; almost while I speak it is a dead corpse, and methinks the
+shadows of the old governors are fit mourners at its funeral."
+
+With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak, and, drawing his
+granddaughter's arm within his own, retired from the last festival
+that a British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts
+Bay. It was supposed that the colonel and the young lady possessed
+some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that
+night. However this might be, such knowledge has never become general.
+The actors in the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even
+that wild Indian hand who scattered the cargoes of the tea-ships on
+the waves and gained a place in history, yet left no names. But
+superstition, among other legends of this mansion, repeats the
+wondrous tale that on the anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture
+the ghosts of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide
+through the portal of the Province House. And last of all comes a
+figure shrouded in a military cloak, tossing his clenched hands into
+the air and stamping his iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone
+steps with a semblance of feverish despair, but without the sound of a
+foot-tramp.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentleman were hushed, I
+drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving with the best
+energy of my imagination to throw a tinge of romance and historic
+grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a
+scent of cigar-smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way
+of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale.
+Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were woefully disturbed by the
+rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch which Mr. Thomas
+Waite was mingling for a customer. Nor did it add to the picturesque
+appearance of the panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline stage
+was suspended against them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some
+far-descended governor. A stage-driver sat at one of the windows
+reading a penny paper of the day--the Boston _Times_--and presenting a
+figure which could nowise be brought into any picture of "Times in
+Boston" seventy or a hundred years ago. On the window-seat lay a
+bundle neatly done up in brown paper, the direction of which I had the
+idle curiosity to read: "MISS SUSAN HUGGINS, at the PROVINCE HOUSE." A
+pretty chambermaid, no doubt. In truth, it is desperately hard work
+when we attempt to throw the spell of hoar antiquity over localities
+with which the living world and the day that is passing over us have
+aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the stately staircase down which the
+procession of the old governors had descended, and as I emerged
+through the venerable portal whence their figures had preceded me, it
+gladdened me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. Then, diving through
+the narrow archway, a few strides transported me into the densest
+throng of Washington street.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT.
+
+
+The old legendary guest of the Province House abode in my remembrance
+from midsummer till January. One idle evening last winter, confident
+that he would be found in the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I
+resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to deserve well of my
+country by snatching from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of
+history. The night was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by
+almost a gale of wind which whistled along Washington street, causing
+the gaslights to flare and flicker within the lamps.
+
+As I hurried onward my fancy was busy with a comparison between the
+present aspect of the street and that which it probably wore when the
+British governors inhabited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick
+edifices in those times were few till a succession of destructive
+fires had swept, and swept again, the wooden dwellings and warehouses
+from the most populous quarters of the town. The buildings stood
+insulated and independent, not, as now, merging their separate
+existences into connected ranges with a front of tiresome identity,
+but each possessing features of its own, as if the owner's individual
+taste had shaped it, and the whole presenting a picturesque
+irregularity the absence of which is hardly compensated by any
+beauties of our modern architecture. Such a scene, dimly vanishing
+from the eye by the ray of here and there a tallow candle glimmering
+through the small panes of scattered windows, would form a sombre
+contrast to the street as I beheld it with the gaslights blazing from
+corner to corner, flaming within the shops and throwing a noonday
+brightness through the huge plates of glass. But the black, lowering
+sky, as I turned my eyes upward, wore, doubtless, the same visage as
+when it frowned upon the ante-Revolutionary New Englanders. The wintry
+blast had the same shriek that was familiar to their ears. The Old
+South Church, too, still pointed its antique spire into the darkness
+and was lost between earth and heaven, and, as I passed, its clock,
+which had warned so many generations how transitory was their
+lifetime, spoke heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to myself.
+"Only seven o'clock!" thought I. "My old friend's legends will
+scarcely kill the hours 'twixt this and bedtime."
+
+Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the courtyard, the confined
+precincts of which were made visible by a lantern over the portal of
+the Province House. On entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected,
+the old tradition-monger seated by a special good fire of anthracite,
+compelling clouds of smoke from a corpulent cigar. He recognized me
+with evident pleasure, for my rare properties as a patient listener
+invariably make me a favorite with elderly gentlemen and ladies of
+narrative propensites. Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired mine
+host to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey-punch, which was
+speedily prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom,
+a dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of
+nutmeg strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together, my
+legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I
+rejoiced at the oddity of the name, because it gave his image and
+character a sort of individuality in my conception. The old
+gentleman's draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it
+overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead people and
+traits of ancient manners, some of which were childish as a nurse's
+lullaby, while others might have been worth the notice of the grave
+historian. Nothing impressed me more than a story of a black
+mysterious picture which used to hang in one of the chambers of the
+Province House, directly above the room where we were now sitting. The
+following is as correct a version of the fact as the reader would be
+likely to obtain from any other source, although, assuredly, it has a
+tinge of romance approaching to the marvellous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In one of the apartments of the province-house there was long
+preserved an ancient picture the frame of which was as black as ebony,
+and the canvas itself so dark with age, damp and smoke that not a
+touch of the painter's art could be discerned. Time had thrown an
+impenetrable veil over it and left to tradition and fable and
+conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed. During the rule
+of many successive governors it had hung, by prescriptive and
+undisputed right, over the mantel piece of the same chamber, and it
+still kept its place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the
+administration of the province on the departure of Sir Francis
+Bernard.
+
+The lieutenant-governor sat one afternoon resting his head against the
+carved back of his stately arm-chair and gazing up thoughtfully at the
+void blackness of the picture. It was scarcely a time for such
+inactive musing, when affairs of the deepest moment required the
+ruler's decision; for within that very hour Hutchinson had received
+intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet bringing three
+regiments from Halifax to overawe the insubordination of the people.
+These troops awaited his permission to occupy the fortress of Castle
+William and the town itself, yet, instead of affixing his signature to
+an official order, there sat the lieutenant-governor so carefully
+scrutinizing the black waste of canvas that his demeanor attracted the
+notice of two young persons who attended him. One, wearing a military
+dress of buff, was his kinsman, Francis Lincoln, the provincial
+captain of Castle William; the other, who sat on a low stool beside
+his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece. She was clad entirely
+in white--a pale, ethereal creature who, though a native of New
+England, had been educated abroad and seemed not merely a stranger
+from another clime, but almost a being from another world. For several
+years, until left an orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny
+Italy, and there had acquired a taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and
+painting which she found few opportunities of gratifying in the
+undecorated dwellings of the colonial gentry. It was said that the
+early productions of her own pencil exhibited no inferior genius,
+though perhaps the rude atmosphere of New England had cramped her hand
+and dimmed the glowing colors of her fancy. But, observing her uncle's
+steadfast gaze, which appeared to search through the mist of years to
+discover the subject of the picture, her curiosity was excited.
+
+"Is it known, my dear uncle," inquired she, "what this old picture
+once represented? Possibly, could it be made visible, it might prove a
+masterpiece of some great artist; else why has it so long held such a
+conspicuous place?"
+
+As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom--for he was as attentive to
+all the humors and caprices of Alice as if she had been his own
+best-beloved child--did not immediately reply, the young captain of
+Castle William took that office upon himself.
+
+"This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin," said he, "has been
+an heirloom in the province-house from time immemorial. As to the
+painter, I can tell you nothing; but if half the stories told of it be
+true, not one of the great Italian masters has ever produced so
+marvellous a piece of work as that before you."
+
+Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and
+fantasies which, as it was impossible to refute them by ocular
+demonstration, had grown to be articles of popular belief in reference
+to this old picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the
+best-accredited, accounts stated it to be an original and authentic
+portrait of the evil one, taken at a witch-meeting near Salem, and
+that its strong and terrible resemblance had been confirmed by several
+of the confessing wizards and witches at their trial in open court. It
+was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the
+blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public
+calamity to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for
+instance, had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of General
+Abercrombie's shameful and bloody defeat under the walls of
+Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the province-house had caught
+glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at morning or evening
+twilight, or in the depths of night while raking up the fire that
+glimmered on the hearth beneath, although, if any were, bold enough to
+hold a torch before the picture, it would appear as black and
+undistinguishable as ever. The oldest inhabitant of Boston recollected
+that his father--in whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out
+of sight--had once looked upon it, but would never suffer himself to
+be questioned as to the face which was there represented. In
+connection with such stories, it was remarkable that over the top of
+the frame there were some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating
+that a veil had formerly hung down before the picture until the
+duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it. But, after all, it
+was the most singular part of the affair that so many of the pompous
+governors of Massachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to
+remain in the state-chamber of the province-house.
+
+"Some of these fables are really awful," observed Alice Vane, who had
+occasionally shuddered as well as smiled while her cousin spoke. "It
+would be almost worth while to wipe away the black surface of the
+canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so formidable as
+those which fancy paints instead of it."
+
+"But would it be possible," inquired her cousin," to restore this dark
+picture to its pristine hues?"
+
+"Such arts are known in Italy," said Alice.
+
+The lieutenant-governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood,
+and listened with a smile to the conversation of his young relatives.
+Yet his voice had something peculiar in its tones when he undertook
+the explanation of the mystery.
+
+"I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you
+are so fond," remarked he, "but my antiquarian researches have long
+since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture--if picture
+it can be called--which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the
+face of the long-buried man whom it once represented. It was the
+portrait of Edward Randolph, the founder of this house, a person
+famous in the history of New England."
+
+"Of that Edward Randolph," exclaimed Captain Lincoln, "who obtained the
+repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our forefathers
+had enjoyed almost democratic privileges--he that was styled the
+arch-enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation
+as the destroyer of our liberties?"
+
+"It was the same Randolph," answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in
+his chair. "It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium."
+
+"Our annals tell us," continued the captain of Castle William, "that
+the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went and
+wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its
+effect was seen, likewise, in the manner of his death. They say, too,
+that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward and was
+visible on the wretched man's countenance, making it too horrible to
+be looked upon. If so, and if this picture truly represented his
+aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over
+it."
+
+"These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how little
+of historic truth lies at the bottom," said the lieutenant-governor.
+"As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too implicit
+credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who--I must say it,
+though some of his blood runs in my veins--has filled our early
+history with old women's tales as fanciful and extravagant as those of
+Greece or Rome."
+
+"And yet," whispered Alice Vane, "may not such fables have a moral?
+And methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not
+without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the
+province-house. When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were
+well that they should be reminded of the awful weight of a people's
+curse."
+
+The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a moment at his niece,
+as if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own
+breast which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue.
+He knew, indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education,
+retained the native sympathies of a New England girl.
+
+"Peace, silly child!" cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever
+before addressed the gentle Alice. "The rebuke of a king; is more to
+be dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude.--Captain
+Lincoln, it is decided: the fortress of Castle William must be
+occupied by the royal troops. The two remaining regiments shall be
+billeted in the town or encamped upon the Common. It is time, after
+years of tumult, and almost rebellion, that His Majesty's government
+should have a wall of strength about it."
+
+"Trust, sir--trust yet a while to the loyalty of the people," said
+Captain Lincoln, "nor teach them that they can ever be on other terms
+with British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as when they fought
+side by side through the French war. Do not convert the streets of
+your native town into a camp. Think twice before you give up old
+Castle William, the key of the province, into other keeping than that
+of true-born New Englanders."
+
+"Young man, it is decided," repeated Hutchinson, rising from his
+chair. "A British officer will be in attendance this evening to
+receive the necessary instructions for the disposal of the troops.
+Your presence also will be required. Till then, farewell."
+
+With these words the lieutenant-governor hastily left the room, while
+Alice and her cousin more slowly followed, whispering together, and
+once pausing to glance back at the mysterious picture. The captain of
+Castle William fancied that the girl's air and mien were such as might
+have belonged to one of those spirits of fable--fairies or creatures
+of a more antique mythology--who sometimes mingled their agency with
+mortal affairs, half in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal
+or woe. As he held the door for her to pass Alice beckoned to the
+picture and smiled.
+
+"Come forth, dark and evil shape!" cried she. "It is thine hour."
+
+In the evening Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson sat in the same chamber
+where the foregoing scene had occurred, surrounded by several persons
+whose various interests had summoned them together. There were the
+selectmen of Boston--plain patriarchal fathers of the people,
+excellent representatives of the old puritanical founders whose sombre
+strength had stamped so deep an impress upon the New England
+character. Contrasting with these were one or two members of council,
+richly dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered waistcoats and other
+magnificence of the time, and making a somewhat ostentatious display
+of courtier-like ceremonial. In attendance, likewise, was a major of
+the British army, awaiting the lieutenant-governor's orders for the
+landing of the troops, which still remained on board the transports.
+The captain of Castle William stood beside Hutchinson's chair, with
+folded arms, glancing rather haughtily at the British officer by whom
+he was soon to be superseded in his command. On a table in the centre
+of the chamber stood a branched silver candlestick, throwing down the
+glow of half a dozen waxlights upon a paper apparently ready for the
+lieutenant-governor's signature.
+
+Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one of the window-curtains,
+which fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen the white drapery
+of a lady's robe. It may appear strange that Alice Vane should have
+been there at such a time, but there was something so childlike, so
+wayward, in her singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, that
+her presence did not surprise the few who noticed it. Meantime, the
+chairman of the selectmen was addressing to the lieutenant-governor a
+long and solemn protest against the reception of the British troops
+into the town.
+
+"And if Your Honor," concluded this excellent but somewhat prosy old
+gentleman, "shall see fit to persist in bringing these mercenary
+sworders and musketeers into our quiet streets, not on our heads be
+the responsibility. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one
+drop of blood be shed, that blood shall be an eternal stain upon Your
+Honor's memory. You, sir, have written with an able pen the deeds of
+our forefathers; the more to be desired is it, therefore, that
+yourself should deserve honorable mention as a true patriot and
+upright ruler when your own doings shall be written down in history."
+
+"I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural desire to stand well
+in the annals of my country," replied Hutchinson, controlling his
+impatience into courtesy, "nor know I any better method of attaining
+that end than by withstanding the merely temporary spirit of mischief
+which, with your pardon, seems to have infected older men than myself.
+Would you have me wait till the mob shall sack the province-house as
+they did my private mansion? Trust me, sir, the time may come when you
+will be glad to flee for protection to the king's banner, the raising
+of which is now so distasteful to you."
+
+"Yes," said the British major, who was impatiently expecting the
+lieutenant-governor's orders. "The demagogues of this province have
+raised the devil, and cannot lay him again. We will exorcise him in
+God's name and the king's."
+
+"If you meddle with the devil, take care of his claws," answered the
+captain of Castle William, stirred by the taunt against his
+countrymen.
+
+"Craving your pardon, young sir," said the venerable selectman, "let
+not an evil spirit enter into your words. We will strive against the
+oppressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers would have done.
+Like them, moreover, we will submit to whatever lot a wise Providence
+may send us--always after our own best exertions to amend it."
+
+"And there peep forth the devil's claws!" muttered Hutchinson, who
+well understood the nature of Puritan submission. "This matter shall
+be expedited forthwith. When there shall be a sentinel at every corner
+and a court of guard before the town-house, a loyal gentleman may
+venture to walk abroad. What to me is the outcry of a mob in this
+remote province of the realm? The king is my master, and England is my
+country; upheld by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the rabble
+and defy them."
+
+He snatched a pen and was about to affix his signature to the paper
+that lay on the table, when the captain of Castle William placed his
+hand upon his shoulder. The freedom of the action, so contrary to the
+ceremonious respect which was then considered due to rank and dignity,
+awakened general surprise, and in none more than in the
+lieutenant-governor himself. Looking angrily up, he perceived that his
+young relative was pointing his finger to the opposite wall.
+Hutchinson's eye followed the signal, and he saw what had hitherto
+been unobserved--that a black silk curtain was suspended before the
+mysterious picture, so as completely to conceal it. His thoughts
+immediately recurred to the scene of the preceding afternoon, and in
+his surprise, confused by indistinct emotions, yet sensible that his
+niece must have had an agency in this phenomenon, he called loudly
+upon her:
+
+"Alice! Come hither, Alice!"
+
+No sooner had he spoken than Alice Vane glided from her station, and,
+pressing one hand across her eyes, with the other snatched away the
+sable curtain that concealed the portrait. An exclamation of surprise
+burst from every beholder, but the lieutenant-governor's voice had a
+tone of horror.
+
+"By Heaven!" said he, in a low inward murmur, speaking rather to
+himself than to those around him; "if the spirit of Edward Randolph
+were to appear among us from the place of torment, he could not wear
+more of the terrors of hell upon his face."
+
+"For some wise end," said the aged selectman, solemnly, "hath
+Providence scattered away the mist of years that had so long hid this
+dreadful effigy. Until this hour no living man hath seen what we
+behold."
+
+Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste
+of canvas now appeared a visible picture-still dark, indeed, in its
+hues and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief. It was a
+half-length figure of a gentleman in a rich but very old-fashioned
+dress of embroidered velvet, with a broad ruff and a beard, and
+wearing a hat the brim of which overshadowed his forehead. Beneath
+this cloud the eyes had a peculiar glare which was almost lifelike.
+The whole portrait started so distinctly out of the background that it
+had the effect of a person looking down from the wall at the
+astonished and awe-stricken spectators. The expression of the face, if
+any words can convey an idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in
+some hideous guilt and exposed to the bitter hatred and laughter and
+withering scorn of a vast surrounding multitude. There was the
+struggle of defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by the crushing
+weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had come forth upon the
+countenance. It seemed as if the picture, while hidden behind the
+cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time acquiring an intenser
+depth and darkness of expression, till now it gloomed forth again and
+threw its evil omen over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend
+may be credited, was the portrait of Edward Randolph as he appeared
+when a people's curse had wrought its influence upon his nature.
+
+"'Twould drive me mad, that awful face," said Hutchinson, who seemed
+fascinated by the contemplation of it.
+
+"Be warned, then," whispered Alice. "He trampled on a people's rights.
+Behold his punishment, and avoid a crime like his."
+
+The lieutenant-governor actually trembled for an instant, but,
+exerting his energy--which was not, however, his most characteristic
+feature--he strove to shake off the spell of Randolph's countenance.
+
+"Girl," cried he, laughing bitterly, as he turned to Alice, "have you
+brought hither your painter's art, your Italian spirit of intrigue,
+your tricks of stage-effect, and think to influence the councils of
+rulers and the affairs of nations by such shallow contrivances? See
+here!"
+
+"Stay yet a while," said the selectman as Hutchinson again snatched
+the pen; "for if ever mortal man received a warning from a tormented
+soul, Your Honor is that man."
+
+"Away!" answered Hutchinson, fiercely. "Though yonder senseless
+picture cried 'Forbear!' it should not move me!"
+
+Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face--which seemed at that
+moment to intensify the horror of its miserable and wicked look--he
+scrawled on the paper, in characters that betokened it a deed of
+desperation, the name of Thomas Hutchinson. Then, it is said, he
+shuddered, as if that signature had granted away his salvation.
+
+"It is done," said he, and placed his hand upon his brow.
+
+"May Heaven forgive the deed!" said the soft, sad accents of Alice
+Vane, like the voice of a good spirit flitting away.
+
+When morning came, there was a stifled whisper through the household, and
+spreading thence about the town, that the dark mysterious picture had
+started from the wall and spoken face to face with Lieutenant-governor
+Hutchinson. If such a miracle had been wrought, however, no traces of
+it remained behind; for within the antique frame nothing could be
+discerned save the impenetrable cloud which had covered the canvas
+since the memory of man. If the figure had, indeed, stepped forth, it
+had fled back, spirit-like, at the day-dawn, and hidden itself behind
+a century's obscurity. The truth probably was that Alice Vane's secret
+for restoring the hues of the picture had merely effected a temporary
+renovation. But those who in that brief interval had beheld the awful
+visage of Edward Randolph desired no second glance, and ever afterward
+trembled at the recollection of the scene, as if an evil spirit had
+appeared visibly among them. And, as for Hutchinson, when, far over
+the ocean, his dying-hour drew on, he gasped for breath and complained
+that he was choking with the blood of the Boston Massacre, and Francis
+Lincoln, the former captain of Castle William, who was standing at his
+bedside, perceived a likeness in his frenzied look to that of Edward
+Randolph. Did his broken spirit feel at that dread hour the tremendous
+burden of a people's curse?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the conclusion of this miraculous legend I inquired of mine host
+whether the picture still remained in the chamber over our heads, but
+Mr. Tiffany informed me that it had long since been removed, and was
+supposed to be hidden in some out-of-the-way corner of the New England
+Museum. Perchance some curious antiquary may light upon it there, and,
+with the assistance of Mr. Howorth, the picture-cleaner, may supply a
+not unnecessary proof of the authenticity of the facts here set down.
+
+During the progress of the story a storm had been gathering abroad and
+raging and rattling so loudly in the upper regions of the Province
+House that it seemed as if all the old governors and great men were
+running riot above stairs while Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them
+below. In the course of generations, when many people have lived and
+died in an ancient house, the whistling of the wind through its
+crannies and the creaking of its beams and rafters become strangely
+like the tones of the human voice, or thundering laughter, or heavy
+footsteps treading the deserted chambers. It is as if the echoes of
+half a century were revived. Such were the ghostly sounds that roared
+and murmured in our ears when I took leave of the circle round the
+fireside of the Province House and, plunging down the doorsteps,
+fought my way homeward against a drifting snow-storm.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE.
+
+
+Mine excellent friend the landlord of the Province House was pleased
+the other evening to invite Mr. Tiffany and myself to an
+oyster-supper. This slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he
+handsomely observed, was far less than the ingenious tale-teller, and
+I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had fairly earned by the
+public notice which our joint lucubrations had attracted to his
+establishment. Many a cigar had been smoked within his premises, many
+a glass of wine or more potent _aqua vitae_ had been quaffed, many
+a dinner had been eaten, by curious strangers who, save for the
+fortunate conjunction of Mr. Tiffany and me, would never have ventured
+through that darksome avenue which gives access to the historic
+precincts of the Province House. In short, if any credit be due to the
+courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas Waite, we had brought his forgotten
+mansion almost as effectually into public view as if we had thrown
+down the vulgar range of shoe-shops and dry-good stores which hides
+its aristocratic front from Washington street. It may be unadvisable,
+however, to speak too loudly of the increased custom of the house,
+lest Mr. Waite should find it difficult to renew the lease on so
+favorable terms as heretofore.
+
+Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. Tiffany nor myself
+felt any scruple in doing full justice to the good things that were
+set before us. If the feast were less magnificent than those same
+panelled walls had witnessed in a bygone century; if mine host
+presided with somewhat less of state than might have befitted a
+successor of the royal governors; if the guests made a less imposing
+show than the bewigged and powdered and embroidered dignitaries who
+erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table and now sleep within their
+armorial tombs on Copp's Hill or round King's Chapel,--yet never, I
+may boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the
+province-house from Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. The occasion
+was rendered more interesting by the presence of a venerable personage
+whose own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and
+Howe, and even supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two of
+Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and now all but extinguished,
+class whose attachment to royalty, and to the colonial institutions
+and customs that were connected with it, had never yielded to the
+democratic heresies of after-times. The young queen of Britain has not
+a more loyal subject in her realm--perhaps not one who would kneel
+before her throne with such reverential love--as this old grandsire
+whose head has whitened beneath the mild sway of the republic which
+still in his mellower moments he terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices so
+obstinate have not made him an ungentle or impracticable companion. If
+the truth must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has been of such
+a scrambling and unsettled character--he has had so little choice of
+friends and been so often destitute of any--that I doubt whether he
+would refuse a cup of kindness with either Oliver Cromwell or John
+Hancock, to say nothing of any democrat now upon the stage. In another
+paper of this series I may perhaps give the reader a closer glimpse of
+his portrait.
+
+Our host in due season uncorked a bottle of Madeira of such exquisite
+perfume and admirable flavor that he surely must have discovered it in
+an ancient bin down deep beneath the deepest cellar where some jolly
+old butler stored away the governor's choicest wine and forgot to
+reveal the secret on his death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost and a
+libation to his memory! This precious liquor was imbibed by Mr.
+Tiffany with peculiar zest, and after sipping the third glass it was
+his pleasure to give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet
+raked from the storehouse where he keeps such matters. With some
+suitable adornments from my own fancy, it ran pretty much as follows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government of
+Massachusetts Bay--now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago--a young
+lady of rank and fortune arrived from England to claim his protection
+as her guardian. He was her distant relative, but the nearest who had
+survived the gradual extinction of her family; so that no more
+eligible shelter could be found for the rich and high-born Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe than within the province-house of a Transatlantic
+colony. The consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as a mother
+to her childhood, and was now anxious to receive her in the hope that
+a beautiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril from
+the primitive society of New England than amid the artifices and
+corruptions of a court. If either the governor or his lady had
+especially consulted their own comfort, they would probably have
+sought to devolve the responsibility on other hands, since with some
+noble and splendid traits of character Lady Eleanore was remarkable
+for a harsh, unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her
+hereditary and personal advantages, which made her almost incapable of
+control. Judging from many traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar
+temper was hardly less than a monomania; or if the acts which it
+inspired were those of a sane person, it seemed due from Providence
+that pride so sinful should be followed by as severe a retribution.
+That tinge of the marvellous which is thrown over so many of these
+half-forgotten legends has probably imparted an additional wildness to
+the strange story of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe.
+
+The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at Newport, whence
+Lady Eleanore was conveyed to Boston in the governor's coach, attended
+by a small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage,
+with its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled
+through Cornhill surrounded by the prancing steeds of half a dozen
+cavaliers with swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their
+holsters. Through the large glass windows of the coach, as it rolled
+along, the people could discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely
+combining an almost queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty of a
+maiden in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the ladies
+of the province that their fair rival was indebted for much of the
+irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress--an
+embroidered mantle--which had been wrought by the most skilful artist
+in London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the
+present occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress,
+being clad in a riding-habit of velvet which would have appeared stiff
+and ungraceful on any other form.
+
+The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade
+came to a pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced
+the province-house from the public street. It was an awkward
+coincidence that the bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a
+funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome peal with which it was
+customary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers, Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if calamity had
+come embodied in her beautiful person.
+
+"A very great disrespect!" exclaimed Captain Langford, an English
+officer who had recently brought despatches to Governor Shute. "The
+funeral should have been deferred lest Lady Eleanore's spirits be
+affected by such a dismal welcome."
+
+"With your pardon, sir," replied Dr. Clarke, a physician and a famous
+champion of the popular party, "whatever the heralds may pretend, a
+dead beggar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers
+high privileges."
+
+These remarks-were interchanged while the speakers waited a passage
+through the crowd which had gathered on each side of the gateway,
+leaving an open avenue to the portal of the province-house. A black
+slave in livery now leaped from behind the coach and threw open the
+door, while at the same moment Governor Shute descended the flight of
+steps from his mansion to assist Lady Eleanore in alighting. But the
+governor's stately approach was anticipated in a manner that excited
+general astonishment. A pale young man with his black hair all in
+disorder rushed from the throng and prostrated himself beside the
+coach, thus offering his person as a footstool for Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe to tread upon. She held back an instant, yet with an
+expression as if doubting whether the young man were worthy to bear
+the weight of her footstep rather than dissatisfied to receive such
+awful reverence from a fellow-mortal.
+
+"Up, sir!" said the governor, sternly, at the same time lifting his
+cane over the intruder. "What means the Bedlamite by this freak?"
+
+"Nay," answered Lady Eleanore, playfully, but with more scorn than
+pity in her tone; "Your Excellency shall not strike him. When men seek
+only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so
+easily granted--and so well deserved!" Then, though as lightly as a
+sunbeam on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form and
+extended her hand to meet that of the governor.
+
+There was a brief interval during which Lady Eleanore retained this
+attitude, and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of aristocracy
+and hereditary pride trampling on human sympathies and the kindred of
+nature than these two figures presented at that moment. Yet the
+spectators were so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did pride
+seem to the existence of such a creature, that they gave a
+simultaneous acclamation of applause.
+
+"Who is this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who
+still remained beside Dr. Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his
+impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be
+secured from further inconvenience by his confinement."
+
+"His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the doctor--"a youth of no
+birth or fortune, or other advantages save the mind and soul that
+nature gave him; and, being secretary to our colonial agent in London,
+it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved
+her, and her scorn has driven him mad."
+
+"He was mad so to aspire," observed the English officer.
+
+"It may be so," said Dr. Clarke, frowning as he spoke; "but I tell
+you, sir, I could wellnigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if
+no signal humiliation overtake this lady who now treads so haughtily
+into yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies
+of our common nature, which envelops all human souls; see if that
+nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring
+her level with the lowest."
+
+"Never!" cried Captain Langford, indignantly--"neither in life nor
+when they lay her with her ancestors."
+
+Not many days afterward the governor gave a ball in honor of Lady
+Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony received
+invitations, which were distributed to their residences far and near
+by messengers on horseback bearing missives sealed with all the
+formality of official despatches. In obedience to the summons, there
+was a general gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the wide door
+of the province-house had seldom given admittance to more numerous and
+honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's ball. Without
+much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed
+splendid, for, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone
+in rich silks and satins outspread over wide-projecting hoops, and the
+gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery laid unsparingly upon the
+purple or scarlet or sky-blue velvet which was the material of their
+coats and waistcoats. The latter article of dress was of great
+importance, since it enveloped the wearer's body nearly to the knees
+and was perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole year's income
+in golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste of the present day--a
+taste symbolic of a deep change in the whole system of society--would
+look upon almost any of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous, although
+that evening the guests sought their reflections in the pier-glasses
+and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd.
+What a pity that one of the stately mirrors has not preserved a
+picture of the scene which by the very traits that were so transitory
+might have taught us much that would be worth knowing and remembering!
+
+Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us some
+faint idea of a garment already noticed in this legend--the Lady
+Eleanore's embroidered mantle, which the gossips whispered was
+invested with magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace
+to her figure each time that she put it on! Idle fancy as it is, this
+mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around my image of her, partly
+from its fabled virtues and partly because it was the handiwork of a
+dying woman, and perchance owed the fantastic grace of its conception
+to the delirium of approaching death.
+
+After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe
+stood apart from the mob of guests, insulating herself within a small
+and distinguished circle to whom she accorded a more cordial favor
+than to the general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance
+vividly over the scene, bringing out its brilliant points in strong
+relief, but she gazed carelessly, and with now and then an expression
+of weariness or scorn tempered with such feminine grace that her
+auditors scarcely perceived the moral deformity of which it was the
+utterance. She beheld the spectacle not with vulgar ridicule, as
+disdaining to be pleased with the provincial mockery of a
+court-festival, but with the deeper scorn of one whose spirit held
+itself too high to participate in the enjoyment of other human souls.
+Whether or no the recollections of those who saw her that evening were
+influenced by the strange events with which she was subsequently
+connected, so it was that her figure ever after recurred to them as
+marked by something wild and unnatural, although at the time the
+general whisper was of her exceeding beauty and of the indescribable
+charm which her mantle threw around her. Some close observers, indeed,
+detected a feverish flush and alternate paleness of countenance, with
+a corresponding flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or twice a
+painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude, as if she were on the
+point of sinking to the ground. Then, with a nervous shudder, she
+seemed to arouse her energies, and threw some bright and playful yet
+half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation. There was so strange a
+characteristic in her manners and sentiments that it astonished every
+right-minded listener, till, looking in her face, a lurking and
+incomprehensible glance and smile perplexed them with doubts both as
+to her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe's
+circle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen remained in it. These
+were Captain Langford, the English officer before mentioned; a
+Virginian planter who had come to Massachusetts on some political
+errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a British earl;
+and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor Shute, whose
+obsequiousness had won a sort of tolerance from Lady Eleanore.
+
+At different periods of the evening the liveried servants of the
+province-house passed among the guests bearing huge trays of
+refreshments and French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe,
+who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of champagne,
+had sunk back into a large damask chair, apparently overwearied either
+with the excitement of the scene or its tedium; and while, for an
+instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter and music, a young
+man stole forward and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his
+hand on which was a chased silver goblet filled to the brim with wine,
+which he offered as reverentially as to a crowned queen--or, rather,
+with the awful devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol.
+Conscious that some one touched her robe, Lady Eleanore started, and
+unclosed her eyes upon the pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of
+Jervase Helwyse.
+
+"Why do you haunt me thus?" said she, in a languid tone, but with a
+kindlier feeling than she ordinarily permitted herself to express.
+"They tell me that I have done you harm."
+
+"Heaven knows if that be so," replied the young man, solemnly. "But,
+Lady Eleanore, in requital of that harm, if such there be, and for
+your own earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of
+this holy wine and then to pass the goblet round among the guests. And
+this shall be a symbol that you have not sought to withdraw yourself
+from the chain of human sympathies, which whoso would shake off must
+keep company with fallen angels."
+
+"Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental vessel?" exclaimed
+the Episcopal clergyman.
+
+This question drew the notice of the guests to the silver cup, which
+was recognized as appertaining to the communion-plate of the Old South
+Church, and, for aught that could be known, it was brimming over with
+the consecrated wine.
+
+"Perhaps it is poisoned," half whispered the governor's secretary.
+
+"Pour it down the villain's throat!" cried the Virginian, fiercely.
+
+"Turn him out of the house!" cried Captain Langford, seizing Jervase
+Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder that the sacramental cup was
+overturned and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore's mantle.
+"Whether knave, fool or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the fellow
+should go at large."
+
+"Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm," said Lady Eleanore,
+with a faint and weary smile. "Take him out of my sight, if such be
+your pleasure, for I can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at
+him, whereas, in all decency and conscience, it would become me to
+weep for the mischief I have wrought."
+
+But while the bystanders were attempting to lead away the unfortunate
+young man he broke from them and with a wild, impassioned earnestness
+offered a new and equally strange petition to Lady Eleanore. It was no
+other than that she should throw off the mantle, which while he
+pressed the silver cup of wine upon her she had drawn more closely
+around her form, so as almost to shroud herself within it.
+
+"Cast it from you," exclaimed Jervase Helwyse, clasping his hands in
+an agony of entreaty. "It may not yet be too late. Give the accursed
+garment to the flames."
+
+But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the rich folds of the
+embroidered mantle over her head in such a fashion as to give a
+completely new aspect to her beautiful face, which, half hidden, half
+revealed, seemed to belong to some being of mysterious character and
+purposes.
+
+"Farewell, Jervase Helwyse!" said she. "Keep my image in your
+remembrance as you behold it now."
+
+"Alas, lady!" he replied, in a tone no longer wild, but sad as a
+funeral-bell; "we must meet shortly when your face may wear another
+aspect, and that shall be the image that must abide within me." He
+made no more resistance to the violent efforts of the gentlemen and
+servants who almost dragged him out of the apartment and dismissed him
+roughly from the iron gate of the province-house.
+
+Captain Langford, who had been very active in this affair, was
+returning to the presence of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he
+encountered the physician, Dr. Clarke, with whom he had held some
+casual talk on the day of her arrival. The doctor stood apart,
+separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the room, but eying her
+with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him
+credit for the discovery of some deep secret.
+
+"You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly
+maiden," said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician's hidden
+knowledge.
+
+"God forbid!" answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave smile; "and if you be
+wise, you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who
+shall be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder stands
+the governor, and I have a word or two for his private ear.
+Good-night!" He accordingly advanced to Governor Shute and addressed
+him in so low a tone that none of the bystanders could catch a word of
+what he said, although the sudden change of His Excellency's hitherto
+cheerful visage betokened that the communication could be of no
+agreeable import. A very few moments afterward it was announced to the
+guests that an unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to put a
+premature close to the festival.
+
+The ball at the province-house supplied a topic of conversation for
+the colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might
+still longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of
+all-engrossing interest thrust it for a time from the public
+recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic which in
+that age, and long before and afterward, was wont to slay its hundreds
+and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which
+we speak it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that
+it has left its traces--its pitmarks, to use an appropriate figure--on
+the history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown into
+confusion by its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the
+disease seemed to confine itself to the higher circles of society,
+selecting its victims from among the proud, the well-born and the
+wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers and lying down with
+the slumberers in silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests
+of the province-house--even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore
+Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her favor--were stricken by this
+fatal scourge. It was noticed with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling
+that the four gentlemen--the Virginian, the British officer, the young
+clergyman and the governor's secretary--who had been her most devoted
+attendants on the evening of the ball were the foremost on whom the
+plague-stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress,
+soon ceased to be exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red
+brand was no longer conferred like a noble's star or an order of
+knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow and crooked
+streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome dwellings and laid its
+hand of death upon the artisans and laboring classes of the town. It
+compelled rich and poor to feel themselves brethren then, and stalking
+to and fro across the Three Hills with a fierceness which made it
+almost a new pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror--that scourge
+and horror of our forefathers--the small-pox.
+
+We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore by
+contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must
+remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of
+the Asiatic cholera striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic and
+marching like Destiny upon cities far remote which flight had already
+half depopulated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing
+as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven's vital air lest it be
+poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the grip of
+the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now
+followed in the track of the disease or ran before it throughout the
+town. Graves were hastily dug and the pestilential relics as hastily
+covered, because the dead were enemies of the living and strove to
+draw them headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public
+councils were suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its
+devices now that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the
+ruler's mansion. Had an enemy's fleet been hovering on the coast or
+his armies trampling on our soil, the people would probably have
+committed their defence to that same direful conqueror who had wrought
+their own calamity and would permit no interference with his sway.
+This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs: it was a blood-red flag
+that fluttered in the tainted air over the door of every dwelling into
+which the small-pox had entered.
+
+Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the
+province-house, for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps
+back, had all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back
+to a lady's luxurious chamber, to the proudest of the proud, to her
+that was so delicate and hardly owned herself of earthly mould, to the
+haughty one who took her stand above human sympathies--to Lady
+Eleanore. There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had
+lurked in that gorgeous mantle which threw so strange a grace around
+her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the
+delirious brain of a woman on her death-bed and was the last toil of
+her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its
+golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited
+far and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore and cried out
+that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that between them
+both this monstrous evil had been born. At times their rage and
+despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red
+flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another and yet another door,
+they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets in bitter
+mockery: "Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!"
+
+One day in the midst of these dismal times a wild figure approached
+the portal of the province-house, and, folding his arms, stood
+contemplating the scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook
+fitfully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At
+length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade,
+he took down the flag, and entered the mansion waving it above his
+head. At the foot of the staircase he met the governor, booted and
+spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of
+setting forth upon a journey.
+
+"Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?" exclaimed Shute, extending
+his cane to guard himself from contact. "There is nothing here but
+Death; back, or you will meet him."
+
+"Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence," cried
+Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. "Death and the
+pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk
+through the streets to-night, and I must march before them with this
+banner."
+
+"Why do I waste words on the fellow?" muttered the governor, drawing
+his cloak across his mouth. "What matters his miserable life, when
+none of us are sure of twelve hours' breath?--On, fool, to your own
+destruction!"
+
+He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the
+staircase, but on the first landing-place was arrested by the firm
+grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up with a madman's
+impulse to struggle with and rend asunder his opponent, he found
+himself powerless beneath a calm, stern eye which possessed the
+mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height. The person whom
+he had now encountered was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties of
+whose sad profession had led him to the province-house, where he was
+an infrequent guest in more prosperous times.
+
+"Young man, what is your purpose?" demanded he.
+
+"I seek the Lady Eleanore," answered Jervase Helwyse, submissively.
+
+"All have fled from her," said the physician. "Why do you seek her
+now? I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold
+of that fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such a curse to our
+shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore, that her breath has filled the
+air with poison, that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the
+land from the folds of her accursed mantle?"
+
+"Let me look upon her," rejoined the mad youth, more wildly. "Let me
+behold her in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the
+pestilence. She and Death sit on a throne together; let me kneel down
+before them."
+
+"Poor youth!" said Dr. Clarke, and, moved by a deep sense of human
+weakness, a smile of caustic humor curled his lip even then. "Wilt
+thou still worship the destroyer and surround her image with fantasies
+the more magnificent the more evil she has wrought? Thus man doth ever
+to his tyrants. Approach, then. Madness, as I have noted, has that
+good efficacy that it will guard you from contagion, and perhaps its
+own cure may be found in yonder chamber." Ascending another flight of
+stairs, he threw open a door and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he
+should enter.
+
+The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cherished a delusion that his
+haughty mistress sat in state, unharmed herself by the pestilential
+influence which as by enchantment she scattered round about her. He
+dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into
+superhuman splendor. With such anticipations he stole reverentially to
+the door at which the physician stood, but paused upon the threshold,
+gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened chamber.
+
+"Where is the Lady Eleanore?" whispered he.
+
+"Call her," replied the physician.
+
+"Lady Eleanore! princess! queen of Death!" cried Jervase Helwyse,
+advancing three steps into the chamber. "She is not here. There, on
+yonder table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore
+upon her bosom. There"--and he shuddered--"there hangs her mantle, on
+which a dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where
+is the Lady Eleanore?"
+
+Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed and a
+low moan was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began
+to distinguish as a woman's voice complaining dolefully of thirst. He
+fancied, even, that he recognized its tones.
+
+"My throat! My throat is scorched," murmured the voice. "A drop of
+water!"
+
+"What thing art thou?" said the brain-stricken youth, drawing near the
+bed and tearing asunder its curtains. "Whose voice hast thou stolen
+for thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore could be
+conscious of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap of diseased mortality, why
+lurkest thou in my lady's chamber?"
+
+"Oh, Jervase Helwyse," said the voice--and as it spoke the figure
+contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face--"look not now
+on the woman you once loved. The curse of Heaven hath stricken me
+because I would not call man my brother nor woman sister. I wrapped
+myself in pride as in a mantle and scorned the sympathies of nature,
+and therefore has Nature made this wretched body the medium of a
+dreadful sympathy. You are avenged, they are all avenged, Nature is
+avenged; for I am Eleanore Rochcliffe."
+
+The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom
+of his heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined life and love
+that had been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of
+Jervase Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched girl, and the
+chamber echoed, the curtains of the bed were shaken, with his outburst
+of insane merriment.
+
+"Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!" he cried. "All have been her
+victims; who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?" Impelled by
+some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched the fatal mantle
+and rushed from the chamber and the house.
+
+That night a procession passed by torchlight through the streets,
+bearing in the midst the figure of a woman enveloped with a
+richly-embroidered mantle, while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse
+waving the red flag of the pestilence. Arriving opposite the
+province-house, the mob burned the effigy, and a strong wind came and
+swept away the ashes. It was said that from that very hour the
+pestilence abated, as if its sway had some mysterious connection, from
+the first plague-stroke to the last, with Lady Elcanore's mantle. A
+remarkable uncertainty broods over that unhappy lady's fate. There is
+a belief, however, that in a certain chamber of this mansion a female
+form may sometimes be duskily discerned shrinking into the darkest
+corner and muffling her face within an embroidered mantle. Supposing
+the legend true, can this be other than the once proud Lady Eleanore?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no little Warmth of
+applause upon this narrative, in which we had all been deeply
+interested; for the reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the
+effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in the present case, we
+may repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who tells it. For
+my own part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the
+foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the
+more faithfully had he professed himself an eyewitness of the doings
+and sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might
+demand documentary evidence, or even require him to produce the
+embroidered mantle, forgetting that--Heaven be praised!--it was
+consumed to ashes.
+
+But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer,
+began to talk, in his turn, about the traditions of the Province
+House, and hinted that he, if it were agreeable, might add a few
+reminiscences to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to
+dread a rival, immediately besought him to favor us with a specimen;
+my own entreaties, of course, were urged to the same effect; and our
+venerable guest, well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited only
+the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth to provide
+accommodations for several new arrivals. Perchance the public--but be
+this as its own caprice and ours shall settle the matter--may read the
+result in another tale of the Province House.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.
+
+
+Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as Mr. Tiffany and
+myself expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story
+to which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw
+lit to moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then,
+turning his face toward our coal-fire, looked steadfastly for a few
+moments into the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally he poured forth
+a great fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had imbibed,
+while it warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill
+from his heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel
+which we could hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of
+fourscore winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable
+than those of a younger man--or, at least, the same degree of feeling
+manifested itself by more visible effects than if his judgment and
+will had possessed the potency of meridian life. At the pathetic
+passages of his narrative he readily melted into tears. When a breath
+of indignation swept across his spirit, the blood flushed his withered
+visage even to the roots of his white hair, and he shook his clinched
+fist at the trio of peaceful auditors, seeming to fancy enemies in
+those who felt very kindly toward the desolate old soul. But ever and
+anon, sometimes in the midst of his most earnest talk, this ancient
+person's intellect would wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter
+in hand and groping for it amid misty shadows. Then would he cackle
+forth a feeble laugh and express a doubt whether his wits--for by that
+phrase it pleased our ancient friend to signify his mental
+powers--were not getting a little the worse for wear.
+
+Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist's story required more
+revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series
+which have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment
+and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight--or perchance
+more than slight--metamorphosis in its transmission to the reader
+through the medium of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a
+mere sketch with no involution of plot nor any great interest of
+events, yet possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive
+influence over the mind which the shadow of the old Province House
+flings upon the loiterer in its court-yard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hour had come--the hour of defeat and humiliation--when Sir
+William Howe was to pass over the threshold of the province-house and
+embark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself,
+on board the British fleet. He bade his servants and military
+attendants go before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of
+the mansion to quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom
+as with a death-throb. Preferable then would he have deemed his fate
+had a warrior's death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a
+grave within the soil which the king had given him to defend. With an
+ominous perception that as his departing footsteps echoed adown the
+staircase the sway of Britain was passing for ever from New England,
+he smote his clenched hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had
+flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him.
+
+"Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, "that
+the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the floor
+should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
+his trust."
+
+The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.
+
+"Heaven's cause and the king's are one," it said. "Go forth, Sir
+William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in
+triumph."
+
+Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith
+that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an
+aged woman leaning on a gold-headed staff was standing betwixt him and
+the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial
+years in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from
+it as the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an
+ancient and once eminent family which had fallen into poverty and
+decay and left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the
+king, nor any shelter except within the walls of the province-house.
+An office in the household with merely nominal duties had been
+assigned to her as a pretext for the payment of a small pension, the
+greater part of which she expended in adorning herself with an antique
+magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther Dudley's gentle blood
+were acknowledged by all the successive governors, and they treated
+her with the punctilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand,
+not always with success, from a neglectful world. The only actual
+share which she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide
+through its passages and public chambers late at night to see that the
+servants had dropped no fire from their flaring torches nor left
+embers crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this
+invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that
+caused the superstition of the times to invest the old woman with
+attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that she had entered the portal
+of the province-house--none knew whence--in the train of the first
+royal governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last
+should have departed.
+
+But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.
+
+"Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?" asked he, with some
+severity of tone. "It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of
+the king."
+
+"Not so, if it please Your Excellency," answered the time-stricken
+woman. "This roof has sheltered me long; I will not pass from it until
+they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is
+there for old Esther Dudley save the province-house or the grave?"
+
+"Now, Heaven forgive me!" said Sir William Howe to himself. "I was
+about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg.--Take
+this, good Mistress Dudley," he added, putting a purse into her hands.
+"King George's head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will
+continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock
+their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the
+province-house can now afford."
+
+"While the burden of life remains upon me I will have no other shelter
+than this roof," persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the
+floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve; "and when Your
+Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome
+you."
+
+"My poor old friend!" answered the British general, and all his manly
+and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears.
+"This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king
+entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune--perchance in
+disgrace--to return no more. And you, whose present being is
+incorporated with the past, who have seen governor after governor in
+stately pageantry ascend these steps, whose whole life has been an
+observance of majestic ceremonies and a worship of the king,--how will
+you endure the change? Come with us; bid farewell to a land that has
+shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government at
+Halifax."
+
+"Never! never!" said the pertinacious old dame. "Here will I abide,
+and King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal
+province."
+
+"Beshrew the old fool!" muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient
+of her obstinacy and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been
+betrayed. "She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could
+exist nowhere but in this musty edifice.--Well, then, Mistress Dudley,
+since you will needs tarry, I give the province-house in charge to
+you. Take this key, and keep it safe until myself or some other royal
+governor shall demand it of you." Smiling bitterly at himself and her,
+he took the heavy key of the province-house, and, delivering it into
+the old lady's hands, drew his cloak around him for departure.
+
+As the general glanced back at Esther Dudley's antique figure he
+deemed her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a
+representative of the decayed past--of an age gone by, with its
+manners, opinions, faith and feelings all fallen into oblivion or
+scorn, of what had once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of
+faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his
+clenched hands together in the fierce anguish of his spirit, and old
+Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely province-house,
+dwelling there with Memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around
+her, still it was Memory in disguise.
+
+The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the
+British troops did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold.
+There was not for many years afterward a governor of Massachusetts,
+and the magistrates who had charge of such matters saw no objection to
+Esther Dudley's residence in the province-house, especially as they
+must otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises,
+which with her was a labor of love; and so they left her the
+undisturbed mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange
+were the fables which the gossips whispered about her in all the
+chimney-corners of the town.
+
+Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left in the
+mansion, there was a tall antique mirror which was well worthy of a
+tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one. The
+gold of its heavily-wrought frame was tarnished, and its surface so
+blurred that the old woman's figure, whenever she paused before it,
+looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the general belief that
+Esther could cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty, with the
+beautiful ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the Indian
+chiefs who had come up to the province-house to hold council or swear
+allegiance, the grim provincial warriors, the severe clergymen--in
+short, all the pageantry of gone days, all the figures that ever swept
+across the broad-plate of glass in former times,--she could cause the
+whole to reappear and people the inner world of the mirror with
+shadows of old life. Such legends as these, together with the
+singularity of her isolated existence, her age and the infirmity that
+each added winter flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley the object both
+of fear and pity, and it was partly the result of either sentiment
+that, amid all the angry license of the times, neither wrong nor
+insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much
+haughtiness in her demeanor toward intruders--among whom she reckoned
+all persons acting under the new authorities--that it was really an
+affair of no small nerve to look her in the face. And, to do the
+people justice, stern republicans as they had now become, they were
+well content that the old gentlewoman, in her hoop-petticoat and faded
+embroidery, should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and
+overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying a history
+in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt year after year in the
+province-house, still reverencing all that others had flung aside,
+still faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable dame yet
+held her post, might be said to retain one true subject in New England
+and one spot of the empire that had been wrested from him.
+
+And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, "Not so."
+Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to
+summon a black slave of Governor Shirley's from the blurred mirror and
+send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those
+deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight
+or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the
+burial-grounds, knocking at the iron doors of tombs or upon the marble
+slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within, "My mistress,
+old Esther Dudley, bids you to the province-house at midnight;" and
+punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows
+of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys--all the grandees of a
+bygone generation--gliding beneath the portal into the well-known
+mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a
+shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is
+certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch
+though crestfallen old Tories who had lingered in the rebel town
+during those days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle
+containing liquor that a royal governor might have smacked his lips
+over they quaffed healths to the king and babbled treason to the
+republic, feeling as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still
+flung around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they
+stole timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob
+reviled them in the street.
+
+Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests were the children
+of the town. Toward them she was never stern. A kindly and loving
+nature hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky
+prejudices lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of
+gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted
+their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the
+province-house, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day
+there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop-petticoat,
+greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these
+little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious
+mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people
+had long ago forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as
+if they had gone astray into ancient times and become children of the
+past. At home, when their parents asked where they had loitered such a
+weary while and with whom they had been at play, the children would
+talk of all the departed worthies of the province as far back as
+Governor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would
+seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous
+personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had
+toyed with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats or roguishly pulled
+the long curls of their flowing wigs. "But Governor Belcher has been
+dead this many a year," would the mother say to her little boy. "And
+did you really see him at the province-house?"--"Oh yes, dear
+mother--yes!" the half-dreaming child would answer. "But when old
+Esther had done speaking about him, he faded away out of his chair."
+Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand
+into the chambers of her own desolate heart and made childhood's fancy
+discern the ghosts that haunted there.
+
+Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating
+her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley
+appears to have grown partially crazed. It was found that she had no
+right sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary war,
+but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious
+on every field and destined to be ultimately triumphant. Whenever the
+town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington or Gates or Morgan or
+Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the province-house as
+through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange
+tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton or Cornwallis. Sooner or later,
+it was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the
+footstool of the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that
+such was already the case. On one occasion she startled the
+townspeople by a brilliant illumination of the province-house with
+candles at every pane of glass and a transparency of the king's
+initials and a crown of light in the great balcony-window. The figure
+of the aged woman in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and
+brocades was seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused
+before the balcony and flourished a huge key above her head. Her
+wrinkled visage actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within
+her were a festal lamp.
+
+"What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther's joy portend?"
+whispered a spectator. "It is frightful to see her gliding about the
+chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company."
+
+"It is as if she were making merry in a tomb," said another.
+
+"Pshaw! It is no such mystery," observed an old man, after some brief
+exercise of memory. "Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the king
+of England's birthday."
+
+Then the people laughed aloud, and would have thrown mud against the
+blazing transparency of the king's crown and initials, only that they
+pitied the poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck
+and ruin of the system to which she appertained.
+
+Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound
+upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward
+and countryward, watching for a British fleet or for the march of a
+grand procession with the king's banner floating over it. The
+passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage and
+send up a shout: "When the golden Indian on the province-house shall
+shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow,
+then look for a royal governor again!" for this had grown a by-word
+through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther
+Dudley knew--or perchance she only dreamed--that a royal governor was
+on the eve of returning to the province-house to receive the heavy key
+which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now, it was the
+fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther's version
+of it was current among the townspeople. She set the mansion in the
+best order that her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks and
+tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred mirror to admire her own
+magnificence. As she gazed the gray and withered lady moved her ashen
+lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within the
+mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the household friends of
+memory, and bidding them rejoice with her and come forth to meet the
+governor. And while absorbed in this communion Mistress Dudley heard
+the tramp of many footsteps in the street, and, looking out at the
+window, beheld what she construed as the royal governor's arrival.
+
+"Oh, happy day! Oh, blessed, blessed hour!" she exclaimed. "Let me but
+bid him welcome within the portal, and my task in the province-house
+and on earth is done." Then, with tottering feet which age and
+tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand
+staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went; so that the
+sound was as if a train of special courtiers were thronging from the
+dim mirror.
+
+And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the wide door should be
+flung open all the pomp and splendor of bygone times would pace
+majestically into the province-house and the gilded tapestry of the
+past would be brightened by the sunshine of the present. She turned
+the key, withdrew it from the lock, unclosed the door and stepped
+across the threshold. Advancing up the court-yard appeared a person of
+most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther interpreted them, of
+gentle blood, high rank and long-accustomed authority even in his walk
+and every gesture. He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe,
+which, however, did not lessen the stateliness of his gait. Around and
+behind him were people in plain civic dresses and two or three
+war-worn veterans--evidently officers of rank--arrayed in a uniform of
+blue and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened
+its roots about her heart, beheld only the principal personage, and
+never doubted that this was the long-looked-for governor to whom she
+was to surrender up her charge. As he approached she involuntarily
+sank down on her knees and tremblingly held forth the heavy key.
+
+"Receive my trust! Take it quickly," cried she, "for methinks Death is
+striving to snatch away my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank
+Heaven for this blessed hour! God save King George!"
+
+"That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment,"
+replied the unknown guest of the province-house, and, courteously
+removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. "Yet, in
+reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that
+any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge
+his sceptre, God save King George!"
+
+Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the
+key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger, and dimly and
+doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes
+half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry
+of the province, but the ban of the king had fallen upon him. How,
+then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from mercy,
+the monarch's most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant
+had stood triumphantly against a kingdom's strength, and his foot now
+trod upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps of the
+province-house, the people's chosen governor of Massachusetts.
+
+"Wretch, wretch that I am!" muttered the old woman, with such a
+heartbroken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger's eyes.
+"Have I bidden a traitor welcome?--Come, Death! come quickly!"
+
+"Alas, venerable lady!" said Governor Hancock, lending her his support
+with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen,
+"your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you.
+You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless--the
+principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting which another
+generation has flung aside--and you are a symbol of the past. And I
+and these around me--we represent a new race of men, living no longer
+in the past, scarcely in the present, but projecting our lives forward
+into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions,
+it is our faith and principle to press onward--onward.--Yet," continued
+he, turning to his attendants, "let us reverence for the last time the
+stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering past."
+
+While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the
+helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his
+arm, but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient
+woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of
+the province-house fell from her grasp and clanked against the stone.
+
+"I have been faithful unto death," murmured she. "God save the king!"
+
+"She hath done her office," said Hancock, solemnly. "We will follow her
+reverently to the tomb of her ancestors, and then, my fellow-citizens,
+onward--onward. We are no longer children of the past."
+
+
+
+As the old loyalist concluded his narrative the enthusiasm which had
+been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his
+wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul
+were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw
+out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward,
+compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim
+glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a
+dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the
+province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight.
+And now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on
+the breeze, knolling the hourly knell of the past, crying out far and
+wide through the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as we sat
+in the dusky chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In that
+same mansion--in that very chamber--what a volume of history had been
+told off into hours by the same voice that was now trembling in the
+air! Many a governor had heard those midnight accents and longed to
+exchange his stately cares for slumber. And, as for mine host and Mr.
+Bela Tiffany and the old loyalist and me, we had babbled about dreams
+of the past until we almost fancied that the clock was still striking
+in a bygone century. Neither of us would have wondered had a
+hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber,
+walking her rounds in the hush of midnight as of yore, and motioned us
+to quench the fading embers of the fire and leave the historic
+precincts to herself and her kindred shades. But, as no such vision
+was vouchsafed, I retired unbidden, and would advise Mr. Tiffany to
+lay hold of another auditor, being resolved not to show my face in the
+Province House for a good while hence--if ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED MIND.
+
+
+What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
+recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
+your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of
+your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad
+glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the
+metaphor, you find yourself for a single instant wide awake in that
+realm of illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its
+ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their
+strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed.
+The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You
+question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your
+waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of
+your dream. While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang
+over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a
+long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must
+proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the
+strokes--one, two; and there they cease with a booming sound like the
+gathering of a third stroke within the bell.
+
+If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
+would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
+enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue, while before
+you, till the sun comes from "Far Cathay" to brighten your window,
+there is almost the space of a summer night--one hour to be spent in
+thought with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and
+two in that strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and
+woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and
+appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty
+air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already
+vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged
+from the future. You have found an intermediate space where the
+business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers
+and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he
+thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take
+breath. Oh that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without
+growing older!
+
+Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion
+would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably
+awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe
+that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frost-work, and
+that each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be
+time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to
+breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass where the
+silvery mountain-peaks of the frost-scenery do not ascend, the most
+conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs
+you to the wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish
+the figures on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty
+sky and the snow-covered roofs and the long vista of the frozen
+street, all white, and the distant water hardened into rock, might
+make you shiver even under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet
+look at that one glorious star! Its beams are distinguishable from all
+the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with
+a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an
+outline.
+
+You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the
+while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar
+atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.
+You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed
+like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of
+inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such
+as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its
+train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and
+narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot
+persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow
+is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls
+against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a
+gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.
+
+In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
+lights, the music and revelry, above may cause us to forget their
+existence and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But
+sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung
+wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive
+sensibility, but no active strength--when the imagination is a mirror
+imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or
+controlling them--then pray that your griefs may slumber and the
+brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late. A
+funeral train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling
+assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the
+eye. There is your earliest sorrow, a pale young mourner wearing a
+sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed
+sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her
+sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness with dust among
+her golden hair and her bright garments all faded and defaced,
+stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach:
+she was your fondest hope, but a delusive one; so call her
+Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles,
+a look and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unless
+it be Fatality--an emblem of the evil influence that rules your
+fortunes, a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the
+outset of life, and were bound his slave for ever by once obeying him.
+See those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip
+of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger touching
+the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous
+folly at which you would blush even in the remotest cavern of the
+earth? Then recognize your shame.
+
+Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable,
+a fiercer tribe do not surround him--the devils of a guilty heart that
+holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the
+features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in
+woman's garments with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie
+down by your side? What if he should stand at your bed's foot in the
+likeness of a corpse with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient
+without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul, this heavy, heavy
+sinking of the spirits, this wintry gloom about the heart, this
+indistinct horror of the mind blending itself with the darkness of the
+chamber.
+
+By a desperate effort you start upright, breaking from a sort of
+conscious sleep and gazing wildly round the bed, as if the fiends were
+anywhere but in your haunted mind. At the same moment the slumbering
+embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates the
+whole outer room and flickers through the door of the bedchamber, but
+cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches for whatever may
+remind you of the living world. With eager minuteness you take note of
+the table near the fireplace, the book with an ivory knife between its
+leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat and the fallen glove. Soon the
+flame vanishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though its image
+remains an instant in your mind's eye when darkness has swallowed the
+reality. Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before,
+but not the same gloom within your breast.
+
+As your head falls back upon the pillow you think--in a whisper be it
+spoken--how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and
+fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a
+tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its
+peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were
+involving you in her dream. Her influence is over you, though she have
+no existence but in that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery
+spot on the borders of sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise
+before you in pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a
+pervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons
+that glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children
+round the door of a schoolhouse beneath the glimmering shadow of old
+trees at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a
+summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood,
+and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows overarching the
+unbroken sheet of snow on the American side of Niagara. Your mind
+struggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the hearth of
+a young man and his recent bride and the twittering flight of birds in
+spring about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bounding of a
+ship before the breeze, and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls as
+they twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid ball-room, and
+find yourself in the brilliant circle of a crowded theatre as the
+curtain falls over a light and airy scene.
+
+With an involuntary start you seize hold on consciousness, and prove
+yourself but half awake by running a doubtful parallel between human
+life and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from
+mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly
+control, and are borne onward to another mystery. Now comes the peal
+of the distant clock with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge
+farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary
+death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen among
+the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without
+wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change--so
+undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to
+its eternal home.
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE UNCLE.
+
+AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT.
+
+
+Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
+comfortable, especially here where the old man sits in his old
+arm-chair; but on Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up
+the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss
+on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relicts of the Mermaid's
+knee-timbers--the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and
+clearer, be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in
+the village and the light of our household mirth flash far across the
+bay to Nahant.
+
+And now come, Susan; come, my children. Draw your chairs round me, all
+of you. There is a dimness over your figures. You sit quivering
+indistinctly with each motion of the blaze, which eddies about you
+like a flood; so that you all have the look of visions or people that
+dwell only in the firelight, and will vanish from existence as
+completely as your own shadows when the flame shall sink among the
+embers.
+
+Hark! let me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a
+mile inland on a night like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but
+only an uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach, though
+by the almanac it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must
+now be dashing within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man's ears
+are failing him, and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind, else
+you would not all be so shadowy in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire.
+
+How strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present!
+To judge by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in
+another room. Yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old
+chest of drawers, nor Susan's profile and mine in that gilt
+frame--nothing, in short, except this same fire, which glimmered on
+books, papers and a picture, and half discovered my solitary figure in
+a looking-glass. But it was paler than my rugged old self, and
+younger, too, by almost half a century.
+
+Speak to me, Susan; speak, my beloved ones; for the scene is
+glimmering on my sight again, and as it brightens you fade away. Oh, I
+should be loth to lose my treasure of past happiness and become once
+more what I was then--a hermit in the depths of my own mind,
+sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes and anon a scribbler of wearier
+trash than what I read; a man who had wandered out of the real world
+and got into its shadow, where his troubles, joys and vicissitudes
+were of such slight stuff that he hardly knew whether he lived or only
+dreamed of living. Thank Heaven I am an old man now and have done with
+all such vanities!
+
+Still this dimness of mine eyes!--Come nearer, Susan, and stand before
+the fullest blaze of the hearth. Now I behold you illuminated from
+head to foot, in your clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of
+gray hair across your forehead and a quiet smile about your mouth,
+while the eyes alone are concealed by the red gleam of the fire upon
+your spectacles. There! you made me tremble again. When the flame
+quivered, my sweet Susan, you quivered with it and grew indistinct, as
+if melting into the warm light, that my last glimpse of you might be
+as visionary as the first was, full many a year since. Do you remember
+it? You stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs across
+King's Beach into the sea. It was twilight, the waves rolling in, the
+wind sweeping by, the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver
+moon brightening above the hill; and on the bridge were you,
+fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your
+pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind, a creature of
+the ocean-foam and the crimson light, whose merry life was spent in
+dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to
+support your footsteps. As I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the
+race of mermaids, and thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with
+you among the quiet coves in the shadow of the cliffs, and to roam
+along secluded beaches of the purest sand, and, when our Northern
+shores grew bleak, to haunt the islands, green and lonely, far amid
+summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, after all this nonsense, to find
+you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly perplexed with the rude
+behavior of the wind about your petticoats. Thus I did with Susan as
+with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my
+mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see
+her as she really was.
+
+Now, Susan, for a sober picture of our village. It was a small
+collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea
+with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm, or
+to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber which had
+been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner. There was just space
+for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a
+precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a
+waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The
+village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all
+were rude. Here stood a little old hovel, built, perhaps, of
+driftwood, there a row of boat-houses, and beyond them a two-story
+dwelling of dark and weatherbeaten aspect, the whole intermixed with
+one or two snug cottages painted white, a sufficiency of pig-styes and
+a shoemaker's shop. Two grocery stores stood opposite each other in
+the centre of the village. These were the places of resort at their
+idle hours of a hardy throng of fishermen in red baize shirts,
+oilcloth trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole
+leg--true seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk
+the earth. The wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out
+of salt water to sun themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to
+see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish such
+as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and
+flows. When their fleet of boats was weather-bound, the butchers
+raised their price, and the spit was busier than the frying-pan; for
+this was a place of fish, and known as such to all the country round
+about. The very air was fishy, being perfumed with dead sculpins,
+hard-heads and dogfish strewn plentifully on the beach.--You see,
+children, the village is but little changed since your mother and I
+were young.
+
+How like a dream it was when I bent over a pool of water one pleasant
+morning and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made
+me a fisherman! There was the tarpaulin, the baize shirt, the oilcloth
+trousers and seven-league boots, and there my own features, but so
+reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes that methought I had another
+face, and on other shoulders too. The seagulls and the loons and I had
+now all one trade: we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey
+beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds. Always when
+the east grew purple I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed
+skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or
+perhaps beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge--a
+spot of peril to ships unpiloted--and sometimes spread an adventurous
+sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in
+sight of Scituate. Ere nightfall I hauled my skiff high and dry on the
+beach, laden with red rock-cod or the white-bellied ones of deep
+water, haddock bearing the black marks of St. Peter's fingers near the
+gills, the long-bearded hake whose liver holds oil enough for a
+midnight lamp, and now and then a mighty halibut with a back broad as
+my boat. In the autumn I toled and caught those lovely fish the
+mackerel. When the wind was high, when the whale-boats anchored off
+the Point nodded their slender masts at each other and the dories
+pitched and tossed in the surf, when Nahant Beach was thundering three
+miles off and the spray broke a hundred feet in the air round the
+distant base of Egg Rock, when the brimful and boisterous sea
+threatened to tumble over the street of our village,--then I made a
+holiday on shore.
+
+Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive to
+the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of
+seniority, but of Southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His
+figure is before me now enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel--a lean old
+man of great height, but bent with years and twisted into an uncouth
+shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weatherworn, as if
+every gale for the better part of a century had caught him somewhere
+on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest--a shipmate of the
+Flying Dutchman. After innumerable voyages aboard men-of-war and
+merchantmen, fishing-schooners and chebacco-boats, the old salt had
+become master of a hand-cart, which he daily trundled about the
+vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the streets of
+Salem. One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with gunpowder,
+and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it upward as he
+spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French and
+battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be
+seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down by a spike-nail
+through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he
+expatiated on the delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and
+goose-like fowl which the sailors catch with hook and line on the
+Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the
+Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened himself amid polar snows with
+the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And
+wrathfully did he shake his fist as he related how a party of Cape Cod
+men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoils and
+sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to
+drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood
+who are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails to mislead the mariner
+along the dangerous shores of the Cape.
+
+Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen with that old salt in
+the midst. One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an
+oil-barrel, a third lolls at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines,
+and another has planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of
+salt which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They are a
+likely set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the
+Pacific, and most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to
+Newfoundland; a few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and
+one or two have always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker
+used to say, they have all been christened in salt water and know more
+than men ever learn in the bushes. A curious figure, by way of
+contrast, is a fish-dealer from far up-country listening with eyes
+wide open to narratives that might startle Sinbad the Sailor.--Be it
+well with you, my brethren! Ye are all gone--some to your graves
+ashore and others to the depths of ocean--but my faith is strong that
+ye are happy; for whenever I behold your forms, whether in dream or
+vision, each departed friend is puffing his long nine, and a mug of
+the right blackstrap goes round from lip to lip.
+
+But where was the mermaid in those delightful times? At a certain
+window near the centre of the village appeared a pretty display of
+gingerbread men and horses, picture-books and ballads, small
+fish-hooks, pins, needles, sugarplums and brass thimbles--articles on
+which the young fishermen used to expend their money from pure
+gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the counter! A slender
+maiden, though the child of rugged parents, she had the slimmest of
+all waists, brown hair curling on her neck, and a complexion rather
+pale except when the sea-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became
+beauty-spots beneath her eyelids.--How was it, Susan, that you talked
+and acted so carelessly, yet always for the best, doing whatever was
+right in your own eyes, and never once doing wrong in mine, nor
+shocked a taste that had been morbidly sensitive till now? And whence
+had you that happiest gift of brightening every topic with an unsought
+gayety, quiet but irresistible, so that even gloomy spirits felt your
+sunshine and did not shrink from it? Nature wrought the charm. She
+made you a frank, simple, kind-hearted, sensible and mirthful girl.
+Obeying Nature, you did free things without indelicacy, displayed a
+maiden's thoughts to every eye, and proved yourself as innocent as
+naked Eve.--It was beautiful to observe how her simple and happy
+nature mingled itself with mine. She kindled a domestic fire within my
+heart and took up her dwelling there, even in that chill and lonesome
+cavern hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth
+of feeling, while the influence of my mind made her contemplative. I
+taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the
+encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent
+shadow, while beyond Nahant the wind rippled the dim ocean into a
+dreamy brightness which grew faint afar off without becoming gloomier.
+I held her hand and pointed to the long surf-wave as it rolled calmly
+on the beach in an unbroken line of silver; we were silent together
+till its deep and peaceful murmur had swept by us. When the Sabbath
+sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs, I led the mermaid
+thither and told her that those huge gray, shattered rocks, and her
+native sea that raged for ever like a storm against them, and her own
+slender beauty in so stern a scene, were all combined into a strain of
+poetry. But on the Sabbath-eve, when her mother had gone early to bed
+and her gentle sister had smiled and left us, as we sat alone by the
+quiet hearth with household things around, it was her turn to make me
+feel that here was a deeper poetry, and that this was the dearest hour
+of all. Thus went on our wooing, till I had shot wild-fowl enough to
+feather our bridal-bed, and the daughter of the sea was mine.
+
+I built a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a gateway in the form
+of a Gothic arch by setting up a whale's jaw-bones. We bought a heifer
+with her first calf, and had a little garden on the hillside to supply
+us with potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor, small and
+neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame, and with
+shells and pretty pebbles on the mantelpiece, selected from the sea's
+treasury of such things on Nahant Beach. On the desk, beneath the
+looking-glass, lay the Bible, which I had begun to read aloud at the
+book of Genesis, and the singing-book that Susan used for her evening
+psalm. Except the almanac, we had no other literature. All that I
+heard of books was when an Indian history or tale of shipwreck was
+sold by a pedler or wandering subscription-man to some one in the
+village, and read through its owner's nose to a slumbrous auditory.
+
+Like my brother-fishermen, I grew into the belief that all human
+erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and
+solemn phiz as he passed to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of
+sand might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England.
+In truth, I dreaded him.--When our children were old enough to claim
+his care, you remember, Susan, how I frowned, though you were pleased
+at this learned man's encomiums on their proficiency. I feared to
+trust them even with the alphabet: it was the key to a fatal treasure.
+But I loved to lead them by their little hands along the beach and
+point to nature in the vast and the minute--the sky, the sea, the
+green earth, the pebbles and the shells. Then did I discourse of the
+mighty works and coextensive goodness of the Deity with the simple
+wisdom of a man whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep
+and his heart by the strong and pure affections of his evening home.
+Sometimes my voice lost itself in a tremulous depth, for I felt his
+eye upon me as I spoke. Once, while my wife and all of us were gazing
+at ourselves in the mirror left by the tide in a hollow of the sand, I
+pointed to the pictured heaven below and bade her observe how religion
+was strewn everywhere in our path, since even a casual pool of water
+recalled the idea of that home whither we were travelling to rest for
+ever with our children. Suddenly your image, Susan, and all the little
+faces made up of yours and mine, seemed to fade away and vanish around
+me, leaving a pale visage like my own of former days within the frame
+of a large looking-glass. Strange illusion!
+
+My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with the present and
+absorb the future, till the whole lies before me at a glance. My
+manhood has long been waning with a stanch decay; my earlier
+contemporaries, after lives of unbroken health, are all at rest
+without having known the weariness of later age; and now with a
+wrinkled forehead and thin white hair as badges of my dignity I have
+become the patriarch--the uncle--of the village. I love that name: it
+widens the circle of my sympathies; it joins all the youthful to my
+household in the kindred of affection.
+
+Like Uncle Parker, whose rheumatic bones were dashed against Egg Rock
+full forty years ago, I am a spinner of long yarns. Seated on the
+gunnel of a dory or on the sunny side of a boat-house, where the
+warmth is grateful to my limbs, or by my own hearth when a friend or
+two are there, I overflow with talk, and yet am never tedious. With a
+broken voice I give utterance to much wisdom. Such, Heaven be praised!
+is the vigor of my faculties that many a forgotten usage, and
+traditions ancient in my youth, and early adventures of myself or
+others hitherto effaced by things more recent, acquire new
+distinctness in my memory. I remember the happy days when the haddock
+were more numerous on all the fishing-grounds than sculpins in the
+surf--when the deep-water cod swam close in-shore, and the dogfish,
+with his poisonous horn, had not learnt to take the hook. I can number
+every equinoctial storm in which the sea has overwhelmed the street,
+flooded the cellars of the village and hissed upon our kitchen hearth.
+I give the history of the great whale that was landed on Whale Beach,
+and whose jaws, being now my gateway, will last for ages after my
+coffin shall have passed beneath them. Thence it is an easy digression
+to the halibut--scarcely smaller than the whale--which ran out six
+codlines and hauled my dory to the mouth of Boston harbor before I
+could touch him with the gaff.
+
+If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation, I tell how a
+friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark, and the
+sad, true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage who had been nine
+days missing, when his drowned body floated into the very pathway on
+Marble-head Neck that had often led him to the dwelling of his bride,
+as if the dripping corpse would have come where the mourner was. With
+such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil his vows! Another
+favorite story is of a crazy maiden who conversed with angels and had
+the gift of prophecy, and whom all the village loved and pitied,
+though she went from door to door accusing us of sin, exhorting to
+repentance and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake. If
+the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I
+speak of pilots who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its
+taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and
+Mount Desert guided only by the rote of the shore--the peculiar sound
+of the surf on each island, beach and line of rocks along the coast.
+Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise while they deem it
+pastime.
+
+I recollect no happier portion of my life than this my calm old age.
+It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley where late in the
+autumn the grass is greener than in August, and intermixed with golden
+dandelions that had not been seen till now since the first warmth of
+the year. But with me the verdure and the flowers are not frost-bitten
+in the midst of winter. A playfulness has revisited my mind--a
+sympathy with the young and gay, an unpainful interest in the business
+of others, a light and wandering curiosity--arising, perhaps, from the
+sense that my toil on earth is ended and the brief hour till bedtime
+may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied that there is a depth of
+feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one
+who has lived long and is soon to die.
+
+Show me anything that would make an infant smile, and you shall behold
+a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a
+pleasant hour in the sun watching the sports of the village children
+on the edge of the surf. Now they chase the retreating wave far down
+over the wet sand; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet;
+now it comes onward with threatening front, and roars after the
+laughing crew as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not an old
+man be merry too, when the great sea is at play with those little
+children? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party
+of young men and girls strolling along the beach after an early supper
+at the Point. Here, with handkerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap
+of eel-grass entangled in which is a dead skate so oddly accoutred
+with two legs and a long tail that they mistake him for a drowned
+animal. A few steps farther the ladies scream, and the gentlemen make
+ready to protect them against a young shark of the dogfish kind
+rolling with a lifelike motion in the tide that has thrown him up.
+Next they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of
+live lobsters packed in rock-weed for the country-market. And when
+they reach the fleet of dories just hauled ashore after the day's
+fishing, how do I laugh in my sleeve, and sometimes roar outright, at
+the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the
+fishermen! In winter, when our village is thrown into a bustle by the
+arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers bargaining for frozen
+fish to be transported hundreds of miles and eaten fresh in Vermont or
+Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng. For I launch
+my boat no more.
+
+When the shore was solitary, I have found a pleasure that seemed even
+to exalt my mind in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls
+as they wheeled and hovered about each other with hoarse screams, one
+moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft till
+their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the
+summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of
+activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There
+I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from
+afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern steamboat;
+there, too, is the sun, going down, but not in gloom, and there the
+illimitable ocean mingling with the sky, to remind me of eternity.
+
+But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk
+that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing
+fireside. And never, even on the first Thanksgiving-night, when Susan
+and I sat alone with our hopes, nor the second, when a stranger had
+been sent to gladden us and be the visible image of our affection, did
+I feel such joy as now. All that belongs to me are here: Death has
+taken none, nor Disease kept them away, nor Strife divided them from
+their parents or each other; with neither poverty nor riches to
+disturb them, nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have
+kept New England's festival round the patriarch's board. For I am a
+patriarch. Here I sit among my descendants, in my old arm-chair and
+immemorial corner, while the firelight throws an appropriate glory
+round my venerable frame.--Susan! My children! Something whispers me
+that this happiest hour must be the final one, and that nothing
+remains but to bless you all and depart with a treasure of recollected
+joys to heaven. Will you meet me there? Alas! your figures grow
+indistinct, fading into pictures on the air, and now to fainter
+outlines, while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar
+room, and shows the book that I flung down and the sheet that I left
+half written some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the
+looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless those be the
+mermaid's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a
+tender and melancholy smile.
+
+Ah! One feels a chilliness--not bodily, but about the heart--and,
+moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes.
+I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and
+terror after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or
+distant people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which
+had changed it to a palace.
+
+And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can
+create so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from
+youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real?
+Oh, the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the
+stern reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the
+wintry blast. Be this the moral, then: In chaste and warm affections,
+humble wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is health for
+the mind and quiet for the heart, the prospect of a happy life and the
+fairest hope of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.
+
+
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled
+it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the
+pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
+down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
+room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
+sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the
+image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat
+knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old.
+They had found the "herb heart's-ease" in the bleakest spot of all New
+England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills,
+where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in
+the winter, giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it
+descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a
+dangerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that
+the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at
+midnight.
+
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all
+with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
+before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and
+lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
+them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
+were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
+traveller whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
+heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went moaning
+away from the door.
+
+Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
+with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery
+through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
+throbbing between Maine on one side and the Green Mountains and the
+shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew
+up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but
+his staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
+might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of
+the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
+teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night,
+and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and
+steal a kiss from the mountain-maid at parting. It was one of those
+primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging,
+but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps
+were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the
+whole family rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if about to
+welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with
+theirs.
+
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
+melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild
+and bleak road at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he
+saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring
+forward to meet them all, from the old woman who wiped a chair with
+her apron to the little child that held out its arms to him. One
+glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent
+familiarity with the eldest daughter.
+
+"Ah! this fire is the right thing," cried he, "especially when there
+is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed, for the Notch
+is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a
+terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett."
+
+"Then you are going toward Vermont?" said the master of the house as
+he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
+
+"Yes, to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. "I meant to
+have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night, but a pedestrian lingers along
+such a road as this. It is no matter; for when I saw this good fire
+and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on
+purpose for me and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among
+you and make myself at home."
+
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
+something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the
+steep side of the mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking
+such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite
+precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the sound,
+and their guest held his by instinct.
+
+"The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget
+him," said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods his
+head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree
+together pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of
+refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest."
+
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's
+meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on
+a footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as
+freely together as if he belonged to their mountain-brood. He was of a
+proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and
+great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door and
+be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the
+household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the
+pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth
+which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the
+mountain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic
+and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life,
+indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his
+nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have
+been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable,
+had that consciousness of unity among themselves and separation from
+the world at large which in every domestic circle should still keep a
+holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic
+sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart
+before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him
+with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not
+the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+
+The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
+to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to
+hope, and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty that,
+obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,
+though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity
+should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they
+would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner
+glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his
+cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him.
+
+"As yet," cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
+with enthusiasm--"as yet I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from
+the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you--that a
+nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and
+opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch
+by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 'Who was he?
+Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have achieved my
+destiny. Then let Death come: I shall have built my monument."
+
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid
+abstracted reverie which enabled the family to understand this young
+man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
+sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he
+had been betrayed.
+
+"You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and
+laughing himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were
+to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that
+people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that
+would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue."
+
+"It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl, blushing,
+"and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us."
+
+"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there is
+something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
+turned that way, I might have felt just the same.--It is strange,
+wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty
+certain never to come to pass."
+
+"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he
+will do when he is a widower?"
+
+"No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness.
+"When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine too. But I was
+wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton, or
+some other township round the White Mountains, but not where they
+could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my
+neighbors and be called squire and sent to General Court for a term or
+two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer.
+And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so
+as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave
+you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as
+a marble one, with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and
+something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a
+Christian."
+
+"There, now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature to desire a
+monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+memory in the universal heart of man."
+
+"We're in a strange way to-night," said the wife, with tears in her
+eyes. "They say it's a sign of something when folks' minds go
+a-wandering so. Hark to the children!"
+
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
+another room, but with an open door between; so that they could be
+heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have
+caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each
+other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when
+they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of
+addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
+
+"I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he: "I want you and father
+and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right
+away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume."
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm bed
+and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the
+Flume--a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch.
+
+The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along the road and
+stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
+men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song
+which resounded in broken notes between the cliffs, while the singers
+hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
+night.
+
+"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."
+
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
+unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
+patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door, and, the
+lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
+singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
+from the heart of the mountain.
+
+"There, mother!" cried the boy, again; "they'd have given us a ride to
+the Flume."
+
+Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a
+night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the
+daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath
+that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little
+struggle to repress it. Then, starting and blushing, she looked
+quickly around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her
+bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
+
+"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile; "only I felt lonesome
+just then."
+
+"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's
+hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
+For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth
+and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
+feelings into words?"
+
+"They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put
+into words," replied the mountain-nymph, laughing, but avoiding his
+eye.
+
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
+hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not
+be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his, and
+the proud, contemplative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by
+simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
+the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings, of a
+maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
+sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral
+strain of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their
+dwelling among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a
+sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were
+passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on
+their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose,
+discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The
+light hovered about them fondly and caressed them all. There were the
+little faces of the children peeping from their bed apart, and here
+the father's frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien,
+the high-browed youth, the budding girl and the good old grandam,
+still knitting in the warmest place.
+
+The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy was
+the next to speak.
+
+"Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young ones.
+You've been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one
+thing and another till you've set my mind a-wandering too. Now, what
+should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before
+she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till
+I tell you."
+
+"What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife at once.
+
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle
+closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her
+grave-clothes some years before--a nice linen shroud, a cap with a
+muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since
+her wedding-day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely
+recurred to her. It used to be said in her younger days that if
+anything were amiss with a corpse--if only the ruff were not smooth or
+the cap did not set right--the corpse, in the coffin and beneath the
+clods, would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare
+thought made her nervous.
+
+"Don't talk so, grandmother," said the girl, shuddering.
+
+"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
+strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children, when your
+mother is dressed and in the coffin,--I want one of you to hold a
+looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
+myself and see whether all's right?"
+
+"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the
+stranger-youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking
+and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in
+the ocean, that wide and nameless sepulchre?"
+
+For a moment the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
+of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
+of a blast, had grown broad, deep and terrible before the fated group
+were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
+foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
+were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
+glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without utterance or
+power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all
+their lips:
+
+"The slide! The slide!"
+
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
+horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and
+sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in
+contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared.
+Alas! they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway
+of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract
+of ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke into two
+branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
+vicinity, blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its
+dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of that great slide had ceased
+to roar among the mountains the mortal agony had been endured and the
+victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.
+
+The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
+chimney up the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
+the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
+had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would
+shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
+left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made
+to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has
+been told far and wide, and will for ever be a legend of these
+mountains. Poets have sung their fate.
+
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
+been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
+catastrophe of all its inmates; others denied that there were
+sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled
+youth with his dream of earthly immortality! His name and person
+utterly unknown, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery
+never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a
+doubt,--whose was the agony of that death-moment?
+
+
+
+
+THE SISTER-YEARS.
+
+
+Last night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, when the Old Year was
+leaving her final footprints on the borders of Time's empire, she
+found herself in possession of a few spare moments, and sat down--of
+all places in the world--on the steps of our new city-hall. The wintry
+moonlight showed that she looked weary of body and sad of heart, like
+many another wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been exposed to
+much foul weather and rough usage, were in very ill condition, and, as
+the hurry of her journey had never before allowed her to take an
+instant's rest, her shoes were so worn as to be scarcely worth the
+mending. But after trudging only a little distance farther this poor
+Old Year was destined to enjoy a long, long sleep. I forgot to mention
+that when she seated herself on the steps she deposited by her side a
+very capacious bandbox in which, as is the custom among travellers of
+her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this
+luggage, there was a folio book under her arm very much resembling the
+annual volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees and
+resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary,
+bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh and appeared to be
+taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence.
+
+While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to summon her to
+the innumerable sisterhood of departed years, there came a young
+maiden treading lightsomely on tip-toe along the street from the
+direction of the railroad depot. She was evidently a stranger, and
+perhaps had come to town by the evening train of cars. There was a
+smiling cheerfulness in this fair maiden's face which bespoke her
+fully confident of a kind reception from the multitude of people with
+whom she was soon to form acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy
+for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons and other
+vanities which were likely soon to be rent away by the fierce storms
+or to fade in the hot sunshine amid which she was to pursue her
+changeful course. But still she was a wonderfully pleasant-looking
+figure, and had so much promise and such an indescribable hopefulness
+in her aspect that hardly anybody could meet her without anticipating
+some very desirable thing--the consummation of some long-sought
+good--from her kind offices. A few dismal characters there may be here
+and there about the world who have so often been trifled with by young
+maidens as promising as she that they have now ceased to pin any faith
+upon the skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have great
+faith in her, and, should I live to see fifty more such, still from
+each of those successive sisters I shall reckon upon receiving
+something that will be worth living for.
+
+The New Year--for this young maiden was no less a personage--carried
+all her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight,
+which hung upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with
+great affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the
+city-hall, waiting for the signal to begin her rambles through the
+world. The two were own sisters, being both granddaughters of Time,
+and, though one looked so much older than the other, it was rather
+owing to hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but a
+twelvemonth's difference between them.
+
+"Well, my dear sister," said the New Year, after the first
+salutations, "you look almost tired to death. What have you been about
+during your sojourn in this part of infinite space?"
+
+"Oh, I have it all recorded here in my book of chronicles," answered
+the Old Year, in a heavy tone. "There is nothing that would amuse you,
+and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your
+own personal experience. It is but tiresome reading."
+
+Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio and glanced at
+them by the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of
+interest in her own biography, although its incidents were remembered
+without pleasure. The volume, though she termed it her book of
+chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the Salem
+_Gazette_ for 1838; in the accuracy of which journal this sagacious
+Old Year had so much confidence that she deemed it needless to record
+her history with her own pen.
+
+"What have you been doing in the political way?" asked the New Year.
+
+"Why, my course here in the United States," said the Old Year--"though
+perhaps I ought to blush at the confession--my political course, I
+must acknowledge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes inclining
+toward the Whigs, then causing the administration party to shout for
+triumph, and now again uplifting what seemed the almost prostrate
+banner of the opposition; so that historians will hardly know what to
+make of me in this respect. But the Loco-Focos--"
+
+"I do not like these party nicknames," interrupted her sister, who
+seemed remarkably touchy about some points. "Perhaps we shall part in
+better humor if we avoid any political discussion."
+
+"With all my heart," replied the Old Year, who had already been
+tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind. "I care not if
+the name of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about banks
+and the sub-treasury, abolition, Texas, the Florida war, and a million
+of other topics which you will learn soon enough for your own
+comfort,--I care not, I say, if no whisper of these matters ever
+reaches my ears again. Yet they have occupied so large a share of my
+attention that I scarcely know what else to tell you. There has,
+indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where blood
+has streamed in the names of liberty and patriotism; but it must
+remain for some future, perhaps far-distant, year to tell whether or
+no those holy names have been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much
+depresses me in my view of mortal affairs as to see high energies
+wasted and human life and happiness thrown away for ends that appear
+oftentimes unwise, and still oftener remain unaccomplished. But the
+wisest people and the best keep a steadfast faith that the progress of
+mankind is onward and upward, and that the toil and anguish of the
+path serve to wear away the imperfections of the immortal pilgrim, and
+will be felt no more when they have done their office."
+
+"Perhaps," cried the hopeful New Year--"perhaps I shall see that happy
+day."
+
+"I doubt whether it be so close at hand," answered the Old Year,
+gravely smiling. "You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed
+consummation, and will turn for amusement--as has frequently been my
+own practice--to the affairs of some sober little city like this of
+Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the new city-hall which has been
+completed under my administration, and it would make you laugh to see
+how the game of politics of which the Capitol at Washington is the
+great chess-board is here played in miniature. Burning Ambition finds
+its fuel here; here patriotism speaks boldly in the people's behalf
+and virtuous economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a
+lamplighter; here the aldermen range their senatorial dignity around
+the mayor's chair of state and the common council feel that they have
+liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and
+policy, man's tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his
+individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied
+almost as well here as on the theatre of nations, and with this great
+advantage--that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian
+scope still makes the beholder smile."
+
+"Have you done much for the improvement of the city?" asked the New
+Year. "Judging from what little I have seen, it appears to be ancient
+and time-worn."
+
+"I have opened the railroad," said the elder Year, "and half a dozen
+times a day you will hear the bell which once summoned the monks of a
+Spanish convent to their devotions announcing the arrival or departure
+of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when
+I first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a
+time. New faces throng in Essex street. Railroad-hacks and omnibuses
+rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of
+oyster-shops and other establishments for the accommodation of a
+transitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change awaits the
+venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be
+carried off by the free circulation of society. A peculiarity of
+character of which the inhabitants themselves are hardly sensible will
+be rubbed down and worn away by the attrition of foreign substances.
+Much of the result will be good; there will likewise be a few things
+not so good. Whether for better or worse, there will be a probable
+diminution of the moral influence of wealth, and the sway of an
+aristocratic class which from an era far beyond my memory has held
+firmer dominion here than in any other New England town."
+
+The Old Year, having talked away nearly all of her little remaining
+breath, now closed her book of chronicles, and was about to take her
+departure, but her sister detained her a while longer by inquiring the
+contents of the huge bandbox which she was so painfully lugging along
+with her.
+
+"These are merely a few trifles," replied the Old Year, "which I have
+picked up in my rambles and am going to deposit in the receptacle of
+things past and forgotten. We sisterhood of years never carry anything
+really valuable out of the world with us. Here are patterns of most of
+the fashions which I brought into vogue, and which have already lived
+out their allotted term; you will supply their place with others
+equally ephemeral. Here, put up in little china pots, like rouge, is a
+considerable lot of beautiful women's bloom which the disconsolate
+fair ones owe me a bitter grudge for stealing. I have likewise a
+quantity of men's dark hair, instead of which I have left gray locks
+or none at all. The tears of widows and other afflicted mortals who
+have received comfort during the last twelve months are preserved in
+some dozens of essence-bottles well corked and sealed. I have several
+bundles of love-letters eloquently breathing an eternity of burning
+passion which grew cold and perished almost before the ink was dry.
+Moreover, here is an assortment of many thousand broken promises and
+other broken ware, all very light and packed into little space. The
+heaviest articles in my possession are a large parcel of disappointed
+hopes which a little while ago were buoyant enough to have inflated
+Mr. Lauriat's balloon."
+
+"I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year.
+"They are a sweet-smelling flower--a species of rose."
+
+"They soon lose their perfume," replied the sombre Old Year. "What
+else have you brought to insure a welcome from the discontented race
+of mortals?"
+
+"Why, to say the truth, little or nothing else," said her sister, with
+a smile, "save a few new _Annuals_ and almanacs, and some New Year's
+gifts for the children. But I heartily wish well to poor mortals, and
+mean to do all I can for their improvement and happiness."
+
+"It is a good resolution," rejoined the Old Year. "And, by the way, I
+have a plentiful assortment of good resolutions which have now grown
+so stale and musty that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only
+for fear that the city authorities would send Constable Mansfield with
+a warrant after me, I should toss them into the street at once. Many
+other matters go to make up the contents of my bandbox, but the whole
+lot would not fetch a single bid even at an auction of worn-out
+furniture; and as they are worth nothing either to you or anybody
+else, I need not trouble you with a longer catalogue."
+
+"And must I also pick up such worthless luggage in my travels?" asked
+the New Year.
+
+"Most certainly, and well if you have no heavier load to bear,"
+replied the other. "And now, my dear sister, I must bid you farewell,
+earnestly advising and exhorting you to expect no gratitude nor
+good-will from this peevish, unreasonable, inconsiderate,
+ill-intending and worse-behaving world. However warmly its inhabitants
+may seem to welcome you, yet, do what you may and lavish on them what
+means of happiness you please, they will still be complaining, still
+craving what it is not in your power to give, still looking forward to
+some other year for the accomplishment of projects which ought never
+to have been formed, and which, if successful, would only provide new
+occasions of discontent. If these ridiculous people ever see anything
+tolerable in you, it will be after you are gone for ever."
+
+"But I," cried the fresh-hearted New Year--"I shall try to leave men
+wiser than I find them. I will offer them freely whatever good gifts
+Providence permits me to distribute, and will tell them to be thankful
+for what they have and humbly hopeful for more; and surely, if they
+are not absolute fools, they will condescend to be happy, and will
+allow me to be a happy year. For my happiness must depend on them."
+
+"Alas for you, then, my poor sister!" said the Old Year, sighing, as
+she uplifted her burden. "We grandchildren of Time are born to
+trouble. Happiness, they say, dwells in the mansions of eternity, but
+we can only lead mortals thither step by step with reluctant
+murmurings, and ourselves must perish on the threshold. But hark! my
+task is done."
+
+The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson's church struck twelve;
+there was a response from Dr. Flint's, in the opposite quarter of the
+city; and while the strokes were yet dropping into the air the Old
+Year either flitted or faded away, and not the wisdom and might of
+angels, to say nothing of the remorseful yearnings of the millions who
+had used her ill, could have prevailed with that departed year to
+return one step. But she, in the company of Time and all her kindred,
+must hereafter hold a reckoning with mankind. So shall it be,
+likewise, with the maidenly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to
+strike, arose from the steps of the city-hall and set out rather
+timorously on her earthly course.
+
+"A happy New Year!" cried a watchman, eying her figure very
+questionably, but without the least suspicion that he was addressing
+the New Year in person.
+
+"Thank you kindly," said the New Year; and she gave the watchman one
+of the roses of hope from her basket. "May this flower keep a sweet
+smell long after I have bidden you good-bye!"
+
+Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets, and such
+as were awake at the moment heard her footfall and said, "The New Year
+is come!" Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they
+quaffed her health. She sighed, however, to perceive that the air was
+tainted--as the atmosphere of this world must continually be--with the
+dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to
+bury them. But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her
+coming, and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing
+emblematic flowers on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which
+some persons will gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others will
+trample under foot. The carrier-boy can only say further that early
+this morning she filled his basket with New Year's addresses, assuring
+him that the whole city, with our new mayor and the aldermen and
+common council at its head, would make a general rush to secure
+copies. Kind patrons, will not you redeem the pledge of the New Year?
+
+
+
+
+SNOWFLAKES.
+
+
+There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through the
+partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning
+of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the
+air and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on
+the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the
+atmosphere. These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture which
+melt as they touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain. It
+is to be in good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three people
+visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed,
+frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a
+comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall--or, at least, before the
+sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us--the street and our little
+garden will be heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, already
+frozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be
+laid upon it, and to a Northern eye the landscape will lose its
+melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own when Mother
+Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her
+winter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.
+As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar-frost over the brown
+surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still
+discernible, and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look
+gray instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within the
+circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly
+equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually by silent and stealthy
+influences are great changes wrought. These little snow-particles
+which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air will bury
+the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold
+her sister Sky again for dreary months. We likewise shall lose sight
+of our mother's familiar visage, and must content ourselves with
+looking heavenward the oftener.
+
+Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down,
+pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an
+influence productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative
+thought in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a Southern
+clime may woo the Muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage
+reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing-birds and
+warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our brief
+summer I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a
+dream. My hour of inspiration--if that hour ever comes--is when the
+green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for
+the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals
+drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement
+rattles in the gust and the snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelt
+hard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper
+with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it
+like stars at twilight or like violets in May, perhaps to fade as
+soon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the
+darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the
+room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-born
+son, be New England's winter, which makes us one and all the nurslings
+of the storm and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek
+of the December blast. Now look we forth again and see how much of his
+task the storm-spirit has done.
+
+Slow and sure! He has the day--perchance the week--before him, and may
+take his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in snow. A smooth
+mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the
+dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white
+surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand
+shivering in a shallow snowdrift, looking, poor things! as
+disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary
+scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the
+summer. They neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems but
+the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in
+midwinter. The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the
+eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the
+real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object--as
+yonder spire--and observe how the riotous gust fights with the
+descending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the entire
+prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct but transient
+glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and now the dense
+wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdrifts at each
+other in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have an amusing
+parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions.
+It is a snow-battle of schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war and
+military glory might be written in the form of a child's story by
+describing the snow-ball fights of two rival schools, the alternate
+defeats and victories of each, and the final triumph of one party, or
+perhaps of neither! What pitched battles worthy to be chanted in
+Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses built all of massive
+snow-blocks! What feats of individual prowess and embodied onsets of
+martial enthusiasm! And when some well-contested and decisive victory
+had put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a lofty
+monument of snow upon the battlefield and crown it with the victor's
+statue hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeks
+thereafter the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon the
+level common, and, unmindful of the famous victory, would ask, "How
+came it there? Who reared it? And what means it?" The shattered
+pedestal of many a battle-monument has provoked these questions when
+none could answer.
+
+Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there, lending our ears
+to the wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice and
+dictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to
+sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea,
+if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy,
+shall be the theme of the next page.
+
+How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter
+autumn which is Nature's cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushes
+among the shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters the
+sear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap
+themselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,
+"Winter is at hand." Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and
+diligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice because each
+shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per
+ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the
+atmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the children look out of
+the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the
+air. It is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd around the hearth and
+cling to their mother's gown or press between their father's knees,
+affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide
+flue of the chimney.
+
+It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, they
+shudder and exclaim, "Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reign
+already." Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar
+sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity
+who tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his
+white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a
+wind-tossed snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of the
+northern blast, and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon
+his path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the
+spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing
+rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His
+dreary empire is established; all around stretches the desolation of
+the pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter
+is our sire, though a stern and rough one)--not ungrateful even for
+the severities which have nourished our unyielding strength of
+character. And let us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered by
+the music of merry bells; for the crackling and rustling hearth when
+the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of
+woman: for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which
+flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven
+months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a
+flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting
+him with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the path
+behind him. Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes
+fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring,
+yet step by step he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends the
+summer month within the Arctic circle.
+
+Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the
+winter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without
+abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser
+volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a
+layer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The garden
+is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of
+uncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it
+elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors of
+houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across
+a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen
+with the wind. And now the jingling of bells--a sluggish sound
+responsive to the horse's toilsome progress through the unbroken
+drifts--announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behind
+and ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes a
+sledge laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper whom winter has
+surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles
+along the uneven street? A sable hearse bestrewn with snow is bearing
+a dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh how dreary is a
+burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her
+poor child!
+
+Evening--the early eve of December--begins to spread its deepening
+veil over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens and
+throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber,
+but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas! I
+shiver and think it time to be disconsolate, but, taking a farewell
+glance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snowbirds
+skimming lightsomely through the tempest and flitting from drift to
+drift as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer.
+Whence come they? Where do they build their nests and seek their food?
+Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth,
+instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm and fluttering
+on the dreary verge of the winter's eve? I know not whence they come,
+nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock of
+snow-birds.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.
+
+
+Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year,
+I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three
+directions. Straight before me the main road extended its dusty length
+to Boston; on the left a branch went toward the sea, and would have
+lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles, while by the
+right-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada,
+visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of
+grass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object which, though
+locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver's
+portable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered
+wagon--or, more properly, a small house on wheels--with a door on one
+side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses
+munching provender out of the baskets which muzzled them were fastened
+near the vehicle. A delectable sound of music proceeded from the
+interior, and I immediately conjectured that this was some itinerant
+show halting at the confluence of the roads to intercept such idle
+travellers as myself. A shower had long been climbing up the western
+sky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a point
+of wisdom to seek shelter here.
+
+"Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?" cried I,
+approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the
+wagon.
+
+The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not
+the sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering
+showman, but a most respectable old personage whom I was sorry to have
+addressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored coat and
+small-clothes, with white top-boots, and exhibited the mild dignity of
+aspect and manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters,
+and sometimes in deacons, selectmen or other potentates of that kind.
+A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises, where I
+found only one other person, hereafter to be described.
+
+"This is a dull day for business," said the old gentleman as he
+ushered me in; "but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being
+bound for the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New
+England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my
+description. The spectacle--for I will not use the unworthy term of
+"puppet-show"--consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on
+a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind in the
+attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen
+standing ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a line
+across the stage, looking stern, grim and terrible enough to make it a
+pleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; and
+conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew in the pointed cap
+and motley coat of his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimic
+world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like that
+people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business and
+delights and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an
+eternal semblance of labor that was ended and pleasure that could be
+felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a
+barrel-organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening
+effect upon the figures and awoke them all to their proper occupations
+and amusements. By the selfsame impulse the tailor plied his needle,
+the blacksmith's hammer descended upon the anvil and the dancers
+whirled away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke into
+platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of
+horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and
+trampling of hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while
+an old toper of inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle and
+took off a hearty swig. Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper and
+turn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head and winking his
+eyes in as lifelike a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense of
+all human affairs and making fun of the whole multitude beneath him.
+At length the old magician (for I compared the showman to Prospero
+entertaining his guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I might
+give utterance to my wonder.
+
+"What an admirable piece of work is this!" exclaimed I, lifting up my
+hands in astonishment.
+
+Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man's
+gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom
+which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of
+vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
+most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations
+foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable
+circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this
+gray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and
+pleasurable adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through
+the sands of Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the
+north and east, and halting now on the green before a village
+meeting-house and now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often
+must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children as they
+viewed these animated figures, or his pride indulged by haranguing
+learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such
+wonderful effects, or his gallantry brought into play--for this is an
+attribute which such grave men do not lack--by the visits of pretty
+maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return at intervals
+to his own peculiar home! "I would I were assured of as happy a life
+as his," thought I.
+
+Though the showman's wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
+spectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person,
+at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man
+of two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat with
+velvet collar were smart, though no longer new, while a pair of green
+spectacles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave him
+something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a
+sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow and
+drew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he
+forthwith began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-sounding
+words and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myself
+one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required some
+considerable powers of commendation in the salesman. There were
+several ancient friends of mine--the novels of those happy days when
+my affections wavered between the _Scottish Chiefs_ and _Thomas
+Thumb_--besides a few of later date whose merits had not been
+acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear little
+venerable volume the _New England Primer_, looking as antique as
+ever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuated
+gilt picture-books made such a child of me that, partly for the
+glittering covers and partly for the fairy-tales within, I bought the
+whole, and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew
+largely on my purse. To balance these expenditures, I meddled neither
+with sermons nor science nor morality, though volumes of each were
+there, nor with a _Life of Franklin_ in the coarsest of paper,
+but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the doctor himself in
+the court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris, nor with Webster's
+spelling-book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a dozen
+little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the collection
+might have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up at an
+evening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered pamphlet
+which the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I purchased it
+immediately at his own price; and then for the first time the thought
+struck me that I had spoken face to face with the veritable author of
+a printed book.
+
+The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured
+to inquire which way he was travelling.
+
+"Oh," said he, "I keep company with this old gentlemen here, and we
+are moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented a
+corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed,
+was a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the
+country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan
+exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon
+felicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially when his character
+resembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate was to be
+reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the
+present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger
+and made him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literary
+achievement, was travelling the country in a showman's wagon. A more
+valuable yet not infrequent triumph might be won in his conversations
+with some elderly clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery
+back-settlement of New England, who as he recruited his library from
+the pedler's stock of sermons would exhort him to seek a college
+education and become the first scholar in his class. Sweeter and
+prouder yet would be his sensations when, talking poetry while he sold
+spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart,
+of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a
+wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at.
+But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had
+halted for the night and his stock of books was transferred to some
+crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multifarious company,
+whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or
+neighboring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler,
+works suited to each particular taste and capacity, proving, all the
+while, by acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his
+books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he
+traverse the land, sometimes a herald before the march of Mind,
+sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reaping
+everywhere a harvest of real and sensible popularity which the
+secluded bookworms by whose toil he lived could never hope for.
+
+"If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself in
+adamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller."
+
+Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about
+us, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,
+pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A
+sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
+halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosy
+face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if
+the sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and
+handsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than might
+have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into
+the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers
+stood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to those
+of my companions, and I was delighted with the more than
+hospitable--the even paternal--kindness of the old showman's manner as
+he welcomed them, while the man of literature hastened to lead the
+merry-eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.
+
+"You are housed but just in time, my young friends," said the master
+of the wagon; "the sky would have been down upon you within five
+minutes."
+
+The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner--not by any variation
+from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
+more caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with the
+language.
+
+"We knew that a shower was hanging over us," said he, "and consulted
+whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill,
+but, seeing your wagon in the road--"
+
+"We agreed to come hither," interrupted the girl, with a smile,
+"because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this."
+
+I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy was narrowly
+inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,
+tall, agile and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls
+clustering round a dark and vivacious countenance which, if it had not
+greater expression, was at least more active and attracted readier
+notice, than the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first
+appearance he had been laden with a neat mahogany box of about two
+feet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he had
+immediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor
+of the wagon.
+
+The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a
+brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which
+seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness,
+suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gay
+attire, combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green and a deep
+orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born
+in it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that
+mirth-inspiring instrument the fiddle, which her companion took from
+her hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us the
+previous company of the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for this
+could be no mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations,
+cattle-shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober
+land; and there is a dear friend of mine who will smile when this page
+recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by us in rescuing
+the show-box of such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted
+countrymen.
+
+"Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire; "shall we visit all the
+wonders of the world together?"
+
+She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not much
+have troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
+words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
+in through its small round magnifying-window while the girl sat by my
+side and gave short descriptive sketches as one after another the
+pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together--at least, our
+imaginations did--full many a famous city in the streets of which I
+had long yearned to tread. Once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
+Barcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore me through the air to
+Sicily and bade me look up at blazing AEtna; then we took wing to
+Venice and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anon
+she set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of
+Napoleon. But there was one scene--its locality she could not
+tell--which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous
+palaces and churches, because the fancy haunted me that I myself the
+preceding summer had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in just
+such a pine-surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All these
+pictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl's
+touches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend how in so few
+sentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she
+contrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene.
+
+When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I
+looked into my guide's face.
+
+"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" inquired I, in the words of
+an old song.
+
+"Ah!" said the gay damsel; "you might as well ask where the summer
+wind is going. We are wanderers here and there and everywhere.
+Wherever there is mirth our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day,
+indeed, the people have told us of a great frolic and festival in
+these parts; so perhaps we may be needed at what you call the
+camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in
+my ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been
+her companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies
+cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two
+strangers the world was in its Golden Age--not that, indeed, it was
+less dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had
+no community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in
+their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their gladness,
+care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and Age,
+tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their
+sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade,
+would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves as
+these bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was
+throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them
+broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too,
+was an elastic foot as tireless as the wing of the bird of Paradise;
+mine was then an untroubled heart that would have gone singing on its
+delightful way.
+
+"Oh, maiden," said I aloud, "why did you not come hither alone?"
+
+While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box the
+unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed
+pretty nearly of the old showman's age, but much smaller, leaner and
+more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of
+gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance and a pair of
+diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
+puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman in
+a manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving that
+the damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded
+document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be
+a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand and signed by
+several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating
+that the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune and
+recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous
+disbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of
+which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation provided he
+would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked
+keenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable
+spirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which
+takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
+
+"Why, perhaps," said the ragged old mendicant, "if the bank is in good
+standing, I can't say but I may have enough about me to change your
+bill."
+
+"It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank," said I, "and better than the
+specie."
+
+As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff
+leather bag tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was
+opened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins of
+all sorts and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw gleaming among them
+the golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency the American
+eagle. In this precious heap was my bank-note deposited, the rate of
+exchange being considerably against me.
+
+His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his
+pocket an old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed to
+fill the buff leather bag in more ways than one.
+
+"Come!" said he; "I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for
+twenty-five cents more I'll tell you what it is."
+
+I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling
+the cards and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to
+the prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting
+the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of his
+preternatural science by describing scenes through which I had already
+passed.
+
+Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a
+page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine and
+proceeded to relate in all its minute particulars what was then the
+most singular event of my life. It was one which I had no purpose to
+disclose till the general unfolding of all secrets, nor would it be a
+much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or fortunate
+conjecture if the beggar were to meet me in the street today and
+repeat word for word the page which I have here written.
+
+The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loth
+to make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began to
+converse with the other occupants of the wagon.
+
+"Well, old friend," said the showman, "you have not yet told us which
+way your face is turned this afternoon."
+
+"I am taking a trip northward this warm weather," replied the
+conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,
+and maybe into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the
+breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
+to the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the
+way.
+
+The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should
+pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of
+these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.
+
+"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
+her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
+jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my
+own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,
+if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."
+
+This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
+those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had
+no title to be included in it.
+
+Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the
+four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover
+what enjoyments were peculiar to the old "straggler," as the people of
+the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As
+he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was
+fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing
+some of the mental and moral characteristics--the lighter and more
+comic ones--of the devil in popular stories. Among them might be
+reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen
+relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of
+petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the
+consciousness--so insupportable to some minds--that his whole life was
+a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the
+public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.
+Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent
+triumphs--as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out
+of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a
+part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some
+ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who
+was richer than himself, or when--though he would not always be so
+decidedly diabolical--his pretended wants should make him a sharer in
+the scanty living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible
+field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and
+achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering
+spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.
+
+All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
+had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to
+admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to
+him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had
+compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
+"wandering up and down upon the earth," and, indeed, a crafty
+disposition which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnected
+tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally impelled to
+a continual change of scene and society.
+
+My reflections were here interrupted.
+
+"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.
+
+The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
+roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beating
+violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
+people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the
+displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now an
+attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice uttering some strange,
+unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and I
+suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman stepped forward
+and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our
+wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the
+forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment.
+It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort
+of cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock of
+blue cotton girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of
+knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments of
+silver, while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope had
+interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had
+worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrim
+of the storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When the
+first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the
+Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen in their summer
+excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch
+canoes among the coasting-schooners, and build their wigwam beside
+some roaring mill-dam, and drive a little trade in basket-work where
+their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably wandering
+through the country toward Boston, subsisting on the careless charity
+of the people while he turned his archery to profitable account by
+shooting at cents which were to be the prize of his successful aim.
+
+The Indian had not long been seated ere our merry damsel sought to
+draw him into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up of
+sunshine in the month of May, for there was nothing so dark and dismal
+that her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wild
+man, like a fir tree in his native forest, soon began to brighten into
+a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length she inquired whether his
+journey had any particular end or purpose.
+
+"I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford," replied the Indian.
+
+"And here are five more," said the girl, "all aiming at the
+camp-meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we travel with light
+hearts; and, as for me, I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and am
+full of merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that
+there is never any sadness among them that keep me company. But oh,
+you would find it very dull indeed to go all the way to Stamford
+alone."
+
+My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian
+would prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offered
+him; on the contrary, the girl's proposal met with immediate
+acceptance and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation of
+enjoyment.
+
+I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether it flowed
+naturally from this combination of events or was drawn forth by a
+wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep
+music. I saw mankind in this weary old age of the world either
+enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or,
+if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope
+but to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life,
+among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that had
+darkened the sunshine of today. But there were some full of the
+primeval instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest
+years by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits and new
+associates, and cared little, though their birthplace might have been
+here in New England, if the grave should close over them in Central
+Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits;
+unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre,
+they had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared the
+representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer
+during thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land.
+Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished
+around his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot
+of its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind of
+their savage virtue and uncultured force, but here, untamable to the
+routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road as of old
+over the forest-leaves,--here was the Indian still.
+
+"Well," said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, "here is
+an honest company of us--one, two, three, four, five, six--all going
+to the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like
+to know where this young gentleman may be going?"
+
+I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind that
+preferred its own folly to another's wisdom, the open spirit that
+found companions everywhere--above all, the restless impulse that had
+so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments,--these were my
+claims to be of their society.
+
+"My friends," cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, "I am
+going with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford."
+
+"But in what capacity?" asked the old showman, after a moment's
+silence. "All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way.
+Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it,
+are a mere strolling gentleman."
+
+I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me a
+propensity to their way of life she had not left me altogether
+destitute of qualifications for it, though I could not deny that my
+talent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than the
+meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate the
+story-tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and become an
+itinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such
+audiences as I could collect.
+
+"Either this," said I, "is my vocation, or I have been born in vain."
+
+The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take
+me as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of
+which undoubtedly would have given full scope to whatever inventive
+talent I might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words in
+opposition to my plan--influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousy
+of authorship, and partly by an apprehension that the _viva-voce_
+practice would become general among novelists, to the infinite
+detriment of the book trade.
+
+Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.
+
+"'Mirth,'" cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L'Allegro,
+"'to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of thy crew!'"
+
+"Let us indulge the poor youth," said Mirth, with a kindness which
+made me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to
+misinterpret her motives. "I have espied much promise in him. True, a
+shadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to
+follow in a moment. He is never guilty of a sad thought but a merry
+one is twin-born with it. We will take him with us, and you shall see
+that he will set us all a-laughing before we reach the camp-meeting at
+Stamford." Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest and gained me
+admittance into the league; according to the terms of which, without a
+community of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all the aid
+and avert all the harm that might be in our power.
+
+This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe
+of us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual. The
+old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of
+the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book;
+tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in the
+spirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part more
+facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me. The
+young foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a master's hand, and
+gave an inspiring echo to the showman's melody. The bookish man and
+the merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance, the former
+enacting the double shuffle in a style which everybody must have
+witnessed ere election week was blotted out of time, while the girl,
+setting her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed
+such light rapidity of foot and harmony of varying attitude and motion
+that I could not conceive how she ever was to stop, imagining at the
+moment that Nature had made her, as the old showman had made his
+puppets, for no earthly purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bellowed
+forth a succession of most hideous outcries, somewhat affrighting us
+till we interpreted them as the war-song with which, in imitation of
+his ancestors, he was prefacing the assault on Stamford. The conjurer,
+meanwhile, sat demurely in a corner extracting a sly enjoyment from
+the whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry Andrew, directing his
+queer glance particularly at me. As for myself, with great
+exhilaration of fancy, I began to arrange and color the incidents of a
+tale wherewith I proposed to amuse an audience that very evening; for
+I saw that my associates were a little ashamed of me, and that no time
+was to be lost in obtaining a public acknowledgment of my abilities.
+
+"Come, fellow-laborers," at last said the old showman, whom we had
+elected president; "the shower is over, and we must be doing our duty
+by these poor souls at Stamford."
+
+"We'll come among them in procession, with music and dancing," cried
+the merry damsel.
+
+Accordingly--for it must be understood that our pilgrimage was to be
+performed on foot--we sallied joyously out of the wagon, each of us,
+even the old gentleman in his white top-boots, giving a great skip as
+we came down the ladder. Above our heads there was such a glory of
+sunshine and splendor of clouds, and such brightness of verdure below,
+that, as I modestly remarked at the time, Nature seemed to have washed
+her face and put on the best of her jewelry and a fresh green gown in
+honor of our confederation. Casting our eyes northward, we beheld a
+horseman approaching leisurely and splashing through the little puddle
+on the Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his saddle with
+rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom the
+showman and the conjurer shortly recognized to be what his aspect
+sufficiently indicated--a travelling preacher of great fame among the
+Methodists. What puzzled us was the fact that his face appeared turned
+from, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stamford. However, as this
+new votary of the wandering life drew near the little green space
+where the guide-post and our wagon were situated, my six
+fellow-vagabonds and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying
+out with united voices, "What news? What news from the camp-meeting at
+Stamford?"
+
+The missionary looked down in surprise at as singular a knot of people
+as could have been selected from all his heterogeneous auditors.
+Indeed, considering that we might all be classified under the general
+head of Vagabond, there was great diversity of character among the
+grave old showman, the sly, prophetic beggar, the fiddling foreigner
+and his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian and
+myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even
+fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of
+the preacher's mouth.
+
+"Good people," answered he, "the camp-meeting is broke up."
+
+So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode
+westward. Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object,
+we were sundered at once to the four winds of heaven. The
+fortune-teller, giving a nod to all and a peculiar wink to me,
+departed on his Northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took the
+Stamford road. The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already
+tackling their horses to the wagon with a design to peregrinate
+south-west along the sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel
+took their laughing leave and pursued the eastern road, which I had
+that day trodden; as they passed away the young man played a lively
+strain and the girl's happy spirit broke into a dance, and, thus
+dissolving, as it were, into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant
+pair departed from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown
+across my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy of my late
+companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forth
+toward the distant city.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE OLD MAID.
+
+
+The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
+spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
+lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the
+ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed, falling between the
+heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But
+how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a
+shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a corpse in
+its burial-clothes.
+
+Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange
+fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt
+the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and
+a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the
+moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as
+she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed her living
+lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from that long
+kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its
+anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved
+responsive to her own. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had
+waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another
+fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside.
+There the two maidens stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of
+the dead between them. But she who had first entered was proud and
+stately, and the other a soft and fragile thing.
+
+"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him living; the dead is
+mine."
+
+"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well hast thou spoken; the
+dead is thine."
+
+The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
+but a wild-and mournful expression passed across the features of the
+gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head
+pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark
+locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had
+bewildered her.
+
+"Edith!" cried her rival.
+
+Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and, removing
+her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
+encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.
+
+"Wilt thou betray me?" said the latter, calmly.
+
+"Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent," answered Edith. "Leave
+us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return and tell me
+of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest of sufferings
+more than death, we will both forgive thee."
+
+"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud girl, as if her heart
+acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.
+
+"This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
+curls that lay heavily on the dead man's brow.
+
+The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
+appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
+meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the
+motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and trembled ere
+she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon
+her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form fading into the moonlight?
+Scorning her own weakness, she went forth and perceived that a negro
+slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight, which he held
+between her face and his own and regarded her, as she thought, with an
+ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave
+lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion.
+The young clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and,
+bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.
+
+Years--many years--rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much
+older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped
+their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely
+woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the
+town as the "Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." A taint of insanity had
+affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free
+from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies
+unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures she had
+naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight except
+to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in
+sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and proud
+thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them
+came the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called
+her shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but
+stood at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear
+of the procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the
+house of mourning and be the shadow of affliction and see that the
+dead were duly buried. So long had this been her custom that the
+inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as
+the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself, and augured ill of the
+sinner's destiny unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding
+like a ghost behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal-party
+with her pale presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall
+just as the priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before
+her lover had been dead a year. Evil was the omen to that marriage.
+Sometimes she stole forth by moonlight and visited the graves of
+venerable integrity and wedded love and virgin innocence, and every
+spot where the ashes of a kind and faithful heart were mouldering.
+Over the hillocks of those favored dead would she stretch out her arms
+with a gesture as if she were scattering seeds, and many believed that
+she brought them from the garden of Paradise, for the graves which she
+had visited were green beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers
+from April to November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon
+the tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful and fantastic
+life till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
+wondered how the dead had ever been buried or mourners had endured
+their grief without the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. Still years
+went on, and still she followed funerals and was not yet summoned to
+her own festival of death.
+
+One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with business
+and bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of the
+church-spire, having left the housetops and loftiest trees in shadow.
+The scene was cheerful and animated in spite of the sombre shade
+between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants in white
+wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces of sea-captains, the foreign
+garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the disdainful port of natives of
+Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two
+back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests where axe had
+never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an
+embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes and
+courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious obeisances of the
+gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far
+from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from the pavement,
+surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of loneliness rather
+deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its site would have
+been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange or a brick block
+lettered all over with various signs, or the large house itself might
+have made a noble tavern with the "King's Arms" swinging before it and
+guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But, owing
+to some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had been
+long without a tenant, decaying from year to year and throwing the
+stately gloom of its shadow over the busiest part of the town.
+
+Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that
+have been described was observed at a distance down the street.
+
+"I espy a strange sail yonder," remarked a Liverpool captain--"that
+woman in the long white garment."
+
+The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others
+who at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had
+attracted his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of
+conversation gave place to speculations in an undertone on this
+unwonted occurrence.
+
+"Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?" inquired some.
+
+They looked for the signs of death at every door--the sexton, the
+hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the
+woeful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt
+spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its
+bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in
+the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to
+its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral except
+the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+"What may this portend?" asked each man of his neighbor.
+
+All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
+their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
+prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one whose
+presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet
+is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on,
+while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud
+and the humble stood aside that her white garment might not wave
+against them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity. Its wearer
+appeared very old, pale, emaciated and feeble, yet glided onward
+without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her course a
+little rosy boy burst forth from a door and ran with open arms toward
+the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips.
+She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expression of
+no earthly sweetness, so that the child shivered and stood awestruck
+rather than affrighted while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her
+garment might have been polluted even by an infant's touch; perhaps
+her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy within the year.
+
+"She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious. "The child put
+forth his arms and could not grasp her robe."
+
+The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of
+the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron
+knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture that
+some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the
+poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth--all gone from
+their home long since and for ever unless their ghosts still haunted
+it, fit company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his
+gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.
+
+"None, madam," said he, "have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
+agone--no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
+you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among
+themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin."
+
+The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand and
+a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than
+ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer,
+and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now
+heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion which all conceived
+to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the
+pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more distinct
+on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell on
+the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance toward the
+church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that
+the people saw of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
+
+"Who undid the door?" asked many.
+
+This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
+could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
+against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
+within was a negro and bore a singular resemblance to old Caesar,
+formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
+before.
+
+"Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family," said one, half
+seriously.
+
+"Let us wait here," replied another; "more guests will knock at the
+door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open."
+
+Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate or
+the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was
+wending his way homeward, when a coach--no common spectacle in those
+days--drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage,
+hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a footman behind
+and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front, the whole giving
+an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was something awful in the
+heavy rumbling of the wheels.
+
+The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the
+deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.
+
+"Whose grand coach is this?" asked a very inquisitive body.
+
+The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
+gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach
+door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day
+examined the shield of arms on the panel.
+
+"Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flowers de luce," said he,
+then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.
+The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long
+residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and
+wealth had given him no mean station. "He left no child," continued
+the herald, "and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the
+coach appertains to his widow."
+
+Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the speaker
+been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady who
+thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she
+emerged the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her figure
+dignified in spite of age and infirmity--a stately ruin, but with a
+look at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid features
+had an awe about them unlike that of the white Old Maid, but as of
+something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed
+cane. The door swung open as she ascended, and the light of a torch
+glittered on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on the pillars of
+the porch. After a momentary pause, a glance backward and then a
+desperate effort, she went in.
+
+The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step,
+and, shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the
+torch was held by the very image of old Caesar.
+
+"But such a hideous grin," added he, "was never seen on the face of
+mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying-day."
+
+Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on the
+pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,
+while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when the
+people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient
+lady, the spectre of old Caesar and the Old Maid herself were not all a
+strangely-combined delusion with some dark purport in its mystery. The
+whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd
+continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows of the
+mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders, glad to
+indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded
+splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given and the
+guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from
+abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic
+reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they
+referred. So strong was the impression on some of the more imaginative
+hearers that two or three were seized with trembling fits at one and
+the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard three other
+raps of the iron knocker.
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed others. "See! The moon shines beneath the
+porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
+pillar. There is no one there."
+
+"Did not the door open?" whispered one of these fanciful persons.
+
+"Didst thou see it too?" said his companion, in a startled tone.
+
+But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third
+visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A
+few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red
+gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front window,
+as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This too was
+pronounced a mere fantasy.
+
+But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own
+terror painted in the faces of all the rest.
+
+"What an awful thing is this!" cried they.
+
+A shriek too fearfully distinct for doubt had been heard within the
+mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness, as
+if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
+whether to fly from the very sight of the house or to rush trembling
+in and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and
+affright they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their
+clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught
+them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of an
+ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair upon
+his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast and a back so bent over
+his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to
+choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time before the
+good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could be made to
+comprehend such portions of the affair as were comprehensible at all.
+But when possessed of the facts, his energies assumed unexpected
+vigor.
+
+"Verily," said the old gentleman, "it will be fitting that I enter the
+mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should
+have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the 'Old Maid in
+the Winding-Sheet.'"
+
+Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
+mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who had
+spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained the
+shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like their
+predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.
+
+"Old Caesar cometh not," observed the priest. "Well, I wot he no longer
+doth service in this mansion."
+
+"Assuredly, then, it was something worse in old Caesar's likeness,"
+said the other adventurer.
+
+"Be it as God wills," answered the clergyman. "See! my strength,
+though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let
+us enter and pass up the staircase."
+
+Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a very
+old man's mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the aged
+clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing aside,
+and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
+practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a throng.
+Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with sad and
+solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary locks, and was
+evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.
+
+"Reverend sir," said his attendant, who conceived this a very suitable
+prelude to their further search, "would it not be well that the people
+join with us in prayer?"
+
+"Well-a-day!" cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
+"Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
+present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
+many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I
+saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their
+burials, one after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet hath
+seen them to their graves."
+
+Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
+staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
+each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They
+therefore walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to the
+great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the shadow and
+partial moonlight of the street beneath. On their right hand was the
+open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left.
+
+The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.
+
+"Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole lifetime since, did I sit
+by the death-bed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
+gasp--" Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
+which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his
+companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence
+that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the
+moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It
+was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-backed
+oaken arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her breast and
+her head thrown back, sat the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. The
+stately dame had fallen on her knees with her forehead on the holy
+knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor and the other pressed
+convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair--once
+sable, now discolored with a greenish mould.
+
+As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's
+features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they
+trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it
+was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead face
+and the moonlight.
+
+"Both dead!" said the venerable man. "Then who shall divulge the
+secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light and
+shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now 'tis gone!"
+
+
+
+
+PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE.
+
+
+"And so, Peter, you won't even consider of the business?" said Mr.
+John Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his
+person and drawing on his gloves. "You positively refuse to let me
+have this crazy old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the
+price named?"
+
+"Neither at that, nor treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled
+and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. "The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must
+find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my
+estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid
+new mansion over the cellar of the old house."
+
+"Pho, Peter!" cried Mr. Brown as he opened the kitchen door; "content
+yourself with building castles in the air, where house-lots are
+cheaper than on earth, to say nothing of the cost of bricks and
+mortar. Such foundations are solid enough for your edifices, while
+this underneath us is just the thing for mine; and so we may both be
+suited. What say you, again?"
+
+"Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown," answered Peter Goldthwaite.
+"And, as for castles in the air, mine may not be as magnificent as
+that sort of architecture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr. Brown, as
+the very respectable brick block with dry-goods stores, tailors' shops
+and banking-rooms on the lower floor, and lawyers' offices in the
+second story, which you are so anxious to substitute."
+
+"And the cost, Peter? Eh?" said Mr. Brown as he withdrew in something
+of a pet. "That, I suppose, will be provided for off-hand by drawing a
+check on Bubble Bank?"
+
+John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly known to the
+commercial world between twenty and thirty years before under the firm
+of Goldthwaite & Brown; which copartnership, however, was speedily
+dissolved by the natural incongruity of its constituent parts. Since
+that event, John Brown, with exactly the qualities of a thousand other
+John Browns, and by just such plodding methods as they used, had
+prospered wonderfully and become one of the wealthiest John Browns on
+earth. Peter Goldthwaite, on the contrary, after innumerable schemes
+which ought to have collected all the coin and paper currency of the
+country into his coffers, was as needy a gentleman as ever wore a
+patch upon his elbow. The contrast between him and his former partner
+may be briefly marked, for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always
+had it, while Peter made luck the main condition of his projects, and
+always missed it. While the means held out his speculations had been
+magnificent, but were chiefly confined of late years to such small
+business as adventures in the lottery. Once he had gone on a
+gold-gathering expedition somewhere to the South, and ingeniously
+contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than ever, while
+others, doubtless, were filling theirs with native bullion by the
+handful. More recently he had expended a legacy of a thousand or two
+of dollars in purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the
+proprietor of a province; which, however, so far as Peter could find
+out, was situated where he might have had an empire for the same
+money--in the clouds. From a search after this valuable real estate
+Peter returned so gaunt and threadbare that on reaching New England
+the scarecrows in the corn-fields beckoned to him as he passed by.
+"They did but flutter in the wind," quoth Peter Goldthwaite. No,
+Peter, they beckoned, for the scarecrows knew their brother.
+
+At the period of our story his whole visible income would not have
+paid the tax of the old mansion in which we find him. It was one of
+those rusty, moss-grown, many-peaked wooden houses which are scattered
+about the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed second
+story projecting over the foundation, as if it frowned at the novelty
+around it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he was, and though,
+being centrally situated on the principal street of the town, it would
+have brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own
+reasons for never parting with, either by auction or private sale.
+There seemed, indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his
+birthplace; for, often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and
+standing there even now, he had not yet taken the step beyond it which
+would have compelled him to surrender the house to his creditors. So
+here he dwelt with bad luck till good should come.
+
+Here, then, in his kitchen--the only room where a spark of fire took
+off the chill of a November evening--poor Peter Goldthwaite had just
+been visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview,
+Peter, with rather a mortified look, glanced downward at his dress,
+parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite & Brown.
+His upper garment was a mixed surtout, woefully faded, and patched
+with newer stuff on each elbow; beneath this he wore a threadbare
+black coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced with
+others of a different pattern; and, lastly, though he lacked not a
+pair of gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been
+partially turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter's shins
+before a scanty fire. Peter's person was in keeping with his goodly
+apparel. Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he
+was the perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and
+empty hopes till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash nor
+stomach more substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite,
+crack-brained simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very
+brilliant figure in the world had he employed his imagination in the
+airy business of poetry instead of making it a demon of mischief in
+mercantile pursuits. After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless
+as a child, and as honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman
+which Nature meant him for, as an irregular life and depressed
+circumstances will permit any man to be.
+
+As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth looking round at the
+disconsolate old kitchen his eyes began to kindle with the
+illumination of an enthusiasm that never long deserted him. He raised
+his hand, clenched it and smote it energetically against the smoky
+panel over the fireplace.
+
+"The time is come," said he; "with such a treasure at command, it were
+folly to be a poor man any longer. Tomorrow morning I will begin with
+the garret, nor desist till I have torn the house down."
+
+Deep in the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a
+little old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith
+Peter Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet
+were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off
+flannel petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid
+upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that
+same chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter's
+grandfather had taken her from the almshouse. She had no friend but
+Peter, nor Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as Peter might have a
+shelter for his own head, Tabitha would know where to shelter hers,
+or, being homeless elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand
+and bring him to her native home, the almshouse. Should it ever be
+necessary, she loved him well enough to feed him with her last morsel
+and clothe him with her under-petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old
+woman, and, though never infected with Peter's flightiness, had become
+so accustomed to his freaks and follies that she viewed them all as
+matters of course. Hearing him threaten to tear the house down, she
+looked quietly up from her work.
+
+"Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter," said she.
+
+"The sooner we have it all down, the better," said Peter Goldthwaite.
+"I am tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy, smoky,
+creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man
+when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we
+shall by this time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny
+side, old Tabby, finished and furnished as best may suit your own
+notions."
+
+"I should like it pretty much such a room as this kitchen," answered
+Tabitha. "It will never be like home to me till the chimney-corner
+gets as black with smoke as this, and that won't be these hundred
+years. How much do you mean to lay out on the house, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"What is that to the purpose?" exclaimed Peter, loftily. "Did not my
+great-grand-uncle, Peter Goldthwaite, who died seventy years ago, and
+whose namesake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty such?"
+
+"I can't say but he did, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha, threading her
+needle.
+
+Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference to an immense hoard
+of the precious metals which was said to exist somewhere in the cellar
+or walls, or under the floors, or in some concealed closet or other
+out-of-the-way nook of the old house. This wealth, according to
+tradition, had been accumulated by a former Peter Goldthwaite whose
+character seems to have borne a remarkable similitude to that of the
+Peter of our story. Like him, he was a wild projector, seeking to heap
+up gold by the bushel and the cart-load instead of scraping it
+together coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had
+almost invariably failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the
+final one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches
+to his gaunt and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the
+nature of his fortunate speculation, one intimating that the ancient
+Peter had made the gold by alchemy; another, that he had conjured it
+out of people's pockets by the black art; and a third--still more
+unaccountable--that the devil had given him free access to the old
+provincial treasury. It was affirmed, however, that some secret
+impediment had debarred him from the enjoyment of his riches, and that
+he had a motive for concealing them from his heir, or, at any rate,
+had died without disclosing the place of deposit. The present Peter's
+father had faith enough in the story to cause the cellar to be dug
+over. Peter himself chose to consider the legend as an indisputable
+truth, and amid his many troubles had this one consolation--that,
+should all other resources fail, he might build up his fortunes by
+tearing his house down. Yet, unless he felt a lurking distrust of the
+golden tale, it is difficult to account for his permitting the
+paternal roof to stand so long, since he had never yet seen the moment
+when his predecessor's treasure would not have found plenty of room in
+his own strong-box. But now was the crisis. Should he delay the search
+a little longer, the house would pass from the lineal heir, and with
+it the vast heap of gold, to remain in its burial-place till the ruin
+of the aged walls should discover it to strangers of a future
+generation.
+
+"Yes," cried Peter Goldthwaite, again; "to-morrow I will set about
+it."
+
+The deeper he looked at the matter, the more certain of success grew
+Peter. His spirits were naturally so elastic that even now, in the
+blasted autumn of his age, he could often compete with the springtime
+gayety of other people. Enlivened by his brightening prospects, he
+began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin, with the queerest
+antics of his lean limbs and gesticulations of his starved features.
+Nay, in the exuberance of his feelings, he seized both of Tabitha's
+hands and danced the old lady across the floor till the oddity of her
+rheumatic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was echoed
+back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter Goldthwaite were
+laughing in every one. Finally, he bounded upward, almost out of
+sight, into the smoke that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and,
+alighting safely on the floor again, endeavored to resume his
+customary gravity.
+
+"To-morrow, at sunrise," he repeated, taking his lamp to retire to
+bed, "I'll see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the
+garret."
+
+"And, as we're out of wood, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha, puffing and
+panting with her late gymnastics, "as fast as you tear the house down
+I'll make a fire with the pieces."
+
+Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldthwaite. At one time
+he was turning a ponderous key in an iron door not unlike the door of
+a sepulchre, but which, being opened, disclosed a vault heaped up with
+gold coin as plentifully as golden corn in a granary. There were
+chased goblets, also, and tureens, salvers, dinner-dishes and
+dish-covers of gold or silver-gilt, besides chains and other jewels,
+incalculably rich, though tarnished with the damps of the vault; for,
+of all the wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried in
+the earth or sunken in the sea, Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this
+one treasure-place. Anon he had returned to the old house as poor as
+ever, and was received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of
+a man whom he might have mistaken for himself, only that his garments
+were of a much elder fashion. But the house, without losing its former
+aspect, had been changed into a palace of the precious metals. The
+floors, walls and ceilings were of burnished silver; the doors, the
+window-frames, the cornices, the balustrades and the steps of the
+staircase, of pure gold; and silver, with gold bottoms, were the
+chairs, and gold, standing on silver legs, the high chests of drawers,
+and silver the bedsteads, with blankets of woven gold and sheets of
+silver tissue. The house had evidently been transmuted by a single
+touch, for it retained all the marks that Peter remembered, but in
+gold or silver instead of wood, and the initials of his name--which
+when a boy he had cut in the wooden door-post--remained as deep in the
+pillar of gold. A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite except
+for a certain ocular deception which, whenever he glanced backward,
+caused the house to darken from its glittering magnificence into the
+sordid gloom of yesterday.
+
+Up betimes rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer and saw which he had
+placed by his bedside, and hied him to the garret. It was but scantily
+lighted up as yet by the frosty fragments of a sunbeam which began to
+glimmer through the almost opaque bull-eyes of the window. A moralizer
+might find abundant themes for his speculative and impracticable
+wisdom in a garret. There is the limbo of departed fashions, aged
+trifles of a day and whatever was valuable only to one generation of
+men, and which passed to the garret when that generation passed to the
+grave--not for safekeeping, but to be out of the way. Peter saw piles
+of yellow and musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein
+creditors long dead and buried had written the names of dead and
+buried debtors in ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones
+were more legible. He found old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and
+tatters, or Peter would have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty
+sword--not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small French
+rapier--which had never left its scabbard till it lost it. Here were
+canes of twenty different sorts, but no gold-headed ones, and
+shoebuckles of various pattern and material, but not silver nor set
+with precious stones. Here was a large box full of shoes with high
+heels and peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a multitude of phials
+half filled with old apothecary's stuff which, when the other half had
+done its business on Peter's ancestors, had been brought hither from
+the death-chamber. Here--not to give a longer inventory of articles
+that will never be put up at auction--was the fragment of a
+full-length looking-glass which by the dust and dimness of its surface
+made the picture of these old things look older than the reality. When
+Peter, not knowing that there was a mirror there, caught the faint
+traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the former Peter
+Goldthwaite had come back either to assist or impede his search for
+the hidden wealth. And at that moment a strange notion glimmered
+through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed
+the gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, however, he had
+unaccountably forgotten.
+
+"Well, Mr. Peter!" cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. "Have you torn
+the house down enough to heat the teakettle?"
+
+"Not yet, old Tabby," answered Peter, "but that's soon done, as you
+shall see." With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and laid
+about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and in
+a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish.
+
+"We shall get our winter's wood cheap," quoth Tabitha.
+
+The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him,
+smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers, unclenching spike-nails,
+ripping and tearing away boards, with a tremendous racket from morning
+till night. He took care, however, to leave the outside shell of the
+house untouched, so that the neighbors might not suspect what was
+going on.
+
+Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it
+lasted, had Peter been happier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was
+something in Peter Goldthwaite's turn of mind which brought him an
+inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused. If he were
+poor, ill-clad, even hungry and exposed, as it were, to be utterly
+annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin, yet only his body
+remained in these miserable circumstances, while his aspiring soul
+enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity. It was his nature to be
+always young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so.
+Gray hairs were nothing--no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look
+old, indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old
+figure much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was
+a young man of high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling
+of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers
+and ashes. It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long--not too long,
+but just to the right age--a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender
+dreams, he resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light,
+to go a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town. What
+heart could resist him? Happy Peter Goldthwaite!
+
+Every evening--as Peter had long absented himself from his former
+lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and
+as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private
+circles--he and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen
+hearth. This was always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his
+day's labor. As the foundation of the fire there would be a
+goodly-sized back-log of red oak, which after being sheltered from
+rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and distilled
+streams of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down
+within a week or two. Next there were large sticks, sound, black and
+heavy, which had lost the principle of decay and were indestructible
+except by fire, wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron. On this
+solid basis Tabitha would rear a lighter structure, composed of the
+splinters of door-panels, ornamented mouldings, and such quick
+combustibles, which caught like straw and threw a brilliant blaze high
+up the spacious flue, making its sooty sides visible almost to the
+chimney-top. Meantime, the gloom of the old kitchen would be chased
+out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the dusky cross-beams
+overhead, and driven nobody could tell whither, while Peter smiled
+like a gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age.
+All this, of course, was but an emblem of the bright fortune which the
+destruction of the house would shed upon its occupants.
+
+While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular
+discharge of fairy-musketry, Peter sat looking and listening in a
+pleasant state of excitement; but when the brief blaze and uproar were
+succeeded by the dark-red glow, the substantial heat and the deep
+singing sound which were to last throughout the evening, his humor
+became talkative. One night--the hundredth time--he teased Tabitha to
+tell him something new about his great-granduncle.
+
+"You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-five years, old
+Tabby, and must have heard many a tradition about him," said Peter.
+"Did not you tell me that when you first came to the house there was
+an old woman sitting where you sit now who had been housekeeper to the
+famous Peter Goldthwaite?"
+
+"So there was, Mr. Peter," answered Tabitha, "and she was near about a
+hundred years old. She used to say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite
+had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire--pretty much as
+you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter."
+
+"The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one," said
+Peter, complacently, "or he never would have grown so rich. But
+methinks he might have invested the money better than he did. No
+interest! nothing but good security! and the house to be torn down to
+come at it! What made him hide it so snug, Tabby?"
+
+"Because he could not spend it," said Tabitha, "for as often as he
+went to unlock the chest the Old Scratch came behind and caught his
+arm. The money, they say, was paid Peter out of his purse, and he
+wanted Peter to give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter
+swore he would not do."
+
+"Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner," remarked Peter. "But
+this is all nonsense, Tabby; I don't believe the story."
+
+"Well, it may not be just the truth," said Tabitha, "for some folks
+say that Peter did make over the house to the Old Scratch, and that's
+the reason it has always been so unlucky to them that lived in it. And
+as soon as Peter had given him the deed the chest flew open, and Peter
+caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and behold! there was nothing
+in his fist but a parcel of old rags."
+
+"Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby!" cried Peter, in great wrath.
+"They were as good golden guineas as ever bore the effigies of the
+king of England. It seems as if I could recollect the whole
+circumstance, and how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was, thrust in my
+hand, or his hand, and drew it out all of a blaze with gold. Old rags
+indeed!"
+
+But it was not an old woman's legend that would discourage Peter
+Goldthwaite. All night long he slept among pleasant dreams, and awoke
+at daylight with a joyous throb of the heart which few are fortunate
+enough to feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day he labored hard
+without wasting a moment except at meal-times, when Tabitha summoned
+him to the pork and cabbage, or such other sustenance as she had
+picked up or Providence had sent them. Being a truly pious man, Peter
+never failed to ask a blessing--if the food were none of the best,
+then so much the more earnestly, as it was more needed--nor to return
+thanks, if the dinner had been scanty, yet for the good appetite which
+was better than a sick stomach at a feast. Then did he hurry back to
+his toil, and in a moment was lost to sight in a cloud of dust from
+the old walls, though sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the
+clatter which he raised in the midst of it.
+
+How enviable is the consciousness of being usefully employed! Nothing
+troubled Peter, or nothing but those phantoms of the mind which seem
+like vague recollections, yet have also the aspect of presentiments.
+He often paused with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself,
+"Peter Goldthwaite, did you never strike this blow before?" or "Peter,
+what need of tearing the whole house down? Think a little while, and
+you will remember where the gold is hidden." Days and weeks passed on,
+however, without any remarkable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean
+gray rat peeped forth at the lean gray man, wondering what devil had
+got into the old house, which had always been so peaceable till now.
+And occasionally Peter sympathized with the sorrows of a female mouse
+who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and delicate young
+ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its ruin. But
+as yet no treasure.
+
+By this time, Peter, being as determined as fate and as diligent as
+time, had made an end with the uppermost regions and got down to the
+second story, where he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had
+formerly been the state-bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as
+the sleeping-apartment of Governor Dudley and many other eminent
+guests. The furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and
+tattered paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented
+with charcoal sketches, chiefly of people's heads in profile. These
+being specimens of Peter's youthful genius, it went more to his heart
+to obliterate them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by
+Michael Angelo. One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected
+him differently. It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself
+on a spade and bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with
+one hand extended to grasp something that he had found. But close
+behind him, with a fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure
+with horns, a tufted tail and a cloven hoof.
+
+"Avaunt, Satan!" cried Peter. "The man shall have his gold." Uplifting
+his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not
+only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the
+whole scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite
+through the plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.
+
+"Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?"
+said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.
+
+Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of
+the wall, and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the
+fireplace, about breast-high from the ground. It contained nothing but
+a brass lamp covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment.
+While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized the lamp and began to
+rub it with her apron.
+
+"There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha," said Peter. "It is not
+Aladdin's lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look
+here, Tabby!"
+
+Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was
+saddled with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she
+begun to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding
+both her hands against her sides.
+
+"You can't make a fool of the old woman," cried she. "This is your own
+handwriting, Mr. Peter, the same as in the letter you sent me from
+Mexico."
+
+"There is certainly a considerable resemblance," said Peter, again
+examining the parchment. "But you know yourself, Tabby, that this
+closet must have been plastered up before you came to the house or I
+came into the world. No; this is old Peter Goldthwaite's writing.
+These columns of pounds, shillings and pence are his figures, denoting
+the amount of the treasure, and this, at the bottom, is doubtless a
+reference to the place of concealment. But the ink has either faded or
+peeled off, so that it is absolutely illegible. What a pity!"
+
+"Well, this lamp is as good as new. That's some comfort," said
+Tabitha.
+
+"A lamp!" thought Peter. "That indicates light on my researches."
+
+For the present Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery
+than to resume his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs he stood
+poring over the parchment at one of the front windows, which was so
+obscured with dust that the sun could barely throw an uncertain shadow
+of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it open and looked out
+upon the great street of the town, while the sun looked in at his old
+house. The air, though mild, and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a
+dash of water.
+
+It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the
+housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops,
+which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a
+summer shower beneath the eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was
+as hard and solid as a pavement of white marble, and had not yet grown
+moist in the spring-like temperature. But when Peter thrust forth his
+head, he saw that the inhabitants, if not the town, were already
+thawed out by this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter
+weather. It gladdened him--a gladness with a sigh breathing through
+it--to see the stream of ladies gliding along the slippery sidewalks
+with their red cheeks set off by quilted hoods, boas and sable capes
+like roses amidst a new kind of foliage. The sleigh bells jingled to
+and fro continually, sometimes announcing the arrival of a sleigh from
+Vermont laden with the frozen bodies of porkers or sheep, and perhaps
+a deer or two; sometimes, of a regular marketman with chickens, geese
+and turkeys, comprising the whole colony of a barn-yard; and
+sometimes, of a farmer and his dame who had come to town partly for
+the ride, partly to go a-shopping and partly for the sale of some eggs
+and butter. This couple rode in an old-fashioned square sleigh which
+had served them twenty winters and stood twenty summers in the sun
+beside their door. Now a gentleman and lady skimmed the snow in an
+elegant car shaped somewhat like a cockle-shell; now a stage-sleigh
+with its cloth curtains thrust aside to admit the sun dashed rapidly
+down the street, whirling in and out among the vehicles that
+obstructed its passage; now came round a corner the similitude of
+Noah's ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh with seats for
+fifty people and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious receptacle was
+populous with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry girls and boys
+and merry old folks, all alive with fun and grinning to the full width
+of their mouths. They kept up a buzz of babbling voices and low
+laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep, joyous shout which the
+spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys
+let drive their snow-balls right among the pleasure-party. The sleigh
+passed on, and when concealed by a bend of the street was still
+audible by a distant cry of merriment.
+
+Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all
+these accessories--the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the
+gleaming snow, the cheerful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles
+and the jingle-jangle of merry bells which made the heart dance to
+their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen except that peaked piece of
+antiquity Peter Goldthwaite's house, which might well look sad
+externally, since such a terrible consumption was preying on its
+insides. And Peter's gaunt figure, half visible in the projecting
+second story, was worthy of his house.
+
+"Peter! How goes it, friend Peter?" cried a voice across the street as
+Peter was drawing in his head. "Look out here, Peter!"
+
+Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
+sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open,
+disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the
+attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite's window, and to the
+dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.
+
+"I say, Peter!" cried Mr. Brown, again; "what the devil are you about
+there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing
+the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?"
+
+"Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown," replied Peter. "If I make
+it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar upward."
+
+"Had not you better let me take the job?" said Mr. Brown,
+significantly.
+
+"Not yet," answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever since
+he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
+him.
+
+As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the
+secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter's
+visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid
+chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
+probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a
+home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very
+dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in contrast with
+the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into
+the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which
+the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and
+an intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an
+object that might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people
+would call madness. It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of
+life that each person rectifies his mind by other minds and squares
+his conduct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in
+eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence
+by merely looking out of the window. For a while he doubted whether
+there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case whether it was
+so exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced of its
+non-existence.
+
+But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which
+Fate had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In
+the course of his search he met with many things that are usually
+found in the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are not.
+What seemed most to the purpose was a rusty key which had been thrust
+into a chink of the wall, with a wooden label appended to the handle,
+bearing the initials "P.G." Another singular discovery was that of a
+bottle of wine walled up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the family
+that Peter's grandfather, a jovial officer in the old French war, had
+set aside many dozens of the precious liquor for the benefit of topers
+then unborn. Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and
+therefore kept the wine to gladden his success. Many half-pence did he
+pick up that had been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some
+few Spanish coins, and the half of a broken sixpence which had
+doubtless been a love-token. There was likewise a silver coronation
+medal of George III. But old Peter Goldthwaite's strong-box fled from
+one dark corner to another, or otherwise eluded the second Peter's
+clutches till, should he seek much farther, he must burrow into the
+earth.
+
+We will not follow him in his triumphant progress step by step.
+Suffice it that Peter worked like a steam-engine and finished in that
+one winter the job which all the former inhabitants of the house, with
+time and the elements to aid them, had only half done in a century.
+Except the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted. The house
+was nothing but a shell, the apparition of a house, as unreal as the
+painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of a great
+cheese in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a cheese no
+more. And Peter was the mouse.
+
+What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burnt up, for she wisely
+considered that without a house they should need no wood to warm it,
+and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said
+to have dissolved in smoke and flown up among the clouds through the
+great black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirable parallel
+to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat.
+
+On the night between the last day of winter and the first of spring
+every chink and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts
+of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had
+set in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed about the
+atmosphere by a real hurricane which fought against the house as if
+the prince of the air in person were putting the final stroke to
+Peter's labors. The framework being so much weakened and the inward
+props removed, it would have been no marvel if in some stronger
+wrestle of the blast the rotten walls of the edifice and all the
+peaked roofs had come crashing down upon the owner's head. He,
+however, was careless of the peril, but as wild and restless as the
+night itself, or as the flame that quivered up the chimney at each
+roar of the tempestuous wind.
+
+"The wine, Tabitha," he cried--"my grandfather's rich old wine! We
+will drink it now."
+
+Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner and
+placed the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp which
+had likewise been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before
+his eyes, and, looking through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen
+illuminated with a golden glory which also enveloped Tabitha and
+gilded her silver hair and converted her mean garments into robes of
+queenly splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.
+
+"Mr. Peter," remarked Tabitha, "must the wine be drunk before the
+money is found?"
+
+"The money _is_ found!" exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness.
+"The chest is within my reach; I will not sleep till I have turned
+this key in the rusty lock. But first of all let us drink."
+
+There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle
+with old Peter Goldthwaite's rusty key, and decapitated the sealed
+cork at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups which
+Tabitha had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant was this
+aged wine that it shone within the cups and rendered the sprig of
+scarlet flowers at the bottom of each more distinctly visible than
+when there had been no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume
+wasted itself round the kitchen.
+
+"Drink, Tabitha!" cried Peter. "Blessings on the honest old fellow who
+set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here's to Peter
+Goldthwaite's memory!"
+
+"And good cause have we to remember him," quoth Tabitha as she drank.
+
+How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various
+calamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be
+quaffed at last by two such boon-companions! A portion of the
+happiness of a former age had been kept for them, and was now set free
+in a crowd of rejoicing visions to sport amid the storm and desolation
+of the present time. Until they have finished the bottle we must turn
+our eyes elsewhere.
+
+It so chanced that on this stormy night Mr. John Brown found himself
+ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair by the glowing grate of
+anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good
+sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the misfortunes of others
+happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of his own
+prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his old partner,
+Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries and continual ill-luck, the
+poverty of his dwelling at Mr. Brown's last visit, and Peter's crazed
+and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the window.
+
+"Poor fellow!" thought Mr. John Brown. "Poor crack-brained Peter
+Goldthwaite! For old acquaintance' sake I ought to have taken care
+that he was comfortable this rough winter." These feelings grew so
+powerful that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit
+Peter Goldthwaite immediately.
+
+The strength of the impulse was really singular. Every shriek of the
+blast seemed a summons, or would have seemed so had Mr. Brown been
+accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much
+amazed at such active benevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak,
+muffled his throat and ears in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus
+fortified, bade defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had
+rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just weathering the
+corner by Peter Goldthwaite's house when the hurricane caught him off
+his feet, tossed him face downward into a snow-bank and proceeded to
+bury his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There seemed little
+hope of his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same
+moment his hat was snatched away and whirled aloft into some
+far-distant region whence no tidings have as yet returned.
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a passage through the
+snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered
+onward to Peter's door. There was such a creaking and groaning and
+rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice
+that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He
+therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen.
+His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with
+their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently
+they had just dragged from a cavity or concealed closet on the left
+side of the chimney. By the lamp in the old woman's hand Mr. Brown saw
+that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with
+iron plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle
+in which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants
+of another.
+
+Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the lock.
+
+"Oh, Tabitha," cried he, with tremulous rapture, "how shall I endure
+the effulgence? The gold!--the bright, bright gold! Methinks I can
+remember my last glance at it just as the iron-plated lid fell down.
+And ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret and
+gathering its splendor against this glorious moment. It will flash
+upon us like the noonday sun."
+
+"Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter!" said Tabitha, with somewhat less
+patience than usual. "But, for mercy's sake, do turn the key!"
+
+And with a strong effort of both hands Peter did force the rusty key
+through the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean
+time, had drawn near and thrust his eager visage between those of the
+other two at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze
+illuminated the kitchen.
+
+"What's here?" exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles and holding
+the lamp over the open chest. "Old Peter Goldthwaite's hoard of old
+rags!"
+
+"Pretty much so, Tabby," said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the
+treasure.
+
+Oh what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised
+to scare himself out of his scanty wits withal! Here was the semblance
+of an incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town and build
+every street anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane man would have
+given a solid sixpence for. What, then, in sober earnest, were the
+delusive treasures of the chest? Why, here were old provincial bills
+of credit and treasury notes and bills of land-banks, and all other
+bubbles of the sort, from the first issue--above a century and a half
+ago--down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a thousand pounds were
+intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than they.
+
+"And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite's treasure!" said John
+Brown. "Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself; and when
+the provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per
+cent, he bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my
+grandfather say that old Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very
+house and land to raise cash for his silly project. But the currency
+kept sinking till nobody would take it as a gift, and there was old
+Peter Goldthwaite, like Peter the second, with thousands in his
+strong-box and hardly a coat to his back. He went mad upon the
+strength of it. But never mind, Peter; it is just the sort of capital
+for building castles in the air."
+
+"The house will be down about our ears," cried Tabitha as the wind
+shook it with increasing violence.
+
+"Let it fall," said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself upon
+the chest.
+
+"No, no, my old friend Peter!" said John Brown. "I have house-room for
+you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow
+we will try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house;
+real estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome
+price."
+
+"And I," observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits, "have a
+plan for laying out the cash to great advantage."
+
+"Why, as to that," muttered John Brown to himself, "we must apply to
+the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if
+Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it to his heart's content
+with old Peter Goldthwaite's treasure."
+
+
+
+
+CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL.
+
+
+Passing a summer several years since at Edgartown, on the island of
+Martha's Vineyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of
+tombstones who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of
+Massachusetts in search of professional employment. The speculation
+had turned out so successful that my friend expected to transmute
+slate and marble into silver and gold to the amount of at least a
+thousand dollars during the few months of his sojourn at Nantucket and
+the Vineyard. The secluded life and the simple and primitive spirit
+which still characterizes the inhabitants of those islands, especially
+of Martha's Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer
+remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bustle of the world
+can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet, while every family is
+anxious to erect a memorial to its departed members, the untainted
+breath of Ocean bestows such health and length of days upon the people
+of the isles as would cause a melancholy dearth of business to a
+resident artist in that line. His own monument, recording his decease
+by starvation, would probably be an early specimen of his skill.
+Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an article of imported
+merchandise.
+
+In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown--where the dead
+have lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has
+returned to its original barrenness--in that ancient burial-ground I
+noticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated
+a century back or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers
+and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's-heads, crossbones,
+scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with
+here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward.
+These productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the
+colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London and
+brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this
+lonely isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the
+ordinary style, without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald
+inscriptions. But others--and those far the most impressive both to my
+taste and feelings--were roughly hewn from the gray rocks of the
+island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and
+relatives. On some there were merely the initials of a name; some were
+inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme, in deep letters which the moss
+and wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliterate. These,
+these were graves where loved ones slept. It is an old theme of
+satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental eulogies; but when
+affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor,
+then we may be sure that they copy from the record on their hearts.
+
+My acquaintance the sculptor--he may share that title with Greenough,
+since the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael--had found a
+ready market for all his blank slabs of marble and full occupation in
+lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of
+the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and
+singleness both of heart and mind which, methinks, is more rarely
+found among us Yankees than in any other community of people. In spite
+of his gray head and wrinkled brow, he was quite like a child in all
+matters save what had some reference to his own business; he seemed,
+unless my fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation than
+as people in want of tombstones, and his literary attainments
+evidently comprehended very little either of prose or poetry which had
+not at one time or other been inscribed on slate or marble. His sole
+task and office among the immortal pilgrims of the tomb--the duty for
+which Providence had sent the old man into the world, as it were with
+a chisel in his hand--was to label the dead bodies, lest their names
+should be forgotten at the resurrection. Yet he had not failed, within
+a narrow scope, to gather a few sprigs of earthly, and more than
+earthly, wisdom--the harvest of many a grave. And, lugubrious as his
+calling might appear, he was as cheerful an old soul as health and
+integrity and lack of care could make him, and used to set to work
+upon one sorrowful inscription or another with that sort of spirit
+which impels a man to sing at his labor. On the whole, I found Mr.
+Wigglesworth an entertaining, and often instructive, if not an
+interesting, character; and, partly for the charm of his society, and
+still more because his work has an invariable attraction for "man that
+is born of woman," I was accustomed to spend some hours a day at his
+workshop. The quaintness of his remarks and their not infrequent
+truth--a truth condensed and pointed by the limited sphere of his
+view--gave a raciness to his talk which mere worldliness and general
+cultivation would at once have destroyed.
+
+Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits of the various
+qualities of marble, numerous slabs of which were resting against the
+walls of the shop, or sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly
+without a word on either side while I watched how neatly his chisel
+struck out letter after letter of the names of the Nortons, the
+Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial families of the
+Vineyard. Often with an artist's pride the good old sculptor would
+speak of favorite productions of his skill which were scattered
+throughout the village graveyards of New England. But my chief and
+most instructive amusement was to witness his interviews with his
+customers, who held interminable consultations about the form and
+fashion of the desired monuments, the buried excellence to be
+commemorated, the anguish to be expressed, and finally the lowest
+price in dollars and cents for which a marble transcript of their
+feelings might be obtained. Really, my mind received many fresh ideas
+which perhaps may remain in it even longer than Mr. Wigglesworth's
+hardest marble will retain the deepest strokes of his chisel.
+
+An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had
+been killed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean no less than forty years
+before. It was singular that so strong an impression of early feeling
+should have survived through the changes of her subsequent life, in
+the course of which she had been a wife and a mother, and, so far as I
+could judge, a comfortable and happy woman. Reflecting within myself,
+it appeared to me that this lifelong sorrow--as, in all good faith,
+she deemed it--was one of the most fortunate circumstances of her
+history. It had given an ideality to her mind; it had kept her purer
+and less earthy than she would otherwise have been by drawing a
+portion of her sympathies apart from earth. Amid the throng of
+enjoyments and the pressure of worldly care and all the warm
+materialism of this life she had communed with a vision, and had been
+the better for such intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her
+maturity, and loving him with a far more real affection than she ever
+could have felt for this dream of her girlhood, there had still been
+an imaginative faith to the ocean-buried; so that an ordinary
+character had thus been elevated and refined. Her sighs had been the
+breath of Heaven to her soul. The good lady earnestly desired that the
+proposed monument should be ornamented with a carved border of marine
+plants interwined with twisted sea-shells, such as were probably
+waving over her lover's skeleton or strewn around it in the far depths
+of the Pacific. But, Mr. Wigglesworth's chisel being inadequate to the
+task, she was forced to content herself with a rose hanging its head
+from a broken stem.
+
+After her departure I remarked that the symbol was none of the most
+apt.
+
+"And yet," said my friend the sculptor, embodying in this image the
+thoughts that had been passing through my own mind, "that broken rose
+has shed its sweet smell through forty years of the good woman's
+life."
+
+It was seldom that I could find such pleasant food for contemplation
+as in the above instance. None of the applicants, I think, affected me
+more disagreeably than an old man who came, with his fourth wife
+hanging on his arm, to bespeak gravestones for the three former
+occupants of his marriage-bed. I watched with some anxiety to see
+whether his remembrance of either were more affectionate than of the
+other two, but could discover no symptom of the kind. The three
+monuments were all to be of the same material and form, and each
+decorated in bas-relief with two weeping willows, one of these
+sympathetic trees bending over its fellow, which was to be broken in
+the midst and rest upon a sepulchral urn. This, indeed, was Mr.
+Wigglesworth's standing emblem of conjugal bereavement. I shuddered at
+the gray polygamist who had so utterly lost the holy sense of
+individuality in wedlock that methought he was fain to reckon upon his
+fingers how many women who had once slept by his side were now
+sleeping in their graves. There was even--if I wrong him, it is no
+great matter--a glance sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were
+inclined to drive a thriftier bargain by bespeaking four gravestones
+in a lot.
+
+I was better pleased with a rough old whaling-captain who gave
+directions for a broad marble slab divided into two compartments, one
+of which was to contain an epitaph on his deceased wife and the other
+to be left vacant till death should engrave his own name there. As is
+frequently the case among the whalers of Martha's Vineyard, so much of
+this storm-beaten widower's life had been tossed away on distant seas
+that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent scarce three, and
+those at scattered intervals, beneath his own roof. Thus the wife of
+his youth, though she died in his and her declining age, retained the
+bridal dewdrops fresh around her memory.
+
+My observations gave me the idea, and Mr. Wigglesworth confirmed it,
+that husbands were more faithful in setting up memorials to their dead
+wives than widows to their dead husbands. I was not ill-natured enough
+to fancy that women less than men feel so sure of their own constancy
+as to be willing to give a pledge of it in marble. It is more probably
+the fact that, while men are able to reflect upon their lost
+companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other
+hand, are conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the
+departed whithersoever he has gone. Soul clings to soul, the living
+dust has a sympathy with the dust of the grave; and by the very
+strength of that sympathy the wife of the dead shrinks the more
+sensitively from reminding the world of its existence. The link is
+already strong enough; it needs no visible symbol. And, though a
+shadow walks ever by her side and the touch of a chill hand is on her
+bosom, yet life, and perchance its natural yearnings, may still be
+warm within her and inspire her with new hopes of happiness. Then
+would she mark out the grave the scent of which would be perceptible
+on the pillow of the second bridal? No, but rather level its green
+mound with the surrounding earth, as if, when she dug up again her
+buried heart, the spot had ceased to be a grave.
+
+Yet, in spite of these sentimentalities, I was prodigiously amused by
+an incident of which I had not the good-fortune to be a witness, but
+which Mr. Wigglesworth related with considerable humor. A gentlewoman
+of the town, receiving news of her husband's loss at sea, had bespoken
+a handsome slab of marble, and came daily to watch the progress of my
+friend's chisel. One afternoon, when the good lady and the sculptor
+were in the very midst of the epitaph--which the departed spirit might
+have been greatly comforted to read--who should walk into the workshop
+but the deceased himself, in substance as well as spirit! He had been
+picked up at sea, and stood in no present need of tombstone or
+epitaph.
+
+"And how," inquired I, "did his wife bear the shock of joyful
+surprise?"
+
+"Why," said the old man, deepening the grin of a death's-head on which
+his chisel was just then employed, "I really felt for the poor woman;
+it was one of my best pieces of marble--and to be thrown away on a
+living man!"
+
+A comely woman with a pretty rosebud of a daughter came to select a
+gravestone for a twin-daughter, who had died a month before. I was
+impressed with the different nature of their feelings for the dead.
+The mother was calm and woefully resigned, fully conscious of her
+loss, as of a treasure which she had not always possessed, and
+therefore had been aware that it might be taken from her; but the
+daughter evidently had no real knowledge of what Death's doings were.
+Her thoughts knew, but not her heart. It seemed to me that by the
+print and pressure which the dead sister had left upon the survivor's
+spirit her feelings were almost the same as if she still stood side by
+side and arm in arm with the departed, looking at the slabs of marble,
+and once or twice she glanced around with a sunny smile, which, as its
+sister-smile had faded for ever, soon grew confusedly overshadowed.
+Perchance her consciousness was truer than her reflection; perchance
+her dead sister was a closer companion than in life.
+
+The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth
+about a suitable epitaph, and finally chose an ordinary verse of
+ill-matched rhymes which had already been inscribed upon innumerable
+tombstones. But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses,
+we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds
+a profound and individual purport in what seems so vague and
+inexpressive unless interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew,
+though the selfsame words may have served for a thousand graves.
+
+"And yet," said I afterward to Mr. Wigglesworth, "they might have made
+a better choice than this. While you were discussing the subject I was
+struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the
+lips of both mother and daughter. One of these would have formed an
+inscription equally original and appropriate."
+
+"No, no!" replied the sculptor, shaking his head; "there is a good
+deal of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry,
+and so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones.
+And somehow they seem to stretch to suit a great grief and shrink to
+fit a small one."
+
+It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took
+place between Mr. Wigglesworth and his customers. A shrewd gentlewoman
+who kept a tavern in the town was anxious to obtain two or three
+gravestones for the deceased members of her family, and to pay for
+these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor to board. Hereupon a
+fantasy arose in my mind of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting down to
+dinner at a broad, flat tombstone carving one of his own plump little
+marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of crossbones and drinking out of a
+hollow death's-head or perhaps a lachrymatory vase or sepulchral urn,
+while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly
+banquet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man he
+laughed heartily and pronounced my humor to be of the right sort.
+
+"I have lived at such a table all my days," said he, "and eaten no
+small quantity of slate and marble."
+
+"Hard fare," rejoined I, smiling, "but you seemed to have found it
+excellent of digestion, too."
+
+A man of fifty or thereabouts with a harsh, unpleasant countenance
+ordered a stone for the grave of his bitter enemy, with whom he had
+waged warfare half a lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The
+secret of this phenomenon was that hatred had become the sustenance
+and enjoyment of the poor wretch's soul; it had supplied the place of
+all kindly affections; it had been really a bond of sympathy between
+himself and the man who shared the passion; and when its object died,
+the unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead. He expressed a
+purpose of being buried side by side with his enemy.
+
+"I doubt whether their dust will mingle," remarked the old sculptor to
+me; for often there was an earthliness in his conceptions.
+
+"Oh yes," replied I, who had mused long upon the incident; "and when
+they rise again, these bitter foes may find themselves dear friends.
+Methinks what they mistook for hatred was but love under a mask."
+
+A gentleman of antiquarian propensities provided a memorial for an
+Indian of Chabbiquidick--one of the few of untainted blood remaining
+in that region, and said to be a hereditary chieftain descended from
+the sachem who welcomed Governor Mayhew to the Vineyard. Mr.
+Wiggles-worth exerted his best skill to carve a broken bow and
+scattered sheaf of arrows in memory of the hunters and warriors whose
+race was ended here, but he likewise sculptured a cherub, to denote
+that the poor Indian had shared the Christian's hope of immortality.
+
+"Why," observed I, taking a perverse view of the winged boy and the
+bow and arrows, "it looks more like Cupid's tomb than an Indian
+chief's."
+
+"You talk nonsense," said the sculptor, with the offended pride of
+art. He then added with his usual good-nature, "How can Cupid die when
+there are such pretty maidens in the Vineyard?"
+
+"Very true," answered I; and for the rest of the day I thought of
+other matters than tombstones.
+
+At our next meeting I found him chiselling an open book upon a marble
+headstone, and concluded that it was meant to express the erudition of
+some black-letter clergyman of the Cotton Mather school. It turned
+out, however, to be emblematical of the scriptural knowledge of an old
+woman who had never read anything but her Bible, and the monument was
+a tribute to her piety and good works from the orthodox church of
+which she had been a member. In strange contrast with this Christian
+woman's memorial was that of an infidel whose gravestone, by his own
+direction, bore an avowal of his belief that the spirit within him
+would be extinguished like a flame, and that the nothingness whence he
+sprang would receive him again.
+
+Mr. Wigglesworth consulted me as to the propriety of enabling a dead
+man's dust to utter this dreadful creed.
+
+"If I thought," said he, "that a single mortal would read the
+inscription without a shudder, my chisel should never cut a letter of
+it. But when the grave speaks such falsehoods, the soul of man will
+know the truth by its own horror."
+
+"So it will," said I, struck by the idea. "The poor infidel may strive
+to preach blasphemies from his grave, but it will be only another
+method of impressing the soul with a consciousness of immortality."
+
+There was an old man by the name of Norton, noted throughout the
+island for his great wealth, which he had accumulated by the exercise
+of strong and shrewd faculties combined with a most penurious
+disposition. This wretched miser, conscious that he had not a friend
+to be mindful of him in his grave, had himself taken the needful
+precautions for posthumous remembrance by bespeaking an immense slab
+of white marble with a long epitaph in raised letters, the whole to be
+as magnificent as Mr. Wigglesworth's skill could make it. There was
+something very characteristic in this contrivance to have his money's
+worth even from his own tombstone, which, indeed, afforded him more
+enjoyment in the few months that he lived thereafter than it probably
+will in a whole century, now that it is laid over his bones.
+
+This incident reminds me of a young girl--a pale, slender, feeble
+creature most unlike the other rosy and healthful damsels of the
+Vineyard, amid whose brightness she was fading away. Day after day did
+the poor maiden come to the sculptor's shop and pass from one piece of
+marble to another, till at last she pencilled her name upon a slender
+slab which, I think, was of a more spotless white than all the rest. I
+saw her no more, but soon afterward found Mr. Wigglesworth cutting her
+virgin-name into the stone which she had chosen.
+
+"She is dead, poor girl!" said he, interrupting the tune which he was
+whistling, "and she chose a good piece of stuff for her headstone.
+Now, which of these slabs would you like best to see your own name
+upon?"
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, my good Mr. Wigglesworth," replied I,
+after a moment's pause, for the abruptness of the question had
+somewhat startled me--"to be quite sincere with you, I care little or
+nothing about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to
+scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the
+dust that once was human. The weight of these heavy marbles, though
+unfelt by the dead corpse or the enfranchised soul, presses drearily
+upon the spirit of the survivor and causes him to connect the idea of
+death with the dungeon-like imprisonment of the tomb, instead of with
+the freedom of the skies. Every gravestone that you ever made is the
+visible symbol of a mistaken system. Our thoughts should soar upward
+with the butterfly, not linger with the exuviae that confined him. In
+truth and reason, neither those whom we call the living, and still
+less the departed, have anything to do with the grave."
+
+"I never heard anything so heathenish," said Mr. Wigglesworth,
+perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his
+notions and feelings and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his
+whole life's labor. "Would you forget your dead friends the moment
+they are under the sod?"
+
+"They are not under the sod," I rejoined; "then why should I mark the
+spot where there is no treasure hidden? Forget them? No; but, to
+remember them aright, I would forget what they have cast off. And to
+gain the truer conception of death I would forget the grave."
+
+But still the good old sculptor murmured, and stumbled, as it were,
+over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life. Whether he
+were right or wrong, I had grown the wiser from our companionship and
+from my observations of nature and character as displayed by those who
+came, with their old griefs or their new ones, to get them recorded
+upon his slabs of marble. And yet with my gain of wisdom I had
+likewise gained perplexity; for there was a strange doubt in my mind
+whether the dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and regrets, have
+not as much real comfort in them--leaving religious influences out of
+the question--as what we term life's joys.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHAKER BRIDAL.
+
+
+One day, in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty
+years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there
+was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect. Individuals
+had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury,
+Harvard and Alfred, and from all the other localities where this
+strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by
+their systematic industry. An elder was likewise there who had made a
+pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in
+Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted
+Mother Ann. He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables,
+had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred
+dance every step of which is believed to alienate the enthusiast from
+earth and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss. His brethren
+of the North had now courteously invited him to be present on an
+occasion when the concurrence of every eminent member of their
+community was peculiarly desirable.
+
+The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair, not only
+hoary-headed and infirm with age, but worn down by a lingering disease
+which it was evident would very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to
+other hands. At his footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the
+Shaker garb.
+
+"My brethren," said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders, feebly
+exerting himself to utter these few words, "here are the son and
+daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about
+to lighten my weary shoulders. Read their faces, I pray you, and say
+whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice
+aright."
+
+Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most
+scrutinizing gaze. The man--whose name was Adam Colburn--had a face
+sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and
+traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely
+reached middle age. There was something severe in his aspect and a
+rigidity throughout his person--characteristics that caused him
+generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he
+had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson,
+was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost
+invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance
+which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.
+
+"This pair are still in the summer of their years," observed the elder
+from Harvard, a shrewd old man. "I would like better to see the
+hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be
+exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which
+have heretofore subsisted between them."
+
+"Nay, brother," said the elder from Canterbury; "the hoar-frost and
+the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha,
+even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they
+are yet green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable
+Father's purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved
+one another as the world's people love? Are there not many brethren
+and sisters among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet,
+adopting our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual
+affection?"
+
+Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it
+inexpedient that they should now preside together over a Shaker
+village, it was certainly most singular that such should be the final
+result of many warm and tender hopes. Children of neighboring
+families, their affection was older even than their school-days; it
+seemed an innate principle interfused among all their sentiments and
+feelings, and not so much a distinct remembrance as connected with
+their whole volume of remembrances. But just as they reached a proper
+age for their union misfortunes had fallen heavily on both and made it
+necessary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare
+subsistence. Even under these circumstances Martha Pierson would
+probably have consented to unite her fate with Adam Colburn's, and,
+secure of the bliss of mutual love, would patiently have awaited the
+less important gifts of Fortune. But Adam, being of a calm and
+cautious character, was loth to relinquish the advantages which a
+single man possesses for raising himself in the world. Year after
+year, therefore, their marriage had been deferred.
+
+Adam Colburn had followed many vocations, had travelled far and seen
+much of the world and of life. Martha had earned her bread sometimes
+as a sempstress, sometimes as help to a farmer's wife, sometimes as
+schoolmistress of the village children, sometimes as a nurse or
+watcher of the sick, thus acquiring a varied experience the ultimate
+use of which she little anticipated. But nothing had gone prosperously
+with either of the lovers; at no subsequent moment would matrimony
+have been so prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the
+opening bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still, they had held
+fast their mutual faith. Martha might have been the wife of a man who
+sat among the senators of his native State, and Adam could have won
+the hand, as he had unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and
+comely widow. But neither of them desired good-fortune save to share
+it with the other.
+
+At length that calm despair which occurs only in a strong and somewhat
+stubborn character and yields to no second spring of hope settled down
+on the spirit of Adam Colburn. He sought an interview with Martha and
+proposed that they should join the Society of Shakers. The converts of
+this sect are oftener driven within its hospitable gates by worldly
+misfortune than drawn thither by fanaticism, and are received without
+inquisition as to their motives. Martha, faithful still, had placed
+her hand in that of her lover and accompanied him to the Shaker
+village. Here the natural capacity of each, cultivated and
+strengthened by the difficulties of their previous lives, had soon
+gained them an important rank in the society, whose members are
+generally below the ordinary standard of intelligence. Their faith and
+feelings had in some degree become assimilated to those of their
+fellow-worshippers. Adam Colburn gradually acquired reputation not
+only in the management of the temporal affairs of the society, but as
+a clear and efficient preacher of their doctrines. Martha was not less
+distinguished in the duties proper to her sex. Finally, when the
+infirmities of Father Ephraim had admonished him to seek a successor
+in his patriarchal office, he thought of Adam and Martha, and proposed
+to renew in their persons the primitive form of Shaker government as
+established by Mother Ann. They were to be the father and mother of
+the village. The simple ceremony which would constitute them such was
+now to be performed.
+
+"Son Adam and daughter Martha," said the venerable Father Ephraim,
+fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, "if ye can conscientiously
+undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your
+fitness."
+
+"Father," replied Adam, speaking with the calmness of his character,
+"I came to your village a disappointed man, weary of the world, worn
+out with continual trouble, seeking only a security against evil
+fortune, as I had no hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success
+were almost dead within me. I came hither as a man might come to a
+tomb willing to lie down in its gloom and coldness for the sake of its
+peace and quiet. There was but one earthly affection in my breast, and
+it had grown calmer since my youth; so that I was satisfied to bring
+Martha to be my sister in our new abode. We are brother and sister,
+nor would I have it otherwise. And in this peaceful village I have
+found all that I hope for--all that I desire. I will strive with my
+best strength for the spiritual and temporal good of our community. My
+conscience is not doubtful in this matter. I am ready to receive the
+trust."
+
+"Thou hast spoken well, son Adam," said the father. "God will bless
+thee in the office which I am about to resign."
+
+"But our sister," observed the elder from Harvard. "Hath she not
+likewise a gift to declare her sentiments?"
+
+Martha started and moved her lips as if she would have made a formal
+reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old
+recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and
+womanhood, might have gushed from her heart in words that it would
+have been profanation to utter there.
+
+"Adam has spoken," said she, hurriedly; "his sentiments are likewise
+mine."
+
+But while speaking these few words Martha grew so pale that she looked
+fitter to be laid in her coffin than to stand in the presence of
+Father Ephraim and the elders; she shuddered, also, as if there were
+something awful or horrible in her situation and destiny. It required,
+indeed, a more than feminine strength of nerve to sustain the fixed
+observance of men so exalted and famous throughout the sect as these
+were. They had overcome their natural sympathy with human frailties
+and affections. One, when he joined the society, had brought with him
+his wife and children, but never from that hour had spoken a fond word
+to the former or taken his best-loved child upon his knee. Another,
+whose family refused to follow him, had been enabled--such was his
+gift of holy fortitude--to leave them to the mercy of the world. The
+youngest of the elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from
+infancy in a Shaker village, and was said never to have clasped a
+woman's hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie
+than the cold fraternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the
+most awful character of all. In his youth he had been a dissolute
+libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken
+of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered at
+the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to
+sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could be
+purified from earthly passions.
+
+However that might be, poor Martha had a woman's heart, and a tender
+one, and it quailed within her as she looked round at those strange
+old men, and from them to the calm features of Adam Colburn. But,
+perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath
+and again spoke.
+
+"With what strength is left me by my many troubles," said she, "I am
+ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it."
+
+"My children, join your hands," said Father Ephraim.
+
+They did so. The elders stood up around, and the father feebly raised
+himself to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great
+chair.
+
+"I have bidden you to join your hands," said he, "not in earthly
+affection, for ye have cast off its chains for ever, but as brother
+and sister in spiritual love and helpers of one another in your
+allotted task. Teach unto others the faith which ye have received.
+Open wide your gates--I deliver you the keys thereof--open them wide
+to all who will give up the iniquities of the world and come hither to
+lead lives of purity and peace. Receive the weary ones who have known
+the vanity of earth; receive the little children, that they may never
+learn that miserable lesson. And a blessing be upon your labors; so
+that the time may hasten on when the mission of Mother Ann shall have
+wrought its full effect, when children shall no more be born and die,
+and the last survivor of mortal race--some old and weary man like
+me--shall see the sun go down nevermore to rise on a world of sin and
+sorrow."
+
+The aged father sank back exhausted, and the surrounding elders
+deemed, with good reason, that the hour was come when the new heads of
+the village must enter on their patriarchal duties. In their attention
+to Father Ephraim their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew
+paler and paler, unnoticed even by Adam Colburn. He, indeed, had
+withdrawn his hand from hers and folded his arms with a sense of
+satisfied ambition. But paler and paler grew Martha by his side, till,
+like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the feet of her
+early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could
+endure the weight of its desolate agony no longer.
+
+
+
+
+NIGHT-SKETCHES,
+
+BENEATH AN UMBRELLA.
+
+
+Pleasant is a rainy winter's day within-doors. The best study for such
+a day--or the best amusement: call it what you will--is a book of
+travels describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is
+mistily presented through the windows. I have experienced that Fancy
+is then most successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors
+to the objects which the author has spread upon his page, and that his
+words become magic spells to summon up a thousand varied pictures.
+Strange landscapes glimmer through the familiar walls of the room, and
+outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred
+precincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough
+to contain the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its
+parched sands tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels
+patiently journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be
+not lofty, yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it
+till their summits shine far above the clouds of the middle
+atmosphere. And with my humble means--a wealth that is not taxable--I
+can transport hither the magnificent merchandise of an Oriental
+bazaar, and call a crowd of purchasers from distant countries to pay a
+fair profit for the precious articles which are displayed on all
+sides. True it is, however, that amid the bustle of traffic, or
+whatever else may seem to be going on around me, the raindrops will
+occasionally be heard to patter against my window-panes, which look
+forth upon one of the quietest streets in a New England town. After a
+time, too, the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my
+bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality
+depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock
+shall strike bedtime to satisfy myself that the world is not entirely
+made up of such shadowy materials as have busied me throughout the
+day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies that the things
+without him will seem as unreal as those within.
+
+When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly
+buttoning my shaggy overcoat and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome
+of which immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible
+raindrops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and
+cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and
+chill discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful
+auguries innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry
+shame upon me, I should turn back within-doors, resume my elbow-chair,
+my slippers and my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as
+the day has been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering
+reluctance, no doubt, has quelled for a moment the adventurous spirit
+of many a traveller when his feet, which were destined to measure the
+earth around, were leaving their last tracks in the home-paths.
+
+In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I
+look upward and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but
+only a black, impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its
+lights were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if
+Nature were dead and the world had put on black and the clouds were
+weeping for her. With their tears upon my cheek I turn my eyes
+earthward, but find little consolation here below. A lamp is burning
+dimly at the distant corner, and throws just enough of light along the
+street to show, and exaggerate by so faintly showing, the perils and
+difficulties which beset my path. Yonder dingily-white remnant of a
+huge snowbank, which will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days
+of March, over or through that wintry waste must I stride onward.
+Beyond lies a certain Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and
+liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep--in a word, of unknown
+bottom--on which the lamplight does not even glimmer, but which I have
+occasionally watched in the gradual growth of its horrors from morn
+till nightfall. Should I flounder into its depths, farewell to upper
+earth! And hark! how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream the
+turbulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam of the
+lamp, but elsewhere brawls noisily through the densest gloom! Oh,
+should I be swept away in fording that impetuous and unclean torrent,
+the coroner will have a job with an unfortunate gentleman who would
+fain end his troubles anywhere but in a mud-puddle.
+
+Pshaw! I will linger not another instant at arm's-length from these
+dim terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable the longer I delay
+to grapple with them. Now for the onset, and, lo! with little damage
+save a dash of rain in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up
+the pantaloons and the left boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at
+the corner of the street. The lamp throws down a circle of red light
+around me, and twinkling onward from corner to corner I discern other
+beacons, marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a
+lonesome and dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to the
+storm with their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces
+a spattering gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin
+spouts! The puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from
+various quarters at once. I have often observed that this corner is a
+haunt and loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do
+upon the deep dashing ships against our iron-bound shores, nor in the
+forest tearing up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their
+vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief.
+See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is passing
+just within the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her
+umbrella and turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of
+her cloak across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable
+liberties with the lower part of her attire. Happily, the good dame is
+no gossamer, but a figure of rotundity and fleshly substance; else
+would these aerial tormentors whirl her aloft like a witch upon a
+broomstick, and set her down, doubtless, in the filthiest kennel
+hereabout.
+
+From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town.
+Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great
+victory has been won either on the battlefield or at the polls. Two
+rows of shops with windows down nearly to the ground cast a glow from
+side to side, while the black night hangs overhead like a canopy, and
+thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks
+gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the
+sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the
+scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around
+their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till
+they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can
+be dispelled only by radiance from above.
+
+And, after all, it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the
+wanderers in it. Here comes one who has so long been familiar with
+tempestuous weather that he takes the bluster of the storm for a
+friendly greeting, as if it should say, "How fare ye, brother?" He is
+a retired sea-captain wrapped in some nameless garment of the
+pea-jacket order, and is now laying his course toward the
+marine-insurance office, there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck
+with a crew of old seadogs like himself. The blast will put in its
+word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them. Next
+I meet an unhappy slipshod gentleman with a cloak flung hastily over
+his shoulders, running a race with boisterous winds and striving to
+glide between the drops of rain. Some domestic emergency or other has
+blown this miserable man from his warm fireside in quest of a doctor.
+See that little vagabond! How carelessly he has taken his stand right
+underneath a spout while staring at some object of curiosity in a
+shop-window! Surely the rain is his native element; he must have
+fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed to do.
+
+Here is a picture, and a pretty one--a young man and a girl, both
+enveloped in cloaks and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a
+cotton umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his
+dancing-pumps, and they are on their way no doubt, to some
+cotillon-party or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments
+included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward
+by a vision of festal splendor. But ah! a most lamentable disaster!
+Bewildered by the red, blue and yellow meteors in an apothecary's
+window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are
+precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two
+streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a
+looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be,
+I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your
+fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye
+touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph
+and a river-deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths of the
+dark pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, disconsolate, abashed, but
+with love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a
+test which proves too strong for many. Faithful though over head and
+ears in trouble!
+
+Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied
+aspect of mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the
+lighted windows or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that
+mine is altogether a chameleon spirit with no hue of its own. Now I
+pass into a more retired street where the dwellings of wealth and
+poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly-contrasted
+pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder
+casement I discern a family circle--the grandmother, the parents and
+the children--all flickering, shadow-like, in the glow of a
+wood-fire.--Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against
+the window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside.--Surely
+my fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my
+bosom night and storm and solitude instead of wife and children.
+Peace, murmurer! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the
+hearth, though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images.
+
+Well, here is still a brighter scene--a stately mansion illuminated
+for a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every
+room, and sunny landscapes hanging round the walls. See! a coach has
+stopped, whence emerges a slender beauty who, canopied by two
+umbrellas, glides within the portal and vanishes amid lightsome
+thrills of music. Will she ever feel the night-wind and the rain?
+Perhaps--perhaps! And will Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud
+mansion? As surely as the dancers will be gay within its halls
+to-night. Such thoughts sadden yet satisfy my heart, for they teach me
+that the poor man in this mean, weatherbeaten hovel, without a fire to
+cheer him, may call the rich his brother--brethren by Sorrow, who must
+be an inmate of both their households; brethren by Death, who will
+lead them both to other homes.
+
+Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the
+utmost limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with
+the darkness like the farthest star that stands sentinel on the
+borders of uncreated space. It is strange what sensations of sublimity
+may spring from a very humble source. Such are suggested by this
+hollow roar of a subterranean cataract where the mighty stream of a
+kennel precipitates itself beneath an iron grate and is seen no more
+on earth. Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will
+magnify it till you start and smile at the illusion. And now another
+sound--the rumbling of wheels as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls
+heavily off the pavements and splashes through the mud and water of
+the road. All night long the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro
+between drowsy watch and troubled sleep, and will dream of their own
+quiet beds and awake to find themselves still jolting onward. Happier
+my lot, who will straightway hie me to my familiar room and toast
+myself comfortably before the fire, musing and fitfully dozing and
+fancying a strangeness in such sights as all may see. But first let me
+gaze at this solitary figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern
+which throws the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground
+about him. He passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will
+not follow him.
+
+This figure shall supply me with a moral wherewith, for lack of a more
+appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the
+dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the
+fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again.
+And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we
+bear the lamp of Faith enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely
+lead us home to that heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.
+
+
+
+
+ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS.
+
+
+At noon of an autumnal day more than two centuries ago the English
+colors were displayed by the standard bearer of the Salem train-band,
+which had mustered for martial exercise under the orders of John
+Endicott. It was a period when the religious exiles were accustomed
+often to buckle on their armor and practise the handling of their
+weapons of war. Since the first settlement of New England its
+prospects had never been so dismal. The dissensions between Charles I.
+and his subjects were then, and for several years afterward, confined
+to the floor of Parliament. The measures of the king and ministry were
+rendered more tyrannically violent by an opposition which had not yet
+acquired sufficient confidence in its own strength to resist royal
+injustice with the sword. The bigoted and haughty primate Laud,
+archbishop of Canterbury, controlled the religious affairs of the
+realm, and was consequently invested with powers which might have
+wrought the utter ruin of the two Puritan colonies, Plymouth and
+Massachusetts. There is evidence on record that our forefathers
+perceived their danger, but were resolved that their infant country
+should not fall without a struggle, even beneath the giant strength of
+the king's right arm.
+
+Such was the aspect of the times when the folds of the English banner
+with the red cross in its field were flung out over a company of
+Puritans. Their leader, the famous Endicott, was a man of stern and
+resolute countenance, the effect of which was heightened by a grizzled
+beard that swept the upper portion of his breastplate. This piece of
+armor was so highly polished that the whole surrounding scene had its
+image in the glittering steel. The central object in the mirrored
+picture was an edifice of humble architecture with neither steeple nor
+bell to proclaim it--what, nevertheless, it was--the house of prayer.
+A token of the perils of the wilderness was seen in the grim head of a
+wolf which had just been slain within the precincts of the town, and,
+according to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed on
+the porch of the meeting-house. The blood was still plashing on the
+doorstep. There happened to be visible at the same noontide hour so
+many other characteristics of the times and manners of the Puritans
+that we must endeavor to represent them in a sketch, though far less
+vividly than they were reflected in the polished breastplate of John
+Endicott.
+
+In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important engine
+of Puritanic authority the whipping-post, with the soil around it well
+trodden by the feet of evil-doers who had there been disciplined. At
+one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory and at the other the
+stocks, and, by a singular good fortune for our sketch, the head of an
+Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely encased in the
+former machine, while a fellow-criminal who had boisterously quaffed a
+health to the king was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by
+side on the meeting-house steps stood a male and a female figure. The
+man was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bearing
+on his breast this label, "A WANTON GOSPELLER," which betokened that
+he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the
+infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect
+showed no lack of zeal to maintain his heterodoxies even at the stake.
+The woman wore a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribution
+for having wagged that unruly member against the elders of the church,
+and her countenance and gestures gave much cause to apprehend that the
+moment the stick should be removed a repetition of the offence would
+demand new ingenuity in chastising it.
+
+The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced to undergo their
+various modes of ignominy for the space of one hour at noonday. But
+among the crowd were several whose punishment would be lifelong--some
+whose ears had been cropped like those of puppy-dogs, others whose
+cheeks had been branded with the initials of their misdemeanors; one
+with his nostrils slit and seared, and another with a halter about his
+neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off or to conceal beneath
+his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously tempted to affix
+the other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough. There was
+likewise a young woman with no mean share of beauty whose doom it was
+to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown in the eyes of all the
+world and her own children. And even her own children knew what that
+initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate
+creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth with golden
+thread and the nicest art of needlework; so that the capital A might
+have been thought to mean "Admirable," or anything rather than
+"Adulteress."
+
+Let not the reader argue from any of these evidences of iniquity that
+the times of the Puritans were more vicious than our own, when as we
+pass along the very street of this sketch we discern no badge of
+infamy on man or woman. It was the policy of our ancestors to search
+out even the most secret sins and expose them to shame, without fear
+or favor, in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were such the
+custom now, perchance we might find materials for a no less piquant
+sketch than the above.
+
+Except the malefactors whom we have described and the diseased or
+infirm persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen
+years and sixty were seen in the ranks of the train-band. A few
+stately savages in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian
+stood gazing at the spectacle. Their flint-headed arrows were but
+childish weapons, compared with the matchlocks of the Puritans, and
+would have rattled harmlessly against the steel caps and hammered iron
+breastplates which enclosed each soldier in an individual fortress.
+The valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy
+followers, and prepared to renew the martial toils of the day.
+
+"Come, my stout hearts!" quoth he, drawing his sword. "Let us show
+these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might.
+Well for them if they put us not to prove it in earnest!"
+
+The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and each man drew
+the heavy butt of his matchlock close to his left foot, thus awaiting
+the orders of the captain. But as Endicott glanced right and left
+along the front he discovered a personage at some little distance with
+whom it behoved him to hold a parley. It was an elderly gentleman
+wearing a black cloak and band and a high-crowned hat beneath which
+was a velvet skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan
+minister. This reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been
+recently cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as if he had
+been travelling on foot through the swamps of the wilderness. His
+aspect was perfectly that of a pilgrim, heightened also by an
+apostolic dignity. Just as Endicott perceived him he laid aside his
+staff and stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain which gushed into
+the sunshine about a score of yards from the corner of the
+meeting-house. But ere the good man drank he turned his face
+heavenward in thankfulness, and then, holding back his gray beard with
+one hand, he scooped up his simple draught in the hollow of the other.
+
+"What ho, good Mr. Williams!" shouted Endicott. "You are welcome back
+again to our town of peace. How does our worthy Governor Winthrop? And
+what news from Boston?"
+
+"The governor hath his health, worshipful sir," answered Roger
+Williams, now resuming his staff and drawing near. "And, for the news,
+here is a letter which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, His
+Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it contains tidings of much
+import, for a ship arrived yesterday from England."
+
+Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course known to all the
+spectators, had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under
+the banner of his company, and put the governor's epistle into his
+hand. The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop's coat-of-arms.
+Endicott hastily unclosed the letter and began to read, while, as his
+eye passed down the page, a wrathful change came over his manly
+countenance. The blood glowed through it till it seemed to be kindling
+with an internal heat, nor was it unnatural to suppose that his
+breastplate would likewise become red hot with the angry fire of the
+bosom which it covered. Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the
+letter fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag
+above his head.
+
+"Black tidings these, Mr. Williams," said he; "blacker never came to
+New England. Doubtless you know their purport?"
+
+"Yea, truly," replied Roger Williams, "for the governor consulted
+respecting this matter with my brethren in the ministry at Boston, and
+my opinion was likewise asked. And His Excellency entreats you by me
+that the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be
+stirred up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the king and the
+archbishop a handle against us."
+
+"The governor is a wise man--a wise man, and a meek and moderate,"
+said Endicott, setting his teeth grimly. "Nevertheless, I must do
+according to my own best judgment. There is neither man, woman nor
+child in New England but has a concern as dear as life in these
+tidings; and if John Endicott's voice be loud enough, man, woman and
+child shall hear them.--Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square.--Ho,
+good people! Here are news for one and all of you."
+
+The soldiers closed in around their captain, and he and Roger Williams
+stood together under the banner of the red cross, while the women and
+the aged men pressed forward and the mothers held up their children to
+look Endicott in the face. A few taps of the drum gave signal for
+silence and attention.
+
+"Fellow-soldiers, fellow-exiles," began Endicott, speaking under
+strong excitement, yet powerfully restraining it, "wherefore did ye
+leave your native country? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green
+and fertile fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls,
+where we were born and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie
+buried? Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in
+a wilderness? A howling wilderness it is. The wolf and the bear meet
+us within halloo of our dwellings. The savage lieth in wait for us in
+the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of the trees break
+our ploughshares when we would till the earth. Our children cry for
+bread, and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them.
+Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil
+and wintry sky? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights? Was
+it not for liberty to worship God according to our conscience?"
+
+"Call you this liberty of conscience?" interrupted a voice on the
+steps of the meeting-house.
+
+It was the wanton gospeller. A sad and quiet smile flitted across the
+mild visage of Roger Williams, but Endicott, in the excitement of the
+moment, shook his sword wrathfully at the culprit--an ominous gesture
+from a man like him.
+
+"What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?" cried he. "I said
+liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him. Break
+not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this
+time to-morrow.--Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed
+rhapsodist. As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have
+come to a land whereof the Old World hath scarcely heard, that we
+might make a new world unto ourselves and painfully seek a path from
+hence to heaven. But what think ye now? This son of a Scotch
+tyrant--this grandson of a papistical and adulterous Scotch woman
+whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always save an
+anointed head from the block--"
+
+"Nay, brother, nay," interposed Mr. Williams; "thy words are not meet
+for a secret chamber, far less for a public street."
+
+"Hold thy peace, Roger Williams!" answered Endicott, imperiously. "My
+spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand.--I tell ye,
+fellow-exiles, that Charles of England and Laud, our bitterest
+persecutor, arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even
+hither. They are taking counsel, saith this letter, to send over a
+governor-general in whose breast shall be deposited all the law and
+equity of the land. They are minded, also, to establish the idolatrous
+forms of English episcopacy; so that when Laud shall kiss the pope's
+toe as cardinal of Rome he may deliver New England, bound hand and
+foot, into the power of his master."
+
+A deep groan from the auditors--a sound of wrath as well as fear and
+sorrow--responded to this intelligence.
+
+"Look ye to it, brethren," resumed Endicott, with increasing energy.
+"If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall briefly
+behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded,
+and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round it at
+noon-day. We shall hear the sacring-bell and the voices of the Romish
+priests saying the mass. But think ye, Christian men, that these
+abominations may be suffered without a sword drawn, without a shot
+fired, without blood spilt--yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit? No!
+Be ye strong of hand and stout of heart. Here we stand on our own
+soil, which we have bought with our goods, which we have won with our
+swords, which we have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with
+the sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our prayers to
+the God that brought us hither! Who shall enslave us here? What have
+we to do with this mitred prelate--with this crowned king? What have
+we to do with England?"
+
+Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now
+full of his own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the
+standard-bearer, who stood close behind him.
+
+"Officer, lower your banner," said he.
+
+The officer obeyed, and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it
+through the cloth and with his left hand rent the red cross completely
+out of the banner. He then waved the tattered ensign above his head.
+
+"Sacrilegious wretch!" cried the high-churchman in the pillory, unable
+longer to restrain himself; "thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy
+religion."
+
+"Treason! treason!" roared the royalist in the stocks. "He hath
+defaced the king's banner!"
+
+"Before God and man I will avouch the deed," answered Endicott.--"Beat
+a flourish, drummer--shout, soldiers and people--in honor of the
+ensign of New England. Neither pope nor tyrant hath part in it now."
+
+With a cry of triumph the people gave their sanction to one of the
+boldest exploits which our history records. And for ever honored be
+the name of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and
+recognize in the rending of the red cross from New England's banner
+the first omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated after
+the bones of the stern Puritan had lain more than a century in the
+dust.
+
+
+
+
+THE LILY'S QUEST.
+
+AN APOLOGUE.
+
+
+Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the
+form of an antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to
+all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
+pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
+friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there
+they would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of
+pathos which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and
+fiction and permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and
+romance; there, in short--for why should we shape out the vague
+sunshine of their hopes?--there all pure delights were to cluster like
+roses among the pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and
+spontaneously.
+
+So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay
+set out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
+together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
+were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
+for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
+Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her "Lily" because her form
+was as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in
+hand down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of
+Lilias Fay's paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged
+creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness
+where the deep shadows fell.
+
+But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
+a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
+made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
+drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them,
+the lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their
+hearts that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely
+unsuited to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay,
+an old man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under
+the burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
+absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast
+between the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They
+looked as if moulded of heaven's sunshine and he of earth's gloomiest
+shade; they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand
+through life, while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all
+the woeful influences which life could fling upon them.
+
+But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
+the gentle Lily, and she paused.
+
+"What sweeter place shall we find than this?" said she. "Why should we
+seek farther for the site of our temple?"
+
+It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by
+any very prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a
+hill, with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a
+church-spire in another. There were vistas and pathways leading onward
+and onward into the green woodlands and vanishing away in the
+glimmering shade. The temple, if erected here, would look toward the
+west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams
+out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and few of their
+anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.
+
+"Yes," said Adam Forrester; "we might seek all day and find no
+lovelier spot. We will build our temple here."
+
+But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site
+which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and
+frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to
+blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal
+figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered
+stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as
+young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now
+relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.
+
+"Not here," cried old Walter Gascoigne. "Here, long ago, other mortals
+built their temple of happiness; seek another site for yours."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Lilias Fay. "Have any ever planned such a temple
+save ourselves?"
+
+"Poor child!" said her gloomy kinsman. "In one shape or other every
+mortal has dreamed your dream." Then he told the lovers, how--not,
+indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling--had once stood there, and
+that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever
+at the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.
+
+Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake
+of sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the
+history of almost every household, and yet his hearers felt as if no
+sunshine ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep
+a stain--or, at least, that no joyous temple should be built there.
+
+"This is very sad," said the Lily, sighing.
+
+"Well, there are lovelier spots than this," said Adam Forrester,
+soothingly--"spots which sorrow has not blighted."
+
+So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them,
+looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot
+and was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
+rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the
+midst of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual
+voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side
+with gray precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had
+not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices
+and wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief
+joy of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the
+presence of a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble
+merrily and disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow,
+and throw the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.
+
+"Here, here is the spot!" cried the two lovers, with one voice, as
+they reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. "This glen
+was made on purpose for our temple."
+
+"And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears," said
+Lilias Fay.
+
+"And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime," said Adam
+Forrester.
+
+"Ye must build no temple here," murmured their dismal companion.
+
+And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
+they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
+symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
+And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
+hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
+this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
+which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim's death-shrieks were
+often heard to echo between the cliffs.
+
+"And see!" cried old Gascoigne; "is the stream yet pure from the stain
+of the murderer's hands?"
+
+"Methinks it has a tinge of blood," faintly answered the Lily; and,
+being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover's
+arm, whispering, "Let us flee from this dreadful vale."
+
+"Come, then," said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; "we shall
+soon find a happier spot."
+
+They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which
+millions--which every child of earth--has tried in turn.
+
+And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
+millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the
+old lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked
+lovely in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
+miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
+of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
+kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
+old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
+malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
+sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
+mother's fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak,
+two lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses
+in each other's arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
+evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
+when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
+of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their
+sad demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were
+seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and
+their posterity.
+
+"Where in this world," exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, "shall
+we build our temple of happiness?"
+
+"Where in this world, indeed?" repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
+and weary--the more so by the heaviness of her heart--the Lily drooped
+her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, "Where in
+this world shall we build our temple?"
+
+"Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?" said their
+companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
+that dwelt on them. "Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
+may build it."
+
+While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly
+thrown their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had
+chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted
+to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a
+certain regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and
+a group of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive
+shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory of the
+sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers
+would dwell together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where
+they were to worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the
+ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale
+lily was growing at their feet.
+
+"We will build our temple here," said they, simultaneously, and with
+an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
+
+Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
+turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
+hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
+those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
+just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with
+his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre
+hat overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
+purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a
+token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate
+the site of their temple of happiness.
+
+In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
+fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid
+the solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright
+sunshine. It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful
+pillars supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this
+dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books
+and music might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of
+the neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient
+mausoleum and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of
+dark-veined marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones.
+They doubted, too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a
+creature of this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day
+more fragile, so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch
+her up and waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth
+of the temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot
+his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and
+giving as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a
+tomb. In due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple
+rite of dedication.
+
+On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
+mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
+strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
+faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
+ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
+With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
+Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the
+time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which the Lily
+had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning
+in the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded
+upon the slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had
+long since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a
+loving hand had now transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden
+of Paradise.
+
+But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam
+Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of
+many delightful hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there.
+And, lo! a wonder! Digging a grave beneath the temple's marble floor,
+the sexton found no virgin earth such as was meet to receive the
+maiden's dust, but an ancient sepulchre in which were treasured up the
+bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
+ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the funeral procession
+brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne
+standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and
+face of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand
+the spot would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they
+lowered the coffin down.
+
+"And so," said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which
+his insanity was wont to gleam forth, "you have found no better
+foundation for your happiness than on a grave?"
+
+But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its
+birth in Adam's mind even from the old man's taunting words, for then
+he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and
+himself had acted, and the mystery of life and death was opened to
+him.
+
+"Joy! joy!" he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. "On a grave be
+the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity."
+
+With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and
+glimmered down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape
+of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom,
+symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that
+the darkest riddle of humanity was read.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE.
+
+
+It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health
+and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the
+world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not
+infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me--one with the roar
+of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs--forth from the
+haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath
+the shadow of even one primeval tree, much less be lost among the
+multitude of hoary trunks and hidden from the earth and sky by the
+mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach more
+like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban
+farmhouse. When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a
+necessity within me, I am drawn to the seashore which extends its line
+of rude rocks and seldom-trodden sands for leagues around our bay.
+Setting forth at my last ramble on a September morning, I bound myself
+with a hermit's vow to interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to
+share no social pleasure, but to derive all that day's enjoyment from
+shore and sea and sky, from my soul's communion with these, and from
+fantasies and recollections or anticipated realities. Surely here is
+enough to feed a human spirit for a single day.--Farewell, then, busy
+world! Till your evening lights shall shine along the street--till
+they gleam upon my sea-flushed face as I tread homeward--free me from
+your ties and let me be a peaceful outlaw.
+
+Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and, clambering down a
+crag, I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does
+the spirit leap forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the
+full extent of the broad blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to
+the sea! I descend over its margin and dip my hand into the wave that
+meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is Ocean's voice
+of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let
+us pace together--the reader's fancy arm in arm with mine--this noble
+beach, which extends a mile or more from that craggy promontory to
+yonder rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea; in the rear, a
+precipitous bank the grassy verge of which is breaking away year after
+year, and flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below.
+The beach itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with
+hardly any pebbles intermixed. Near the water's edge there is a wet
+margin which glistens brightly in the sunshine and reflects objects
+like a mirror, and as we tread along the glistening border a dry spot
+flashes around each footstep, but grows moist again as we lift our
+feet. In some spots the sand receives a complete impression of the
+sole, square toe and all; elsewhere it is of such marble firmness that
+we must stamp heavily to leave a print even of the iron-shod heel.
+Along the whole of this extensive beach gambols the surf-wave. Now it
+makes a feint of dashing onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek
+murmur and does but kiss the strand; now, after many such abortive
+efforts, it rears itself up in an unbroken line, heightening as it
+advances, without a speck of foam on its green crest. With how fierce
+a roar it flings itself forward and rushes far up the beach!
+
+As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was
+startled, as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human
+life was within the magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the
+remote distance of the beach, appearing like sea-nymphs, or some
+airier things such as might tread upon the feathery spray, was a group
+of girls. Hardly had I beheld them, when they passed into the shadow
+of the rocks and vanished. To comfort myself--for truly I would fain
+have gazed a while longer--I made acquaintance with a flock of
+beach-birds. These little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by
+about a stone's-throw along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food
+upon its margin. Yet, with a philosophy which mankind would do well to
+imitate, they drew a continual pleasure from their toil for a
+subsistence. The sea was each little bird's great playmate. They
+chased it downward as it swept back, and again ran up swiftly before
+the impending wave, which sometimes overtook them and bore them off
+their feet. But they floated as lightly as one of their own feathers
+on the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings they seemed to rest
+on the evanescent spray. Their images--long-legged little figures with
+gray backs and snowy bosoms--were seen as distinctly as the realities
+in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a
+score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their
+dalliance with the surf-wave; and thus they bore me company along the
+beach, the types of pleasant fantasies, till at its extremity they
+took wing over the ocean and were gone. After forming a friendship
+with these small surf-spirits, it is really worth a sigh to find no
+memorial of them save their multitudinous little tracks in the sand.
+
+When we have paced the length of the beach, it is pleasant and not
+unprofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and
+occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks, being
+all discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
+every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the
+surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to
+relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf, and
+trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
+live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer
+monster. Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon
+the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a
+jelly-fish which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to
+snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water
+brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming shallower and more
+shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the
+effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary
+appears to have bewildered us, for our tracks go round and round and
+are confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the
+level beach. And here amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost
+the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in
+an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and
+awfulness of the great deep. Thus by tracking our footprints in the
+sand we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a glance
+upon it when it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always
+make us wiser.
+
+This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With
+your staff you may write verses--love-verses if they please you
+best--and consecrate them with a woman's name. Here, too, may be
+inscribed thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the
+heart's secret places, which you would not pour upon the sand without
+the certainty that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea
+will wash them out. Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now
+(for there is room enough on your canvas) draw huge faces--huge as
+that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands--and fit them with bodies of
+corresponding immensity and legs which might stride halfway to yonder
+island. Child's-play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale. But,
+after all, the most fascinating employment is simply to write your
+name in the sand. Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides may
+barely measure them, and three for the long strokes; cut deep, that
+the record may be permanent. Statesmen and warriors and poets have
+spent their strength in no better cause than this. Is it accomplished?
+Return, then, in an hour or two, and seek for this mighty record of a
+name. The sea will have swept over it, even as time rolls its effacing
+waves over the names of statesmen and warriors and poets. Hark! the
+surf-wave laughs at you.
+
+Passing from the beach, I begin to clamber over the crags, making my
+difficult way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the
+assaults of a fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of
+attitude. Some of them have their feet in the foam and are shagged
+halfway upward with seaweed; some have been hollowed almost into
+caverns by the unwearied toil of the sea, which can afford to spend
+centuries in wearing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble. One huge
+rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a giant's
+tombstone, on which the veins resemble inscriptions, but in an unknown
+tongue. We will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antediluvian
+race, or else that Nature's own hand has here recorded a mystery
+which, could I read her language, would make mankind the wiser and the
+happier. How many a thing has troubled me with that same idea! Pass on
+and leave it unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue which might seem to
+have been hewn through the very heart of an enormous crag, affording
+passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with
+tumultuous foam and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare and
+glistening. In this chasm there was once an intersecting vein of
+softer stone, which the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the
+granite walls remain entire on either side. How sharply and with what
+harsh clamor does the sea rake back the pebbles as it momentarily
+withdraws into its own depths! At intervals the floor of the chasm is
+left nearly dry, but anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are
+seen struggling to get in at once; two hit the walls athwart, while
+one rushes straight through, and all three thunder as if with rage and
+triumph. They heap the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and spray.
+While watching this scene I can never rid myself of the idea that a
+monster endowed with life and fierce energy is striving to burst his
+way through the narrow pass. And what a contrast to look through the
+stormy chasm and catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond!
+
+Many interesting discoveries may be made among these broken cliffs.
+Once, for example, I found a dead seal which a recent tempest had
+tossed into the nook of the rocks, where his shaggy carcase lay rolled
+in a heap of eel-grass as if the sea-monster sought to hide himself
+from my eye. Another time a shark seemed on the point of leaping from
+the surf to swallow me, nor did I wholly without dread approach near
+enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death
+from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a
+bird--a large gray bird--but whether a loon or a wild goose or the
+identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology
+to decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its
+head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly
+lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird
+would soar among the clouds no more, nor ride upon its native waves;
+so I drew near and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for a
+remembrance. Another day I discovered an immense bone wedged into a
+chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a
+scymitar, bejewelled with barnacles and small shellfish and partly
+covered with a growth of seaweed. Some leviathan of former ages had
+used this ponderous mass as a jaw-bone. Curiosities of a minuter order
+may be observed in a deep reservoir which is replenished with water at
+every tide, but becomes a lake among the crags save when the sea is at
+its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin grow marine plants, some
+of which tower high beneath the water and cast a shadow in the
+sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro and hide themselves among the
+seaweed; there is also a solitary crab who appears to lead the life of
+a hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of the place, and
+likewise several five-fingers; for I know no other name than that
+which children give them. If your imagination be at all accustomed to
+such freaks, you may look down into the depths of this pool and fancy
+it the mysterious depth of ocean. But where are the hulks and
+scattered timbers of sunken ships? where the treasures that old Ocean
+hoards? where the corroded cannon? where the corpses and skeletons of
+seamen who went down in storm and battle?
+
+On the day of my last ramble--it was a September day, yet as warm as
+summer--what should I behold as I approached the above-described basin
+but three girls sitting on its margin and--yes, it is veritably
+so--laving their snowy feet in the sunny water? These, these are the
+warm realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on
+the beach. Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with
+their feet! They have not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock and
+steal away again.
+
+In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this
+encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant
+sensation. I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet,
+glancing at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with
+the ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down
+from some high crag and watch a group of children gathering pebbles
+and pearly shells and playing with the surf as with old Ocean's hoary
+beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at
+anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and
+sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew--four gentlemen in
+roundabout jackets--are busy with their fishing-lines. But with an
+inward antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any
+meditative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his
+sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.
+
+From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily
+over the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has
+given me a right to call my own. I would do battle for it even with
+the churl that should produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings
+melted into its rocky walls and sandy floor and made them a portion of
+myself? It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough,
+high precipice which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of
+sand. In front the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal; in
+the rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth which gives
+nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees that
+grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for
+footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir trees, but
+oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on
+the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this
+autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor.
+Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of
+yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves
+and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance I
+detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the
+stern gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a
+little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it
+fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the
+feast? A few biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft
+of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By
+this time the little rill has filled its reservoir again, and as I
+quaff it I thank God more heartily than for a civic banquet that he
+gives me the healthful appetite to make a feast of bread and water.
+
+Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the sand and, basking
+in the sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this
+my hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes
+fancy that they have ears to hear them and a soul to sympathize. There
+is a magic in this spot. Dreams haunt its precincts and flit around me
+in broad sunlight, nor require that sleep shall blindfold me to real
+objects ere these be visible. Here can I frame a story of two lovers,
+and make their shadows live before me and be mirrored in the tranquil
+water as they tread along the sand, leaving no footprints. Here,
+should I will it, I can summon up a single shade and be myself her
+lover.--Yes, dreamer, but your lonely heart will be the colder for
+such fancies.--Sometimes, too, the Past comes back, and finds me here,
+and in her train come faces which were gladsome when I knew them, yet
+seem not gladsome now. Would that my hiding-place were lonelier, so
+that the Past might not find me!--Get ye all gone, old friends, and
+let me listen to the murmur of the sea--a melancholy voice, but less
+sad than yours. Of what mysteries is it telling? Of sunken ships and
+whereabouts they lie? Of islands afar and undiscovered whose tawny
+children are unconscious of other islands and of continents, and deem
+the stars of heaven their nearest neighbors? Nothing of all this.
+What, then? Has it talked for so many ages and meant nothing all the
+while? No; for those ages find utterance in the sea's unchanging
+voice, and warn the listener to withdraw his interest from mortal
+vicissitudes and let the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul.
+This is wisdom, and therefore will I spend the next half-hour in
+shaping little boats of driftwood and launching them on voyages across
+the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of
+ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of
+five hundred tons and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "Far
+Cathay." Yet how would the merchant sneer at me!
+
+And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a
+thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock
+mid-deep in the surf--see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars
+and foams,--let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise
+my oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and
+got the victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the
+gentleman in seaweed has nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable
+roaring. His voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine is
+hushed. Once more I shout and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh
+what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary that he may lift
+his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a listener!--But
+hush! Be silent, my good friend! Whence comes that stifled laughter?
+It was musical, but how should there be such music in my solitude?
+Looking upward, I catch a glimpse of three faces peeping from the
+summit of the cliff like angels between me and their native sky.--Ah,
+fair girls! you may make yourself merry at my eloquence, but it was my
+turn to smile when I saw your white feet in the pool. Let us keep each
+other's secrets.
+
+The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the
+sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will
+come and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of
+these gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind.
+Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink
+gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been
+what few can be--sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word
+outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the
+recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has
+been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head
+upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my
+hands in triumph, and see my shadow clapping its unreal hands and
+claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all
+day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries!
+
+Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time--it is time;
+for as the sun sinks over the western wave the sea grows melancholy
+and the surf has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray and
+not of earth in their remoteness amid the desolate waste. My spirit
+wanders forth afar, but finds no resting-place and comes shivering
+back. It is time that I were hence. But grudge me not the day that has
+been spent in seclusion which yet was not solitude, since the great
+sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and
+the wind has told me his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around
+me in my hermitage. Such companionship works an effect upon a man's
+character as if he had been admitted to the society of creatures that
+are not mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets,
+the influence of this day will still be felt; so that I shall walk
+among men kindly and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but
+yet shall not melt into the indistinguishable mass of humankind. I
+shall think my own thoughts and feel my own emotions and possess my
+individuality unviolated.
+
+But it is good at the eve of such a day to feel and know that there
+are men and women in the world. That feeling and that knowledge are
+mine at this moment, for on the shore, far below me, the fishing-party
+have landed from their skiff and are cooking their scaly prey by a
+fire of driftwood kindled in the angle of two rude rocks. The three
+visionary girls are likewise there. In the deepening twilight, while
+the surf is dashing near their hearth, the ruddy gleam of the fire
+throws a strange air of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is
+with pebbles and seaweed and exposed to the "melancholy main."
+Moreover, as the smoke climbs up the precipice, it brings with it a
+savory smell from a pan of fried fish and a black kettle of chowder,
+and reminds me that my dinner was nothing but bread and water and a
+tuft of samphire and an apple. Methinks the party might find room for
+another guest at that flat rock which serves them for a table; and if
+spoons be scarce, I could pick up a clam-shell on the beach. They see
+me now; and--the blessing of a hungry man upon him!--one of them sends
+up a hospitable shout: "Halloo, Sir Solitary! Come down and sup with
+us!" The ladies wave their handkerchiefs. Can I decline? No; and be it
+owned, after all my solitary joys, that this is the sweetest moment of
+a day by the seashore.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD.
+
+
+There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy than, while gazing
+at a figure of melancholy age, to recreate its youth, and without
+entirely obliterating the identity of form and features to restore
+those graces which Time has snatched away. Some old people--especially
+women--so age-worn and woeful are they, seem never to have been young
+and gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent
+into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with
+sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds and weep at
+funerals. Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential
+to their existence; all their attributes combine to render them
+darksome shadows creeping strangely amid the sunshine of human life.
+Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful creatures
+and set Fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken
+the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color, and
+repair the shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy maiden shall be seen
+in the old matron's elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let
+the years roll back again, each sadder than the last, and the whole
+weight of age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure.
+Wrinkles and furrows, the handwriting of Time, may thus be deciphered
+and found to contain deep lessons of thought and feeling.
+
+Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my
+much-respected friend the Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute who
+has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying-breaths these
+forty years. See! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth with her
+gown and upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering thriftily into her
+person the whole warmth of the fire which now at nightfall begins to
+dissipate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers
+capriciously in front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms
+of her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar
+the outlines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a
+teaspoon in her right hand with which to stir up the contents of a
+tumbler in her left, whence steams a vapory fragrance abhorred of
+temperance societies. Now she sips, now stirs, now sips again. Her sad
+old heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva which
+is mixed half and half with hot water in the tumbler. All day long she
+has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home only
+when the spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too.
+But now are her melancholy meditations cheered and her torpid blood
+warmed and her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous years
+by a draught from the true fountain of youth in a case-bottle. It is
+strange that men should deem that fount a fable, when its liquor fills
+more bottles than the Congress-water.--Sip it again, good nurse, and
+see whether a second draught will not take off another score of years,
+and perhaps ten more, and show us in your high-backed chair the
+blooming damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane.--Get you gone,
+Age and Widowhood!--Come back, unwedded Youth!--But, alas! the charm
+will not work. In spite of Fancy's most potent spell, I can see only
+an old dame cowering over the fire, a picture of decay and desolation,
+while the November blast roars at her in the chimney and fitful
+showers rush suddenly against the window.
+
+Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton--such was the pretty
+maiden-name of Nurse Toothaker--possessed beauty that would have
+gladdened this dim and dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her
+the heart of Edward Fane, who has since made so great a figure in the
+world and is now a grand old gentleman with powdered hair and as gouty
+as a lord. These early lovers thought to have walked hand in hand
+through life. They had wept together for Edward's little sister Mary,
+whom Rose tended in her sickness--partly because she was the sweetest
+child that ever lived or died, but more for love of him. She was but
+three years old. Being such an infant, Death could not embody his
+terrors in her little corpse; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead
+child's brow, though chill, as she curled the silken hair around it,
+nor to take her tiny hand and clasp a flower within its fingers.
+Afterward, when she looked through the pane of glass in the coffin-lid
+and beheld Mary's face, it seemed not so much like death or life as
+like a wax-work wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep and
+dreaming of its mother's smile. Rose thought her too fair a thing to
+be hidden in the grave, and wondered that an angel did not snatch up
+little Mary's coffin and bear the slumbering babe to heaven and bid
+her wake immortal. But when the sods were laid on little Mary, the
+heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy that in
+grasping the child's cold fingers her virgin hand had exchanged a
+first greeting with mortality and could never lose the earthy taint.
+How many a greeting since! But as yet she was a fair young girl with
+the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom, and, instead of
+"Rose"--which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty--her
+lover called her "Rosebud."
+
+The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward Fane. His mother
+was a rich and haughty dame with all the aristocratic prejudices of
+colonial times. She scorned Rose Grafton's humble parentage and caused
+her son to break his faith, though, had she let him choose, he would
+have prized his Rosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers parted,
+and have seldom met again. Both may have visited the same mansions,
+but not at the same time, for one was bidden to the festal hall and
+the other to the sick-chamber; he was the guest of Pleasure and
+Prosperity, and she of Anguish. Rose, after their separation, was long
+secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with
+the revengeful hope of breaking her false lover's heart. She went to
+her bridegroom's arms with bitterer tears, they say, than young girls
+ought to shed at the threshold of the bridal-chamber. Yet, though her
+husband's head was getting gray and his heart had been chilled with an
+autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love him, and wondered at her own
+conjugal affection. He was all she had to love; there were no
+children.
+
+In a year or two poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome
+infirmity which settled in his joints and made him weaker than a
+child. He crept forth about his business, and came home at dinner-time
+and eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife's heart,
+but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy
+dub of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife if she sometimes
+blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked
+for the appearance of some old, old man, but he dragged his nerveless
+limbs into the parlor--and there was Mr. Toothaker! The disease
+increasing, he never went into the sunshine save with a staff in his
+right hand and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing heavily
+downward like a dead man's hand. Thus, a slender woman still looking
+maiden-like, she supported his tall, broad-chested frame along the
+pathway of their little garden, and plucked the roses for her
+gray-haired husband, and spoke soothingly as to an infant. His mind
+was palsied with his body; its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few
+months more she helped him up the staircase with a pause at every
+step, and a longer one upon the landing-place, and a heavy glance
+behind as he crossed the threshold of his chamber. He knew, poor man!
+that the precincts of those four walls would thenceforth be his
+world--his world, his home, his tomb, at once a dwelling-and a
+burial-place--till he were borne to a darker and a narrower one. But
+Rose was with him in the tomb. He leaned upon her in his daily passage
+from the bed to the chair by the fireside, and back again from the
+weary chair to the joyless bed--his bed and hers, their
+marriage-bed--till even this short journey ceased and his head lay all
+day upon the pillow and hers all night beside it. How long poor Mr.
+Toothaker was kept in misery! Death seemed to draw near the door, and
+often to lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into
+the chamber, nodding to Rose and pointing at her husband, but still
+delayed to enter. "This bedridden wretch cannot escape me," quoth
+Death. "I will go forth and run a race with the swift and fight a
+battle with the strong, and come back for Toothaker at my leisure."
+Oh, when the deliverer came so near, in the dull anguish of her
+worn-out sympathies did she never long to cry, "Death, come in"?
+
+But no; we have no right to ascribe such a wish to our friend Rose.
+She never failed in a wife's duty to her poor sick husband. She
+murmured not though a glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her
+as him, nor answered peevishly though his complaining accents roused
+her from sweetest dream only to share his wretchedness. He knew her
+faith, yet nourished a cankered jealousy; and when the slow disease
+had chilled all his heart save one lukewarm spot which Death's frozen
+fingers were searching for, his last words were, "What would my Rose
+have done for her first love, if she has been so true and kind to a
+sick old man like me?" And then his poor soul crept away and left the
+body lifeless, though hardly more so than for years before, and Rose a
+widow, though in truth it was the wedding-night that widowed her. She
+felt glad, it must be owned, when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because
+his corpse had retained such a likeness to the man half alive that she
+hearkened for the sad murmur of his voice bidding her shift his
+pillow. But all through the next winter, though the grave had held him
+many a month, she fancied him calling from that cold bed, "Rose, Rose!
+Come put a blanket on my feet!"
+
+So now the Rosebud was the widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come
+early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom
+was fled. She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a
+widow's cheerful gravity she might have won a widower, stealing into
+his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the widow Toothaker
+had no such projects. By her watchings and continual cares her heart
+had become knit to her first husband with a constancy which changed
+its very nature and made her love him for his infirmities, and
+infirmity for his sake. When the palsied old man was gone, even her
+early lover could not have supplied his place. She had dwelt in a
+sick-chamber and been the companion of a half-dead wretch till she
+could scarcely breathe in a free air and felt ill at ease with the
+healthy and the happy. She missed the fragrance of the doctor's stuff.
+She walked the chamber with a noiseless footfall. If visitors came in,
+she spoke in soft and soothing accents, and was startled and shocked
+by their loud voices. Often in the lonesome evening she looked
+timorously from the fireside to the bed, with almost a hope of
+recognizing a ghastly face upon the pillow. Then went her thoughts
+sadly to her husband's grave. If one impatient throb had wronged him
+in his lifetime, if she had secretly repined because her buoyant youth
+was imprisoned with his torpid age, if ever while slumbering beside
+him a treacherous dream had admitted another into her heart,--yet the
+sick man had been preparing a revenge which the dead now claimed. On
+his painful pillow he had cast a spell around her; his groans and
+misery had proved more captivating charms than gayety and youthful
+grace; in his semblance Disease itself had won the Rosebud for a
+bride, nor could his death dissolve the nuptials. By that indissoluble
+bond she had gained a home in every sick-chamber, and nowhere else;
+there were her brethren and sisters; thither her husband summoned her
+with that voice which had seemed to issue from the grave of Toothaker.
+At length she recognized her destiny.
+
+We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the widow; now we see her in
+a separate and insulated character: she was in all her attributes
+Nurse Toothaker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled
+lips, could make known her experience in that capacity. What a history
+might she record of the great sicknesses in which she has gone hand in
+hand with the exterminating angel! She remembers when the small-pox
+hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has
+witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and
+old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last
+loved one. Where would be Death's triumph if none lived to weep? She
+can speak of strange maladies that have broken out as if
+spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands
+with rich silks and other merchandise, the costliest portion of the
+cargo. And once, she recollects, the people died of what was
+considered a new pestilence, till the doctors traced it to the ancient
+grave of a young girl who thus caused many deaths a hundred years
+after her own burial. Strange that such black mischief should lurk in
+a maiden's grave! She loves to tell how strong men fight with fiery
+fevers, utterly refusing to give up their breath, and how consumptive
+virgins fade out of the world, scarcely reluctant, as if their lovers
+were wooing them to a far country.--Tell us, thou fearful woman; tell
+us the death-secrets. Fain would I search out the meaning of words
+faintly gasped with intermingled sobs and broken sentences
+half-audibly spoken between earth and the judgment-seat.
+
+An awful woman! She is the patron-saint of young physicians and the
+bosom-friend of old ones. In the mansions where she enters the inmates
+provide themselves black garments; the coffin-maker follows her, and
+the bell tolls as she comes away from the threshold. Death himself has
+met her at so many a bedside that he puts forth his bony hand to greet
+Nurse Toothaker. She is an awful woman. And oh, is it conceivable that
+this handmaid of human infirmity and affliction--so darkly stained, so
+thoroughly imbued with all that is saddest in the doom of mortals--can
+ever again be bright and gladsome even though bathed in the sunshine
+of eternity? By her long communion with woe has she not forfeited her
+inheritance of immortal joy? Does any germ of bliss survive within
+her?
+
+Hark! an eager knocking st Nurse Toothaker's door. She starts from her
+drowsy reverie, sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon, and lights
+a lamp at the dim embers of the fire. "Rap, rap, rap!" again, and she
+hurries adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can be at
+death's door now, since there is such an earnest messenger at Nurse
+Toothaker's. Again the peal resounds just as her hand is on the lock.
+"Be quick, Nurse Toothaker!" cries a man on the doorstep. "Old General
+Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach and has sent for you to
+watch by his death-bed. Make haste, for there is no time to
+lose."--"Fane! Edward Fane! And has he sent for me at last? I am
+ready. I will get on my cloak and begone. So," adds the sable-gowned,
+ashen-visaged, funereal old figure, "Edward Fane remembers his
+Rosebud."
+
+Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss within her. Her
+long-hoarded constancy, her memory of the bliss that was remaining
+amid the gloom of her after-life like a sweet-smelling flower in a
+coffin, is a symbol that all may be renewed. In some happier clime the
+Rosebud may revive again with all the dewdrops in its bosom.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREEFOLD DESTINY.
+
+A FAERY LEGEND.
+
+
+I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far
+as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in
+which the spirit and mechanism of the faery legend should be combined
+with the characters and manners of familiar life. In the little tale
+which follows a subdued tinge of the wild and wonderful is thrown over
+a sketch of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped,
+without entirely obliterating the sober hues of nature. Rather than a
+story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered as an
+allegory such as the writers of the last century would have expressed
+in the shape of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to
+give a more lifelike warmth than could be infused into those fanciful
+productions.
+
+In the twilight of a summer eve a tall dark figure over which long and
+remote travel had thrown an outlandish aspect was entering a village
+not in "faery londe," but within our own familiar boundaries. The
+staff on which this traveller leaned had been his companion from the
+spot where it grew in the jungles of Hindostan; the hat that
+overshadowed his sombre brow, had shielded him from the suns of Spain;
+but his cheek had been blackened by the red-hot wind of an Arabian
+desert and had felt the frozen breath of an Arctic region. Long
+sojourning amid wild and dangerous men, he still wore beneath his vest
+the ataghan which he had once struck into the throat of a Turkish
+robber. In every foreign clime he had lost something of his New
+England characteristics, and perhaps from every people he had
+unconsciously borrowed a new peculiarity; so that when the
+world-wanderer again trod the street of his native village it is no
+wonder that he passed unrecognized, though exciting the gaze and
+curiosity of all. Yet, as his arm casually touched that of a young
+woman who was wending her way to an evening lecture, she started and
+almost uttered a cry.
+
+"Ralph Cranfield!" was the name that she half articulated.
+
+"Can that be my old playmate Faith Egerton?" thought the traveller,
+looking round at her figure, but without pausing.
+
+Ralph Cranfield from his youth upward had felt himself marked out for
+a high destiny. He had imbibed the idea--we say not whether it were
+revealed to him by witchcraft or in a dream of prophecy, or that his
+brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of
+a sybil, but he had imbibed the idea, and held it firmest among his
+articles of faith--that three marvellous events of his life were to be
+confirmed to him by three signs.
+
+The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his
+youthful imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the
+maid who alone of all the maids on earth could make him happy by her
+love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful
+woman wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart--whether of
+pearl or ruby or emerald or carbuncle or a changeful opal, or perhaps
+a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as it were
+a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger he
+was bound to address her thus: "Maiden, I have brought you a heavy
+heart. May I rest its weight on you?" And if she were his fated
+bride--if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here below
+which all eternity should only bind more closely--she would reply,
+with her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, "This token which I have
+worn so long is the assurance that you may."
+
+And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a
+mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the earth of which the
+burial-place would be revealed to none but him. When his feet should
+press upon the mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him
+pointing downward--whether carved of marble or hewn in gigantic
+dimensions on the side of a rocky precipice, or perchance a hand of
+flame in empty air, he could not tell, but at least he would discern a
+hand, the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the Latin word
+"_Effode_"--"Dig!" And, digging thereabouts, the gold in coin or
+ingots, the precious stones, or of whatever else the treasure might
+consist, would be certain to reward his toil.
+
+The third and last of the miraculous events in the life of this
+high-destined man was to be the attainment of extensive influence and
+sway over his fellow-creatures. Whether he were to be a king and
+founder of a hereditary throne, or the victorious leader of a people
+contending for their freedom, or the apostle of a purified and
+regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show. As messengers of the
+sign by which Ralph Cranfield might recognize the summons, three
+venerable men were to claim audience of him. The chief among them--a
+dignified and majestic person arrayed, it may be supposed, in the
+flowing garments of an ancient sage--would be the bearer of a wand or
+prophet's rod. With this wand or rod or staff the venerable sage would
+trace a certain figure in the air, and then proceed to make known his
+Heaven-instructed message, which, if obeyed, must lead to glorious
+results.
+
+With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his imaginative youth
+Ralph Cranfield had set forth to seek the maid, the treasure, and the
+venerable sage with his gift of extended empire. And had he found
+them? Alas! it was not with the aspect of a triumphant man who had
+achieved a nobler destiny than all his fellows, but rather with the
+gloom of one struggling against peculiar and continual adversity, that
+he now passed homeward to his mother's cottage. He had come back, but
+only for a time, to lay aside the pilgrim's staff, trusting that his
+weary manhood would regain somewhat of the elasticity of youth in the
+spot where his threefold fate had been foreshown him. There had been
+few changes in the village, for it was not one of those thriving
+places where a year's prosperity makes more than the havoc of a
+century's decay, but, like a gray hair in a young man's head, an
+antiquated little town full of old maids and aged elms and moss-grown
+dwellings. Few seemed to be the changes here. The drooping elms,
+indeed, had a more majestic spread, the weather-blackened houses were
+adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss, and doubtless there were
+a few more gravestones in the burial-ground inscribed with names that
+had once been familiar in the village street; yet, summing up all the
+mischief that ten years had wrought, it seemed scarcely more than if
+Ralph Cranfield had gone forth that very morning and dreamed a
+day-dream till the twilight, and then turned back again. But his heart
+grew cold because the village did not remember him as he remembered
+the village.
+
+"Here is the change," sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast.
+"Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering and
+heavy with disappointed hopes? The youth returns not who went forth so
+joyously."
+
+And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother's gate, in front of the
+small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had
+kept herself comfortable during her son's long absence. Admitting
+himself within the enclosure, he leaned against a great old tree,
+trifling with his own impatience as people often do in those intervals
+when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the
+dwelling--its windows brightened with the sky-gleam, its doorway with
+the half of a millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving
+thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood's
+friend--the old tree against which he leaned--and, glancing his eye
+down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It
+was a half-obliterated inscription--the Latin word "_Effode_"--which
+he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree with a whole
+day's toil when he had first begun to muse about his exalted destiny.
+It might be accounted a rather singular coincidence that the bark just
+above the inscription had put forth an excrescence shaped not unlike a
+hand, with the forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate.
+Such, at least, was its appearance in the dusky light.
+
+"Now, a credulous man," said Ralph Cranfield, carelessly, to himself,
+"might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world
+lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother's dwelling. That
+would be a jest indeed."
+
+More he thought not about the matter, for now the door was opened and
+an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to
+discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises and was
+standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield's mother.
+Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the
+other to his rest--if quiet rest he found.
+
+But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow, for his sleep
+and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was
+rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold
+mystery of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to have
+awaited him beneath his mother's roof and thronged riotously around to
+welcome his return. In the well-remembered chamber, on the pillow
+where his infancy had slumbered, he had passed a wilder night than
+ever in an Arab tent or when he had reposed his head in the ghastly
+shades of a haunted forest. A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside
+and laid her finger on the scintillating heart; a hand of flame had
+glowed amid the darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the
+earth; a hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand and beckoned the
+dreamer onward to a chair of state. The same phantoms, though fainter
+in the daylight, still flitted about the cottage and mingled among
+the crowd of familiar faces that were drawn thither by the news of
+Ralph Cranfield's return to bid him welcome for his mother's sake.
+There they found him, a tall, dark, stately man of foreign aspect,
+courteous in demeanor and mild of speech, yet with an abstracted eye
+which seemed often to snatch a glance at the invisible.
+
+Meantime, the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house full of
+joy that she again had somebody to love and be careful of, and for
+whom she might vex and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily
+life. It was nearly noon when she looked forth from the door and
+descried three personages of note coming along the street through the
+hot sunshine and the masses of elm-tree shade. At length they reached
+her gate and undid the latch.
+
+"See, Ralph!" exclaimed she, with maternal pride; "here is Squire
+Hawkwood and the two other selectmen coming on purpose to see you.
+Now, do tell them a good long story about what you have seen in
+foreign parts."
+
+The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood, was a very
+pompous but excellent old gentleman, the head and prime-mover in all
+the affairs of the village, and universally acknowledged to be one of
+the sagest men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion even then
+becoming antiquated, a three-cornered hat, and carried a silver-headed
+cane the use of which seemed to be rather for flourishing in the air
+than for assisting the progress of his legs. His two companions were
+elderly and respectable yeomen who, retaining an ante-Revolutionary
+reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in the
+squire's rear.
+
+As they approached along the pathway Ralph Cranfield sat in an oaken
+elbow-chair half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors and
+enveloping their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded his
+mental world. "Here," thought he, smiling at the conceit--"here come
+three elderly personages, and the first of the three is a venerable
+sage with a staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of
+my fate?"
+
+While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered, Ralph rose from his
+seat and advanced a few steps to receive them, and his stately figure
+and dark countenance as he bent courteously toward his guests had a
+natural dignity contrasting well with the bustling importance of the
+squire. The old gentleman, according to invariable custom, gave an
+elaborate preliminary flourish with his cane in the air, then removed
+his three-cornered hat in order to wipe his brow, and finally
+proceeded to make known his errand.
+
+"My colleagues and myself," began the squire, "are burdened with
+momentous duties, being jointly selectmen of this village. Our minds
+for the space of three days past have been laboriously bent on the
+selection of a suitable person to fill a most important office and
+take upon himself a charge and rule which, wisely considered, may be
+ranked no lower than those of kings and potentates. And whereas you,
+our native townsman, are of good natural intellect and well cultivated
+by foreign travel, and that certain vagaries and fantasies of your
+youth are doubtless long ago corrected,--taking all these matters, I
+say, into due consideration, we are of opinion that Providence hath
+sent you hither at this juncture for our very purpose."
+
+During this harangue Cranfield gazed fixedly at the speaker, as if he
+beheld something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little
+figure, and as if the squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient
+sage instead of a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet
+breeches and silk stockings. Nor was his wonder without sufficient
+cause, for the flourish of the squire's staff, marvellous to relate,
+had described precisely the signal in the air which was to ratify the
+message of the prophetic sage whom Cranfield had sought around the
+world.
+
+"And what," inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor in his
+voice--"what may this office be which is to equal me with kings and
+potentates?"
+
+"No less than instructor of our village school," answered Squire
+Hawkwood, "the office being now vacant by the death of the venerable
+Master Whitaker after a fifty years' incumbency."
+
+"I will consider of your proposal," replied Ralph Cranfield,
+hurriedly, "and will make known my decision within three days."
+
+After a few more words the village dignitary and his companions took
+their leave. But to Cranfield's fancy their images were still present,
+and became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures
+which had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterward had shown
+themselves in his waking moments, assuming homely aspects among
+familiar things. His mind dwelt upon the features of the squire till
+they grew confused with those of the visionary sage and one appeared
+but the shadow of the other. The same visage, he now thought, had
+looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops; the same form had
+beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure
+had mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great
+Geyser. At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the
+dreamy messenger of destiny in this pompous, bustling, self-important,
+little-great man of the village. Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat
+all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his
+mother's thousand questions about his travels and adventures. At
+sunset he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the aged elm
+tree, his eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand pointing
+downward at the half-obliterated inscription.
+
+As Cranfield walked down the street of the village the level sunbeams
+threw his shadow far before him, and he fancied that, as his shadow
+walked among distant objects, so had there been a presentiment
+stalking in advance of him throughout his life. And when he drew near
+each object over which his tall shadow had preceded him, still it
+proved to be one of the familiar recollections of his infancy and
+youth. Every crook in the pathway was remembered. Even the more
+transitory characteristics of the scene were the same as in by-gone
+days. A company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and
+refreshed him with their fragrant breath. "It is sweeter," thought he,
+"than the perfume which was wafted to our ship from the Spice
+Islands." The round little figure of a child rolled from a doorway and
+lay laughing almost beneath Cranfield's feet. The dark and stately man
+stooped down, and, lifting the infant, restored him to his mother's
+arms. "The children," said he to himself, and sighed and smiled--"the
+children are to be my charge." And while a flow of natural feeling
+gushed like a well-spring in his heart he came to a dwelling which he
+could nowise forbear to enter. A sweet voice which seemed to come from
+a deep and tender soul was warbling a plaintive little air within. He
+bent his head and passed through the lowly door. As his foot sounded
+upon the threshold a young woman advanced from the dusky interior of
+the house, at first hastily, and then with a more uncertain step, till
+they met face to face. There was a singular contrast in their two
+figures--he dark and picturesque, one who had battled with the world,
+whom all suns had shone upon and whom all winds had blown on a varied
+course; she neat, comely and quiet--quiet even in her agitation--as if
+all her emotions had been subdued to the peaceful tenor of her life.
+Yet their faces, all unlike as they were, had an expression that
+seemed not so alien--a glow of kindred feeling flashing upward anew
+from half-extinguished embers.
+
+"You are welcome home," said Faith Egerton.
+
+But Cranfield did not immediately answer, for his eye had, been caught
+by an ornament in the shape of a heart which Faith wore as a brooch
+upon her bosom. The material was the ordinary white quartz, and he
+recollected having himself shaped it out of one of those Indian
+arrowheads which are so often found in the ancient haunts of the red
+men. It was precisely on the pattern of that worn by the visionary
+maid. When Cranfield departed on his shadowy search, he had bestowed
+this brooch, in a gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton.
+
+"So, Faith, you have kept the heart?" said he, at length.
+
+"Yes," said she, blushing deeply; then, more gayly, "And what else
+have you brought me from beyond the sea?"
+
+"Faith," replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated words by an
+uncontrollable impulse, "I have brought you nothing but a heavy heart.
+May I rest its weight on you?"
+
+"This token which I have worn so long," said Faith, laying her
+tremulous finger on the heart, "is the assurance that you may."
+
+"Faith, Faith!" cried Cranfield, clasping her in his arms; "you have
+interpreted my wild and weary dream!"
+
+Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the mysterious
+treasure he was to till the earth around his mother's dwelling and
+reap its products; instead of warlike command or regal or religious
+sway, he was to rule over the village children; and now the visionary
+maid had faded from his fancy, and in her place he saw the playmate of
+his childhood.
+
+Would all who cherish such wild wishes but look around them, they
+would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity and happiness,
+within those precincts and in that station where Providence itself has
+cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary
+world-search or a lifetime spent in vain!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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