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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Brave Men and Women, by O.E. Fuller
+
+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: Brave Men and Women
+       Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
+
+Author: O.E. Fuller
+
+Release Date: November 3, 2004 [EBook #13942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kevin Handy, John Hagerson, and the the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN
+
+THEIR STRUGGLES, FAILURES, AND TRIUMPHS.
+
+BY
+
+O.E. FULLER, A.M.
+
+"_Find out what you are fitted for; work hard at that one thing, and
+keep a brave, honest heart_."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COPYRIGHT
+By O.E. FULLER
+1884
+All rights reserved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Struggle, failure, triumph: while triumph is the thing sought, struggle
+has its joy, and failure is not without its uses.
+
+"It is not the _goal_," says Jean Paul, "but the _course_ which makes us
+happy." The law of life is what a great orator affirmed of
+oratory--"Action, action, action!" As soon as one point is gained,
+another, and another presents itself.
+
+"It is a mistake," says Samuel Smiles, "to suppose that men succeed
+through success; they much oftener succeed through failure." He cites,
+among others, the example of Cowper, who, through his diffidence and
+shyness, broke down when pleading his first cause, and lived to revive
+the poetic art in England; and that of Goldsmith, who failed in passing
+as a surgeon, and yet wrote the "Deserted Village" and the "Vicar of
+Wakefield." Even when one turns to no new course, how many failures, as
+a rule, mark the way to triumph, and brand into life, as with a hot
+iron, the lessons of defeat!
+
+The brave man or the brave woman is one who looks life in the eye, and
+says: "God helping me, I am going to  realize the best possibilities of
+my nature, by calling into action the beneficent laws which govern and
+determine the development of each individual member of the race." And
+the failures of such a person are the jewels of triumph; that triumph
+which is certain in the sight of heaven, if not in the eyes of men.
+
+"Brave Men and Women," the title of this volume, is used in a double
+sense, as referring not only to those whose words and deeds are here
+recorded, or cited as examples, but also to all who read the book, and
+are striving after the riches of character.
+
+Some of the sketches and short papers are anonymous, and have been
+adapted for use in these pages. Where the authorship is known, and the
+productions have been given _verbatim_, the source, if not the pen of
+the editor, has been indicated. Thanks are due to the press, and to
+those who have permitted the use of copyrighted matter.
+
+In conclusion, the editor lays little claim to originality--save in the
+metrical pieces, and in the use he has made of material. His aim has
+simply been to form a sort of _mosaic_ or variegated picture of the
+Brave Life--the life which recognizes the Divine Goodness in all things,
+striving through good report and evil report, and in manifold ways,
+which one is often unqualified to judge, to attain to the life of Him
+who is "the light of the world."
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.--HIS FAME STILL CLIMBING TO HEAVEN--WHAT HE HAD DONE
+AT FIFTY-TWO--POOR RICHARD'S ADDRESS
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+DEFENCE OF A GREAT MAN.--WAS DR. FRANKLIN MEAN?--JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS MOTHER.--THE MOTHER'S EDUCATION--THE SON'S
+TRAINING--DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTIES
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ABIGAIL ADAMS.--THE WIFE OF OUR SECOND PRESIDENT--THE MOTHER OF OUR
+SIXTH
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+TWO NEIGHBORS.--WHAT THEY GOT OUT OF LIFE
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+HORACE GREELEY.--THE MOLDER OF PUBLIC OPINION--THE BRAVE JOURNALIST
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WENDELL PHILLIPS.--THE TIMES WHEN HE APPEARED--"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"--A
+FLAMING ADVOCATE OF LIBERTY--LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT--POWER TO
+DISCERN THE RIGHT--THE MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MARY WORDSWORTH.--THE KINDLY WIFE OF THE GREAT POET
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MADAME MALIBRAN.--HER CAREER AS A SINGER--KINDNESS OF HEART
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+GARFIELD MAXIMS.--GATHERED FROM HIS SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, LETTERS, ETC.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+WHAT I CARRIED TO COLLEGE.--A REMINISCENCE AT FORTY--PICTURES OF RURAL
+LIFE
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.--HEROISM ON THE GREAT DEEP--A MARTYR OF THE POLAR SEA
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ELIZABETH ESTAUGH.--A QUAKER COURTSHIP IN WHICH SHE WAS THE PRINCIPAL
+ACTOR
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"CHINESE" GORDON.--IN THE TRENCHES OF THE CRIMEA--PUTS DOWN THE GREAT
+TAIPING REBELLION IN CHINA, IN 1863-4--HERO OF THE SOUDAN--BEARDS THE
+MEN-STEALERS IN THEIR STRONGHOLDS AND MAKES THE PEOPLE LOVE HIM
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MEN'S WIVES.--BITS OF COMMON SENSE AND WISDOM ON A GREAT SUBJECT
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+WOMEN'S HUSBANDS.--WHAT THE "BREAD-WINNERS" LIKE IN THEIR WIVES--A
+LITTLE CONSTITUTIONAL OPPOSITION
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+JOHN PLOUGHMAN.--WHAT HE SAYS ABOUT RELIGIOUS GRUMBLERS--GOOD NATURE AND
+FIRMNESS, ETC.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL.--A NOBLE, SELF-SACRIFICING WOMAN
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+PESTIFEROUS LITERATURE.--THE PRINTING PRESS--THE FLOOD OF IMPURE AND
+LOATHSOME LITERATURE, ETC.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SATISFIED.--AND OTHER POEMS
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+HEROES OF SCIENCE.--MICHAEL FARADAY--SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS--M. PASTEUR
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MY UNCLE TOBY.--ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL CREATIONS OF A GREAT GENIUS
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.--THE NAPOLEON OF MERCHANTS--HIS LIFE SUCCESSFUL, AND YET
+A FAILURE
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+DISAPPOINTMENTS.--PLEASURE AFTER PAIN--PAIN AFTER PLEASURE
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE THREE KINGS.--AN OLD STORY IN A NEW LIGHT
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.--THE HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+SHY PEOPLE.--HAWTHORNE--WASHINGTON, IRVING, AND OTHERS--MADAME RECAMIER
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.--IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY--His MARRIAGE--LAW
+LECTURES--AT THE BAR--His INTELLECTUAL POWERS--ON THE BENCH
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A NOBLE MOTHER.--How SHE TRAINED HERSELF, AND EDUCATED HER BOYS
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE CARE OF THE BODY.--WHAT DR. SARGENT, OF THE HARVARD GYMNASIUM, SAYS
+ABOUT IT--POINTS FOR PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND PUPILS
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+SAINT CECILIA.--THE PATRONESS OF MUSIC--MYTHS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF
+MUSIC--ITS RELATION TO WORK AND BLESSEDNESS
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.--A LIFE OF WONDER AND WARNING
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+A VISION OF TIME.--NEW YEAR'S EVE
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+JOHN BUNYAN.--FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+MADAME ROLAND.--THE MOST REMARKABLE WOMAN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--THE
+IPHIGENIA OF FRANCE
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+CHEERFUL AND BRAVE.--THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON--SIR WALTER
+RALEIGH--XENOPHON--CAESAR--NELSON, ETC.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+HAROLD.--THE LAST SAXON KING OF ENGLAND
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+PETER COOPER.--THE LESSONS OF A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+ILLUSIONS.--"THEREFORE TRUST TO THY HEART AND WHAT THE WORLD CALLS
+ILLUSIONS"
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+PHILLIPS BROOKS.--At Home
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ST. JOHN AND THE ROBBER.--A LEGEND OF THE FIRST CENTURY
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+JOHN PLOUGHMAN AGAIN.--THE PITH AND MARROW OF CERTAIN OLD PROVERBS
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+HENRY WILSON.--FROM THE SHOEMAKER'S BENCH TO THE CHAIR OF VICE-PRESIDENT
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+JOAN OF ARC.--THE PEASANT MAIDEN WHO DELIVERED HER COUNTRY AND BECAME A
+MARTYR IN ITS CAUSE
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE SONG OF WORK.--MANY PHASES AND MANY EXAMPLES
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+ALVAN S. SOUTHWORTH.--CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+A FORBIDDEN TOPIC.--WHICH SOME PEOPLE PERSIST IN INTRODUCING
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+IDA LEWIS WILSON.--THE GRACE DARLING OF AMERICA
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+RACHEL JACKSON.--THE WIFE OF OUR SEVENTH PRESIDENT
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+DISCONTENTED GIRLS.--ONE PANACEA FOR THEM--AND ONE REFUGE
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+THE VOICE IN RAMAH.--"RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT BE
+COMFORTED BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT"
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+LA FAYETTE.--THE FRIEND AND DEFENDER OF LIBERTY ON TWO CONTINENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+LYDIA SIGOURNEY.--THE LESSON OF A USEFUL AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+OLD AGE AND USEFULNESS.--THE GLORY OF BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+RHYMES AND CHIMES.--SUITABLE FOR AUTOGRAPH ALBUMS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
+
+(BORN 1706--DIED 1790.)
+
+
+HIS FAME STILL CLIMBING TO HEAVEN--WHAT HE HAD DONE AT FIFTY-TWO--POOR
+RICHARD'S ADDRESS.
+
+
+The late Judge Black was remarkable not only for his wit and humor,
+which often enlivened the dry logic of law and fact, but also for
+flashes of unique eloquence. In presenting a certain brief before the
+United States Supreme Court he had occasion to animadvert upon some of
+our great men. Among other things he said, as related to the writer by
+one who heard him: "The colossal name of Washington is growing year by
+year, _and the fame of Franklin is still climbing to heaven_,"
+accompanying the latter words by such a movement of his right hand that
+not one of his hearers failed to see the immortal kite quietly bearing
+the philosopher's question to the clouds. It was a point which delivered
+the answer. In the life of every great man there is likewise a point
+which delivers the special message which he was born to publish to the
+world. Biography is greatly simplified when it confines itself chiefly
+to that one point. What does the reader, who has his own work to do,
+care for a great multitude of details which are not needed for the
+setting of the picture? _To the point_ is the cry of our busy life.
+
+Benjamin Franklin is here introduced to the reader
+
+
+AT FIFTY-TWO.
+
+
+What had he done at that age to command more than ordinary respect and
+admiration?
+
+I. Born in poverty and obscurity, in which he passed his early years;
+with no advantages of education in the schools of his day, after he
+entered his teens; under the condition of daily toil for his bread; he
+had carried on, in spite of all obstacles, the process of self-education
+through books and observation, and become in literature and science, as
+well as in the practical affairs of every-day life, the best informed
+man in America.
+
+II. Apprenticed to a printer in his native Boston, at thirteen; a
+journeyman in Philadelphia at seventeen; working at the case in London
+at nineteen; back to the Quaker City, and set up for himself at
+twenty-six; he had long since mastered all the details of a great
+business, prepared to put his hand to any thing, from the trundling of
+paper through the streets on a wheel-barrow to the writing of editorials
+and pamphlets, and had earned for himself a position as the most
+prosperous printer and publisher in the colonies.
+
+III. Retired from active business at forty-six, considering that he had
+already earned and saved enough to supply his reasonable wants for the
+rest of his life; fired with ambition to do something for the
+advancement of science; he had now for six years given himself to
+philosophical investigation and experiment, among other things
+demonstrated the identity of electricity as produced by artificial means
+and atmospheric lightning, and made himself a name throughout the
+civilized world.
+
+IV. Besides, it must not be forgotten that he had all along been
+foremost in many a work for the public good. The Franklin Library, of
+Philadelphia, owes to him its origin. The University of Pennsylvania
+grew out of an educational project in which he was a prime mover. And
+his ideas as to the relative importance of ancient and modern _classics_
+were more than a hundred years in advance of his times.
+
+Such is a glimpse of Franklin at fifty-two, as preliminary to a single
+episode which will occupy the rest of this chapter. But the episode
+itself requires a special word.
+
+V. For a quarter of a century Franklin had published an almanac under
+the _pseudonym_ of Richard Saunders, into the pages of which he crowded
+year by year choice scraps of wit and wisdom, which made the little
+hand-book a welcome visitor in almost every home of the New World. Now
+in the midst of those philosophical studies which so much delighted him,
+when about to cross the Atlantic as a commissioner to the Home
+Government, he found time to gather up the maxims and quaint sayings of
+twenty-five years and set them in a wonderful mosaic, as the preface of
+Poor Richard's world-famous almanac--as unique a piece of writing as any
+language affords. Here it is:
+
+
+POOR RICHARD'S ADDRESS.
+
+
+Courteous Reader: I have heard that nothing gives an author so great
+pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others. Judge,
+then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to
+relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great company of people
+were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale
+not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and
+one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks,
+"Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not those heavy
+taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them?
+What would you advise us to do?" Father Abraham stood up and replied,
+"If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; 'for a word
+to the wise is enough,' as Poor Richard says." They joined in desiring
+him to speak his mind, and gathering around him, he proceeded as
+follows:--
+
+"Friends," says he, "the taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid
+on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more
+easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous
+to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times
+as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from
+these taxes the commissioners can not ease or deliver us by allowing an
+abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be
+done for us; 'God helps them that help themselves,' as Poor Richard
+says.
+
+"I. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people
+one-tenth of their time to be employed in its service, but idleness
+taxes many of us much more: sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely
+shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears,
+while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. 'But dost
+thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is
+made of,' as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we
+spend in sleep! forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and
+that there will be sleeping enough in the grave,' as Poor Richard says.
+'If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be,' as
+Poor Richard says, 'the greatest prodigality;' since as he elsewhere
+tell us, 'Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough
+always proves little enough.' Let us then up and be doing, and doing to
+the purpose, so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.
+'Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy, and he that
+riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at
+night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes
+him. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and
+early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,' as Poor Richard
+says.
+
+"So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times? We may make
+these times better if we bestir ourselves. 'Industry need not wish, and
+he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without
+pains; then help hands, for I have no lands,' or if I have they are
+smartly taxed. 'He that hath a trade, hath an estate; and he that hath a
+calling, hath an office of profit and honor,' as Poor Richard says; but
+then the trade must be worked at, and the calling well followed, or
+neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we
+are industrious we shall never starve; for 'at the workingman's house
+hunger looks in, but dares not enter.' Nor will the bailiff or the
+constable enter, for 'industry pays debts, while despair increaseth
+them.' What though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich relation
+left a legacy; 'Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all
+things to industry. Then plow deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall
+have corn to sell and to keep.' Work while it is called to-day, for you
+know not how much you may be hindered to-morrow. 'One to-day is worth
+two to-morrows,' as Poor Richard says; and farther, 'Never leave that
+till to-morrow which you can do to-day.' If you were a servant, would
+you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle? Are you
+then your own master? Be ashamed to catch yourself idle, when there is
+so much to be done for yourself, your family, your country, and your
+king. Handle your tools without mittens; remember, that 'the cat in
+gloves catches no mice,' as Poor Richard says. It is true there is much
+to be done, and, perhaps, you are weak-handed; but stick to it steadily,
+and you will see great effects; for, 'Constant dropping wears away
+stones; and by diligence, and patience the mouse ate in two the cable;
+and little strokes fell great oaks.'
+
+"Methinks I hear some of you say, 'Must a man afford himself no
+leisure?' I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says: 'Employ
+thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and, since thou art not
+sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.' Leisure is time for doing
+something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the
+lazy man never; for 'A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two
+things. Many, without labor, would live by their wits only, but they
+break for want of stock;' whereas industry gives comfort, and plenty,
+and respect. 'Fly pleasures, and they will follow you. The diligent
+spinner has a large shift; and now I have a sheep and a cow, every body
+bids me good morrow.'
+
+"II. But with our industry we must likewise be steady, settled, and
+careful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eyes, and not trust
+too much to others, for, as Poor Richard says,
+
+    "'I never saw an oft removed tree,
+    Nor yet an oft removed family,
+    That throve so well as those that settled be.'
+
+"And again, 'three removes is as bad as a fire;' and again, 'Keep thy
+shop, and thy shop will keep thee;' and again, 'If you would have your
+business done, go; if not, send;' and again,
+
+    "'He that by the plow would thrive,
+    Himself must either hold or drive.'
+
+And again, 'the eye of the master will do more work than both his
+hands;' and again, 'Want of care does us more damage than want of
+knowledge;' and again, 'Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your
+purse open.' Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for,
+'In the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the
+want of it; but a man's own care is profitable, for, 'If you would have
+a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. A little
+neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost;
+for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider
+was lost,' being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a
+little care about a horseshoe nail.
+
+"III. So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own
+business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our
+industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to
+save as he gets, 'keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die
+not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean will;' and
+
+    "'Many estates are spent in the getting,
+    Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting,
+    And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting.'
+
+'If you would be wealthy, think of saving, as well as of getting. The
+Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are greater than
+her incomes.'
+
+"Away then with your expensive follies, and you will not then have so
+much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable
+families; for
+
+    "'Women and wine, game and deceit,
+    Make the wealth small, and the want great.'
+
+And farther, 'What maintains one vice would bring up two children.' You
+may think, perhaps, that a little tea, or a little punch now and then,
+diet a little more costly, clothes a little finer, and a little
+entertainment now and then, can be no great matter; but remember, 'Many
+a little makes a mickle.' Beware of little expenses. 'A small leak will
+sink a great ship,' as Poor Richard says; and again, 'Who dainties love,
+shall beggars prove;' and moreover, 'Fools make feasts, and wise men eat
+them.' Here you are all got together to this sale of fineries and
+knick-knacks. You call them goods, but, if you do not take care, they
+will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and
+perhaps they may, for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion
+for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard says,
+'Buy what thou hast no need of, and erelong thou shalt sell thy
+necessaries.' And again, 'At a great pennyworth pause awhile;' he means,
+that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the
+bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than
+good. For in another place he says, 'Many have been ruined by buying
+good pennyworths.' Again, 'It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase
+of repentance;' and yet this folly is practiced every day at auctions,
+for want of minding the almanac. Many a one, for the sake of finery on
+the back, have gone with a hungry belly, and half starved their
+families; 'Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen
+fire,' as Poor Richard says. These are not the necessaries of life; they
+can scarcely be called the conveniences; and yet, only because they look
+pretty, how many want to have them? By these and other extravagances,
+the greatest are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom
+they formerly despised, but who, through industry and frugality, have
+maintained their standing; in which case it appears plainly, that 'A
+plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees,' as Poor
+Richard says. Perhaps they have had a small estate left them, which they
+knew not the getting of; they think 'It is day, and will never be
+night;' that a little to be spent out of so much is not worth minding;
+but 'Always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes
+to the bottom,' as Poor Richard says; and then, 'When the well is dry,
+they know the worth of water.' But this they might have known before, if
+they had taken his advice. 'If you would know the value of money, go and
+try to borrow some; for he that goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing,' as
+Poor Richard says; and, indeed, so does he that lends to such people,
+when he goes to get it in again. Poor Dick farther advises, and says,
+
+    "'Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse;
+    Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.'
+
+And again, 'Pride is as loud a beggar as Want, and a great deal more
+saucy.' When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that
+your appearance may be all of a piece; but Poor Dick says, 'It is easier
+to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.' And
+it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to
+swell in order to equal the ox.
+
+    "'Vessels large may venture more,
+    But little boats should keep near shore.'
+
+It is, however, a folly soon punished; for, as Poor Richard says, 'Pride
+that dines on vanity, sups on contempt; Pride breakfasted with Plenty,
+dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy.' And after all, of what use
+is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is
+suffered? It can not promote health, nor ease pain; it makes no increase
+of merit in the person; it creates envy, it hastens misfortune.
+
+"But what madness it must be to run in debt for these superfluities! We
+are offered by the terms of this sale six months' credit; and that,
+perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it, because we can not spare
+the ready money, and hope, now to be fine without it. But, ah! think
+what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your
+liberty. If you can not pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your
+creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him; you will make poor,
+pitiful, sneaking excuses, and, by degrees, come to lose your veracity,
+and sink into base downright lying; for 'The second vice is lying, the
+first is running in debt,' as Poor Richard says; and again, to the same
+purpose, 'Lying rides upon debt's back;' whereas a freeborn Englishman
+ought not to be ashamed nor afraid to see or speak to any man living.
+But poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. 'It is hard
+for an empty bag to stand upright.' What would you think of that prince,
+or of that government, who should issue an edict forbidding you to dress
+like a gentleman or gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude?
+Would you not say that you were free, have a right to dress as you
+please, and that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges, and
+such a government tyrannical? and yet you are about to put yourself
+under that tyranny when you run in debt for such dress! Your creditor
+has authority, at his pleasure, to deprive you of your liberty, by
+confining you in jail for life, or by selling you for a servant, if you
+should not be able to pay him. When you have got your bargain, you may,
+perhaps, think little of payment; but, as Poor Richard says, 'Creditors
+have better memories than debtors; creditors are a superstitious sect,
+great observers of days and times.' The day comes round before you are
+aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it; or,
+if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which at first seemed so long,
+will, as it lessens, appear extremely short: Time will seem to have
+added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. 'Those have a short
+Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.' At present, perhaps, you may
+think yourselves in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a
+little extravagance without injury; but
+
+    "'For age and want save while you may,
+    No morning sun lasts a whole day.'
+
+"Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever, while you live, expense
+is constant and certain; and 'It is easier to build two chimneys than to
+keep one in fuel,' as Poor Richard says: so, 'Rather go to bed
+supperless than rise in debt.'
+
+    "'Get what you can, and what you get hold,
+    'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.'
+
+And, when you have got the philosopher's stone, sure you will no longer
+complain of bad times, or the difficulty of paying taxes.
+
+"IV. This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but, after all, do
+riot depend too much upon your own industry and frugality and prudence,
+though excellent things; for they may all be blasted without the
+blessing of Heaven; and, therefore, ask that blessing humbly, and be not
+uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and
+help them. Remember Job suffered, and was afterwards prosperous.
+
+"And now to conclude, 'Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will
+learn in no other,' as Poor Richard says, and scarce in that; for it is
+true, 'We may give advice, but we can not give conduct.' However,
+remember this, 'They that will not be counseled, can not be helped;' and
+farther, that, 'If you will not hear reason, she will surely rap your
+knuckles,' as Poor Richard says."
+
+Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard it, and
+approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary, just as
+if it had been a common sermon; for the auction opened, and they began
+to buy extravagantly. I found the good man had thoroughly studied my
+Almanac, and digested all I had dropped on these topics during the
+course of twenty-five years. The frequent mention he made of me must
+have tired any one else; but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with
+it, though I was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my
+own which he ascribed to me; but rather the gleanings that I had made of
+the sense of all ages and nations. However, I resolved to be the better
+for the echo of it; and, though I had at first determined to buy stuff
+for a new coat, I went away, resolved to wear my old one a little
+longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy profit will be as great as
+mine. I am, as ever, thine to serve thee,
+
+    RICHARD SAUNDERS.
+
+
+This quaint address made a brilliant hit. It was at once printed on
+large sheets, framed, and hung up in cottages in England, as well as in
+this country. It was also translated into French, Spanish, and modern
+Greek. At the present day, however, it is not often met with, except in
+the author's collected works, or in fragments; and the young reader,
+especially, will be thankful to find it here in full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+DEFENSE OF A GREAT MAN.
+
+
+WAS DR. FRANKLIN MEAN?--JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.
+
+
+A man of no enviable notoriety is reported to have spoken of Dr.
+Franklin as "hard, calculating, angular, unable to comprehend any higher
+object than the accumulation of money." Not a few people who profess
+much admiration for Franklin in other respects seem to think that in
+money matters there was something about him akin to meanness. To correct
+this false impression and show "how Franklin got his money, how much he
+got, and what he did with it," one of his recent biographers is called
+up in his defense, and to the question, "Was Dr. Franklin mean?" here is
+
+
+JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.
+
+
+I will begin with the first pecuniary transaction in which he is known
+to have been concerned, and this shall be given in his own words:
+
+"When I was a child of seven years old my friends, on a holiday, filled
+my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys
+for children, and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met
+by the way in the hands of another boy, _I voluntarily offered and gave
+all my money for one_."
+
+That was certainly not the act of a stingy, calculating boy.
+
+His next purchase, of which we have any knowledge was made when he was
+about eleven years old; and this time, I confess, he made a much better
+bargain. The first book he could ever call his own was a copy of
+Pilgrim's Progress, which he read and re-read until he got from it all
+so young a person could understand. But being exceedingly fond of
+reading, he exchanged his Pilgrim's Progress for a set of little books,
+then much sold by peddlers, called "Burton's Historical Collections," in
+forty paper-covered volumes, containing history, travels, tales,
+wonders, and curiosities, just the thing for a boy. As we do not know
+the market value of his Pilgrim's Progress, we can not tell whether the
+poor peddler did well by him or the contrary. But it strikes me that
+that is not the kind of barter in which a mean, grasping boy usually
+engages.
+
+His father being a poor soap-and-candle maker, with a dozen children or
+more to support or assist, and Benjamin being a printer's apprentice, he
+was more and more puzzled to gratify his love of knowledge. But one day
+he hit upon an expedient that brought in a little cash. By reading a
+vegetarian book this hard, calculating Yankee lad had been led to think
+that people could live better without meat than with it, and that
+killing innocent animals for food was cruel and wicked. So he abstained
+from meat altogether for about two years. As this led to some
+inconvenience at his boarding-house, he made this cunning proposition to
+his master:
+
+"Give me one-half the money you pay for my board and I will board
+myself."
+
+The master consenting, the apprentice lived entirely on such things as
+hominy, bread, rice, and potatoes, and found that he could actually live
+upon half of the half. What did the calculating wretch do with the
+money? Put it into his money-box? No; he laid it out in the improvement
+of his mind.
+
+When at the age of seventeen, he landed in Philadelphia, a runaway
+apprentice, he had one silver dollar and one shilling in copper coin. It
+was a fine Sunday morning, as probably the reader remembers, and he knew
+not a soul in the place. He asked the boatmen upon whose boat he had
+come down the Delaware how much he had to pay. They answered, Nothing,
+because he had helped them row. Franklin, however, insisted upon their
+taking his shilling's worth of coppers, and forced the money upon them.
+An hour after, having bought three rolls for his breakfast, he ate one
+and gave the other two to a poor woman and her child who had been his
+fellow-passengers. These were small things, you may say; but remember he
+was a poor, ragged, dirty runaway in a strange town, four hundred miles
+from a friend, with three pence gone out of the only dollar he had in
+the world.
+
+Next year when he went home to see his parents, with his pocket full of
+money, a new suit of clothes and a watch, one of his oldest Boston
+friends was so much pleased with Franklin's account of Philadelphia that
+he determined to go back with him. On the journey Franklin discovered
+that his friend had become a slave to drink. He was sorely plagued and
+disgraced by him, and at last the young drunkard had spent all his money
+and had no way of getting on except by Franklin's aid. This hard,
+calculating, mercenary youth, did he seize the chance of shaking off a
+most troublesome and injurious traveling companion? Strange to relate,
+he stuck to his old friend, shared his purse with him till it was empty,
+and then began on some money which he had been intrusted with for
+another, and so got him to Philadelphia, where he still assisted him. It
+was seven years before Franklin was able to pay all the debt incurred by
+him to aid this old friend, for abandoning whom few would have blamed
+him.
+
+A year after he was in still worse difficulty from a similar cause. He
+went to London to buy types and a press with which to establish himself
+in business at Philadelphia, the governor of Pennsylvania having
+promised to furnish the money. One of the passengers on the ship was a
+young friend of Franklin's named James Ralph, with whom he had often
+studied, and of whom he was exceedingly fond. Ralph gave out that he,
+too, was going to London to make arrangements for going into business
+for himself at Philadelphia. The young friends arrived. Franklin
+nineteen and Ralph a married man with two children. On reaching London
+Franklin learned, to his amazement and dismay, that the governor had
+deceived him, that no money was to be expected from him, and that he
+must go to work and earn his living at his trade. No sooner had he
+learned this than James Ralph gave him another piece of stunning
+intelligence; namely, that he had run away from his family and meant to
+settle in London as a poet and author.
+
+Franklin had ten pounds in his pocket, and knew a trade. Ralph had no
+money, and knew no trade. They were both strangers in a strange city.
+Now, in such circumstances, what would a mean, calculating young man
+have done? Reader, you know very well, without my telling you. What
+Franklin did was this: he shared his purse with his friend till his ten
+pounds were all gone; and having at once got to work at his trade, he
+kept on dividing his wages with Ralph until he had advanced him
+thirty-six pounds--half a year's income--not a penny of which was ever
+repaid. And this he did--the cold-blooded wretch!--because he could not
+help loving his brilliant, unprincipled comrade, though disapproving his
+conduct and sadly needing his money.
+
+Having returned to Philadelphia, he set up in business as a printer and
+editor, and, after a very severe effort, he got his business well
+established, and at last had the most profitable establishment of the
+kind in all America. During the most active part of his business life he
+always found some time for the promotion of public objects. He founded a
+most useful and public-spirited club; a public library, which still
+exists, and assisted in every worthy scheme. He was most generous to his
+poor relations, hospitable to his fellow-citizens, and particularly
+interested in his journeymen, many of whom he set up in business.
+
+The most decisive proof, however, which he ever gave that he did not
+overvalue money, was the retirement from a most profitable business for
+the purpose of having leisure to pursue his philosophical studies. He
+had been in business twenty years, and he was still in the prime of
+life--forty-six years of age. He was making money faster than any other
+printer on this continent. But being exceedingly desirous of spending
+the rest of his days in study and experiment, and having saved a
+moderate competency, he sold his establishment to his foreman on very
+easy terms, and withdrew. His estate, when he retired, was worth about a
+hundred thousand dollars. If he had been a lover of money, I am
+confident that he could and would have accumulated one of the largest
+fortunes in America. He had nothing to do but continue in business, and
+take care of his investments, to roll up a prodigious estate. But not
+having the slightest taste for needless accumulation, he joyfully laid
+aside the cares of business, and spent the whole remainder of his life
+in the services of his country; for he gave up his heart's desire of
+devoting his leisure to philosophy when his country needed him.
+
+Being in London when Captain Cook returned from his first voyage to the
+Pacific, he entered warmly into a beautiful scheme for sending a ship
+for the purpose of stocking the islands there with pigs, vegetables, and
+other useful animals and products. A hard, selfish man would have
+laughed such a project to scorn.
+
+In 1776, when he was appointed embassador of the revolted colonies to
+the French king, the ocean swarmed with British cruisers, General
+Washington had lost New York, and the prospects of the Revolution were
+gloomy in the extreme. Dr. Franklin was an old man of seventy, and might
+justly have asked to be excused from a service so perilous and
+fatiguing. But he did not. He went. And just before he sailed he got
+together all the money he could raise--about three thousand pounds--and
+invested it in the loan recently announced by Congress. This he did at a
+moment when few men had a hearty faith in the success of the Revolution.
+This he did when he was going to a foreign country that might not
+receive him, from which he might be expelled, and he have no country to
+return to. There never was a more gallant and generous act done by an
+old man.
+
+In France he was as much the main stay of the cause of his country as
+General Washington was at home.
+
+Returning home after the war, he was elected president of Pennsylvania
+for three successive years, at a salary of two thousand pounds a year.
+But by this time he had become convinced that offices of honor, such as
+the governorship of a State, ought not to have any salary attached to
+them. He thought they should be filled by persons of independent income,
+willing to serve their fellow-citizens from benevolence, or for the
+honor of it. So thinking, he at first determined not to receive any
+salary; but this being objected to, he devoted the whole of the salary
+for three years--six thousand pounds--to the furtherance of public
+objects. Part of it he gave to a college, and part was set aside for the
+improvement of the Schuylkill River.
+
+Never was an eminent man more thoughtful of people who were the
+companions of his poverty. Dr. Franklin, from amidst the splendors of
+the French court, and when he was the most famous and admired person in
+Europe, forgot not his poor old sister, Jane, who was in fact dependent
+on his bounty. He gave her a house in Boston, and sent her every
+September the money to lay in her Winter's fuel and provisions. He wrote
+her the kindest, wittiest, pleasantest letters. "Believe me, dear
+brother," she writes, "your writing to me gives me so much pleasure that
+the great, the very great, presents you have sent me give me but a
+secondary joy."
+
+How exceedingly absurd to call such a man "hard" and miserly, because he
+recommended people not to waste their money! Let me tell you, reader,
+that if a man means to be liberal and generous, he _must_ be economical.
+No people are so mean as the extravagant, because, spending all they
+have upon themselves, they have nothing left for others. Benjamin
+Franklin was the most consistently generous man of whom I have any
+knowledge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS MOTHER.
+
+
+THE MOTHER'S EDUCATION--THE SON'S TRAINING--DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL
+DUTIES.
+
+
+It was in the Spring of 1758 that the daughter of a distinguished
+professor of medicine in the University of Edinburgh changed her maiden
+name of Rutherford for her married name of Scott, having the happiness
+to unite her lot with one who was not only a scrupulously honorable man,
+but who, from his youth up, had led a singularly blameless life. Well
+does Coventry Patmore sing:
+
+    "Who is the happy husband? He,
+      Who, scanning his unwedded life,
+    Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
+      'Twas faithful to his future wife."
+
+Such a husband as this was the father of Sir Walter Scott, a writer to
+the signet (or lawyer) in large practice in Edinburgh. He had never been
+led from the right way; and when the less virtuously inclined among the
+companions of his early life in Edinburgh found that they could not
+corrupt him, they ceased after a little while to laugh at him, and
+learned to honor him and to confide in him, "which is certainly," says
+he who makes the record on the authority of Mrs. Scott herself, "a great
+inducement to young men in the outset of life to act a similar part." It
+does not appear that old Walter Scott sought for beauty of person in his
+bride, though no doubt the face he loved was more beautiful to him than
+that of the bonniest belle in Scotland; but beauty of mind and
+disposition she certainly had. Of her father it is told that, when in
+practice as "a physician, he never gave a prescription without silently
+invoking on it the blessing of Heaven, and the piety which dictated the
+custom had been inherited by his daughter.
+
+
+THE MOTHER'S' EDUCATION.
+
+
+Mrs. Scott's education, also, had been an excellent one--giving, besides
+a good general grounding, an acquaintance with literature, and not
+neglecting "the more homely duties of the needle and the account-book."
+Her manners, moreover (an important and too often neglected factor in a
+mother's influence over her children), were finished and elegant, though
+intolerably stiff in some respects, when compared with the manners and
+habits of to-day. The maidens of today can scarcely realize, for
+instance, the asperity of the training of their embryo
+great-grandmothers, who were always made to sit in so Spartanly upright
+a posture that Mrs. Scott, in her seventy-ninth year, boasted that she
+had never allowed her shoulders to touch the back of her chair!
+
+
+THE SON'S TRAINING.
+
+
+As young Walter was one of many children he could not, of course,
+monopolize his mother's attention; but probably she recognized the
+promise of his future greatness (unlike the mother of the duke of
+Wellington, who thought Arthur the family dunce), and gave him a special
+care; for, speaking of his early boyhood, he tells us: "I found much
+consolation in the partiality of my mother." And he goes on to say that
+she joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn to study
+poetry and works of imagination. Like the mothers of the Ettrick
+Shepherd and of Burns, she repeated to her son the traditionary ballads
+she knew by heart; and, so soon as he was sufficiently advanced, his
+leisure hours were usually spent in reading Pope's translation of Homer
+aloud to her, which, with the exception of a few ballads and some of
+Allan Ramsay's songs, was the first poetry he made acquaintance with. It
+must often have been with anxiety, and sometimes not without a struggle,
+that his mother--solicitous about every trifle which affected the
+training of her child--decided on the books which she was to place in
+his hands. She wished him to develop his intellectual faculties, but not
+at the expense of his spiritual; and romantic frivolity and mental
+dissipation on the one hand, and a too severe repression--dangerous in
+its after reaction--on the other, were the Scylla and Charybdis between
+which she had to steer. The ascetic Puritanism of her training and
+surroundings would naturally have led her to the narrower and more
+restrictive view, in which her husband, austerer yet, would have
+heartily concurred; but her broad sense, quickened by the marvelous
+insight that comes from maternal love, led her to adopt the broader,
+and, we may safely add, with Sir Walter's career and character before
+us, the better course. Her courage was, however, tempered with a wise
+discretion; and when he read to her she was wont, he says, to make him
+"pause upon those passages which expressed generous and worthy
+sentiments"--a most happy method of education, and a most effective one
+in the case of an impressionable boy. A little later, when he passed
+from the educational care of his mother to that of a tutor, his
+relations to literature changed, as the following passage from his
+autobiography will show: "My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a
+profane play or poem; and my mother had no longer the opportunity to
+hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, however, in her dressing-room,
+where I slept at one time, some odd volumes of Shakespeare; nor can I
+easily forget the rapture with which I sat up in my shirt reading them
+by the light of a fire in her apartment, until the bustle of the family
+rising from supper warned me that it was time to creep back to my bed,
+where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since 9 o'clock."
+This is a suggestive, as well as frank, story. Supposing for a moment
+that instead of Shakespeare the room had contained some of the volumes
+of verse and romance which, though denying alike the natural and the
+supernatural virtues, are to be found in many a Christian home, how
+easily might he have suffered a contamination of mind.
+
+
+DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTY.
+
+
+It has been proudly said of Sir Walter as an author that he never forgot
+the sanctities of domestic love and social duty in all that he wrote;
+and considering how much he did write, and how vast has been the
+influence of his work on mankind, we can scarcely overestimate the
+importance of the fact. Yet it might have been all wrecked by one little
+parental imprudence in this matter of books. And what excuse is there,
+after all, for running the terrible risk? Authors who are not fit to be
+read by the sons and daughters are rarely read without injury by the
+fathers and mothers; and it would be better by far, Savonarola-like, to
+make a bonfire of all the literature of folly, wickedness, and
+infidelity, than run the risk of injuring a child simply for the sake of
+having a few volumes more on one's shelves. In the balance of heaven
+there is no parity between a complete library and a lost soul. But this
+story has another lesson. It indicates once more the injury which may be
+done to character by undue limitations. Under the ill-considered
+restrictions of his tutor, which ran counter to the good sense of his
+mother, whose wisdom was justified by the event, Walter Scott might
+easily have fallen into tricks of concealment and forfeited his
+candor--that candor which developed into the noble probity which marked
+his conduct to the last. Without candor there can not be truth, and, as
+he himself has said, there can be no other virtue without truth.
+Fortunately for him, by the wise sanction his mother had given to his
+perusal of imaginative writings, she had robbed them of a mystery
+unhealthy in itself; and he came through these stolen readings
+substantially unharmed, because he knew that his fault was only the
+lighter one of sitting up when he was supposed to be lying down.
+
+Luckily this tutor's stern rule did not last long; and when a severe
+illness attacked the youth (then advanced to be a student at Edinburgh
+College) and brought him under his mother's charge once more, the bed on
+which he lay was piled with a constant succession of works of
+imagination, and he was allowed to find consolation in poetry and
+romance, those fountains which flow forever for the ardent and the
+young. It was in relation to Mrs. Scott's control of her son's reading
+that he wrote with gratitude, late in life, "My mother had good natural
+taste and great feeling." And after her death, in a letter to a friend,
+he paid her this tribute: "She had a mind peculiarly well stored. If I
+have been able to do any thing in the way of painting the past times, it
+is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She was a
+strict economist, which, she said, enabled her to be liberal. Out of her
+little income of about fifteen hundred dollars a year, she bestowed at
+least a third in charities; yet I could never prevail on her to accept
+of any assistance." Her charity, as well as her love for genealogy, and
+her aptitude for story-telling, was transmitted to her son. It found
+expression in him, not only in material gifts to the poor, but in a
+conscientious care and consideration for the feelings of others. This
+trait is beautifully exhibited by many of the facts recorded by Lockhart
+in his famous memoir, and also by a little incident, not included there,
+which I have heard Sir Henry Taylor tell, and which, besides
+illustrating the subject, deserves for its own sake a place in print.
+The great and now venerable author of "Philip Van Artevelde" dined at
+Abbotsford only a year or two before the close of its owner's life. Sir
+Walter had then lost his old vivacity, though not his simple dignity;
+but for one moment during the course of the evening he rose into
+animation, and it happened thus: There was a talk among the party of an
+excursion which was to be made on the following day, and during the
+discussion of the plans Miss Scott mentioned that two elderly maiden
+ladies, living in the neighborhood, were to be of the number, and hinted
+that their company would be a bore. The chivalrous kindliness of her
+father's heart was instantly aroused. "I can not call that
+good-breeding," he said, in an earnest and dignified tone--a rebuke
+which echoed the old-fashioned teaching on the duties of true politeness
+he had heard from his mother half a century before.
+
+We would gladly know more than we do of Mrs. Scott's attitude toward her
+son when first his _penchant_ for authorship was shown. That she smiled
+on his early evidences of talent, and fostered them, we may well
+imagine; and the tenderness with which she regarded his early
+compositions is indicated by the fact that a copy of verses, written in
+a boyish scrawl, was carefully preserved by her, and found, after her
+death, folded in a paper on which was inscribed, "My Walter's first
+lines, 1782." That she gloried in his successes when they came, we
+gather; for when speaking late in life to Dr. Davy about his brother Sir
+Humphrey's distinction, Sir Walter, doubtless drawing on his own home
+memories, remarked, "I hope, Dr. Davy, that your mother lived to see it;
+there must have been great pleasure in that to her." But with whatever
+zeal Mrs. Scott may have unfolded Sir Walter's mind by her training, by
+her praise, by her motherly enthusiasm, it is certain that, from first
+to last, she loved his soul, and sought its interest, in and above all.
+Her final present to him before she died was not a Shakespeare or a
+Milton, but an old Bible--the book she loved best; and for her sake Sir
+Walter loved it too.
+
+Happy was Mrs. Scott in having a son who in all things reciprocated the
+affection of his mother. With the first five-guinea fee he earned at the
+bar he bought a present for her--a silver taper-stand, which stood on
+her mantle-piece many a year; when he became enamored of Miss Carpenter
+he filially wrote to consult his mother about the attachment, and to beg
+her blessing upon it; when, in 1819, she died at an advanced age, he was
+in attendance at her side, and, full of occupations though he was, we
+find him busying himself to obtain for her body a beautifully situated
+grave. Thirteen years later he also rested from his labors. During the
+last hours of his lingering life he desired to be read to from the New
+Testament; and when his memory for secular poetry had entirely failed
+him, the words and the import of the sacred volume were still in his
+recollection, as were also some of the hymns of his childhood, which his
+grandson, aged six years, repeated to him. "Lockhart," he said to his
+son-in-law, "I have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good
+man; be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give
+you any comfort when you come to lie here."
+
+So passed the great author of "Waverley" away. And when, in due course,
+his executors came to search for his testament, and lifted up his desk,
+"we found," says one of them, "arranged in careful order a series of
+little objects, which had obviously been so placed there that his eye
+might rest on them every morning before he began his tasks." There were
+the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilet-table
+when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room; the silver
+taper-stand which the young advocate bought for her with his first fee;
+a row of small packets inscribed by her hand, and containing the hair of
+such of her children as had died before her; and more odds and ends of a
+like sort--pathetic tokens of a love which bound together for a little
+while here on earth, and binds together for evermore in heaven,
+Christian mother and son.
+
+      Sir Walter of the land
+      Of song and old romance,
+    Tradition in his cunning hand
+      Obedient as the lance
+
+      His valiant Black Knight bore,
+      Wove into literature
+    The legend, myth, and homely lore
+      Which now for us endure,
+
+      To charm our weary hours,
+      To rouse our stagnant hearts,
+    And leave the sense of new-born powers,
+      Which never more departs.
+
+      We thank him in the name
+      Of One who sits on high,
+    And aye abides in every fame
+      Which makes a brighter sky.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+ABIGAIL ADAMS
+
+(BORN 1744--DIED 1818.)
+
+
+THE WIFE OF OUR SECOND PRESIDENT--THE MOTHER OF OUR SIXTH.
+
+
+Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister, of Weymouth,
+Massachusetts, was one of the most noted women of our early history. She
+left a record of her heart and character, and to some extent a picture
+of the stirring times in which she lived, in the shape of letters which
+are of perennial value, especially to the young. "It was fashionable to
+ridicule female learning" in her day; and she says of herself in one of
+her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds in explanation,
+"I was always sick." When girls, however, were sent to school, their
+education seldom went beyond writing and arithmetic. But in spite of
+disadvantages, she read and studied in private, and by means of
+correspondence with relatives and others, cultivated her mind, and
+formed an easy and graceful style of writing.
+
+On the 25th of October, 1764, Miss Smith became the wife of John Adams,
+a lawyer of Braintree, the part of the town in which he lived being
+afterwards called Quincy, in honor of Mrs. Adams's maternal grandfather.
+Charles Francis Adams, her grandson, from whose memoir of her the
+material for this brief sketch is drawn, says that the ten years
+immediately following her marriage present little that is worth
+recording.
+
+But when the days of the Revolution came on, those times that tried
+men's souls, women were by no means exempt from tribulation, and they,
+too, began to make history. The strength of Mrs. Adams's affection for
+her husband may be learned from an extract from one of her letters: "I
+very well remember when Eastern circuits of the courts, which lasted a
+month, were thought an age, and an absence of three months intolerable;
+but we are carried from step to step, and from one degree to another, to
+endure that which we at first think impossible."
+
+In 1778 her husband went as one of the commissioners to France. During
+his absence Mrs. Adams managed, as she had often done before, both the
+household and the farm--a true wife and mother of the Revolution. "She
+was a farmer cultivating the land, and discussing the weather and the
+crops; a merchant reporting prices current and the rates of exchange,
+and directing the making up of invoices; a politician speculating upon
+the probabilities of peace and war; and a mother writing the most
+exalted sentiments to her son."
+
+John Quincy Adams, the son, in his twelfth year, was with his father in
+Europe. The following extracts are from letters to him, dated 1778-80:
+
+"'Tis almost four months since you left your native land, and embarked
+upon the mighty waters, in quest of a foreign country. Although I have
+not particularly written to you since, yet you may be assured you have
+constantly been upon my heart and mind.
+
+"It is a very difficult task, my dear son, for a tender parent to bring
+her mind to part with a child of your years going to a distant land; nor
+could I have acquiesced in such a separation under any other care than
+that of the most excellent parent and guardian who accompanied you. You
+have arrived at years capable of improving under the advantages you will
+be likely to have, if you do but properly attend to them. They are
+talents put into your hands, of which an account will be required of you
+hereafter; and being possessed of one, two, or four, see to it that you
+double your numbers.
+
+"The most amiable and most useful disposition in a young mind is
+diffidence of itself; and this should lead you to seek advice and
+instruction from him who is your natural guardian, and will always
+counsel and direct you in the best manner, both for your present and
+future happiness. You are in possession of a natural good understanding,
+and of spirits unbroken by adversity and untamed with care. Improve your
+understanding by acquiring useful knowledge and virtue, such as will
+render you an ornament to society, an honor to your country, and a
+blessing to your parents. Great learning and superior abilities, should
+you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation
+unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them. Adhere to
+those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled
+into your mind, and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for
+all your words and actions.
+
+"Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the
+precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of
+your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render
+many things unnecessary for me to write, which I might otherwise do; but
+the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and
+precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both
+parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear
+as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave
+in the ocean you have crossed, or that any untimely death crop you in
+your infant years, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless
+child.
+
+"You have entered early in life upon the great theater of the world,
+which is full of temptations and vice of every kind. You are not wholly
+unacquainted with history, in which you have read of crimes which your
+inexperienced mind could scarcely believe credible. You have been taught
+to think of them with horror, and to view vice as
+
+            'A monster of so frightful mien,
+    That, to be hated, needs but to be seen.'
+
+"Yet you must keep a strict guard upon yourself, or the odious monster
+will soon lose its terror by becoming familiar to you. The modern
+history of our own times furnishes as black a list of crimes as can be
+paralleled in ancient times, even if we go back to Nero, Caligula, or
+Caesar Borgia. Young as you are, the cruel war into which we have been
+compelled by the haughty tyrant of Britain and the bloody emissaries of
+his vengeance, may stamp upon your mind this certain truth, that the
+welfare and prosperity of all countries, communities, and, I may add,
+individuals, depend upon their morals. That nation to which we were once
+united, as it has departed from justice" eluded and subverted the wise
+laws which formerly governed it, and suffered the worst of crimes to go
+unpunished, has lost its valor, wisdom, and humanity, and, from being
+the dread and terror of Europe, has sunk into derision and infamy....
+
+"Some author, that I have met with, compares a judicious traveler to a
+river, that increases its stream the further it flows from its source;
+or to certain springs, which, running through rich veins of minerals,
+improve their qualities as they pass along. It will be expected of you,
+my son, that, as you are favored with superior advantages under the
+instructive eye of a tender parent, your improvement should bear some
+proportion to your advantages. Nothing is wanting with you but
+attention, diligence, and steady application. Nature has not been
+deficient.
+
+"These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the
+still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great
+characters are formed. Would Cicero have shone so distinguished an
+orator if he had not been roused, kindled, and inflamed by the tyranny
+of Catiline, Verres, and Mark Antony? The habits of a vigorous mind are
+formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of
+this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not
+the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great
+virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the
+heart, then those qualities, which would otherwise lie dormant, wake
+into life and form the character of the hero and statesman. War,
+tyranny, and desolation are the scourges of the Almighty, and ought no
+doubt to be deprecated. Yet it is your lot, my son, to be an eye-witness
+of these calamities in your own native land, and, at the same time, to
+owe your existence among a people who have made a glorious defense of
+their invaded liberties, and who, aided by a generous and powerful ally,
+with the blessing of Heaven, will transmit this inheritance to ages yet
+unborn.
+
+"Nor ought it to be one of the least of your incitements towards
+exerting every power and faculty of your mind, that you have a parent
+who has taken so large and active a share in this contest, and
+discharged the trust reposed in him with so much satisfaction as to be
+honored with the important embassy which at present calls him abroad.
+
+"The strict and inviolable regard you have ever paid to truth gives me
+pleasing hopes that you will not swerve from her dictates, but add
+justice, fortitude, and every manly virtue which can adorn a good
+citizen, do honor to your country, and render your parents supremely
+happy, particularly your ever affectionate mother.
+
+... "The only sure and permanent foundation of virtue is religion. Let
+this important truth be engraven upon your heart. And also, that the
+foundation of religion is the belief of the one only God, and a just
+sense of his attributes, as a being infinitely wise, just, and good, to
+whom you owe the highest reverence, gratitude, and adoration; who
+superintends and governs all nature, even to clothing the lilies of the
+field, and hearing the young ravens when they cry; but more particularly
+regards man, whom he created after his own image, and breathed into him
+an immortal spirit, capable of a happiness beyond the grave; for the
+attainment of which he is bound to the performance of certain duties,
+which all tend to the happiness and welfare of society, and are
+comprised in one short sentence, expressive of universal benevolence,
+'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'
+
+"Justice, humanity, and benevolence, are the duties you owe to society
+in general. To your country the same duties are incumbent upon you, with
+the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and
+life itself for its defense and security. To your parents you owe love,
+reverence, and obedience to all just and equitable commands. To
+yourself,--here, indeed, is a wide field to expatiate upon. To become
+what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you, attend
+to some precepts and instructions from the pen of one who can have no
+motive but your welfare and happiness, and who wishes in this way to
+supply to you the personal watchfulness and care which a separation from
+you deprived you of at a period of life when habits are easiest acquired
+and fixed; and though the advice may not be new, yet suffer it to obtain
+a place in your memory, for occasions may offer, and perhaps some
+concurring circumstances unite, to give it weight and force.
+
+"Suffer me to recommend to you one of the most useful lessons of
+life--the knowledge and study of yourself. There you run the greatest
+hazard of being deceived. Self-love and partiality cast a mist before
+the eyes, and there is no knowledge so hard to be acquired, nor of more
+benefit when once thoroughly understood. Ungoverned passions have aptly
+been compared to the boisterous ocean, which is known to produce the
+most terrible effects. 'Passions are the elements of life,' but elements
+which are subject to the control of reason. Whoever will candidly
+examine themselves, will find some degree of passion, peevishness, or
+obstinacy in their natural tempers. You will seldom find these
+disagreeable ingredients all united in one; but the uncontrolled
+indulgence of either is sufficient to render the possessor unhappy in
+himself, and disagreeable to all who are so unhappy as to be witnesses
+of it, or suffer from its effects.
+
+"You, my dear son, are formed with a constitution feelingly alive; your
+passions are strong and impetuous; and, though I have sometimes seen
+them hurry you into excesses, yet with pleasure I have observed a
+frankness and generosity accompany your efforts to govern and subdue
+them. Few persons are so subject to passion but that they can command
+themselves when they have a motive sufficiently strong; and those who
+are most apt to transgress will restrain themselves through respect and
+reverence to superiors, and even, where they wish to recommend
+themselves, to their equals. The due government of the passions has been
+considered in all ages as a most valuable acquisition. Hence an inspired
+writer observes, 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty;
+and he that ruleth his spirit, than he than taketh a city.' This
+passion, co-operating with power, and unrestrained by reason, has
+produced the subversion of cities, the desolation of countries, the
+massacre of nations, and filled the world with injustice and oppression.
+Behold your own country, your native land, suffering from the effects of
+lawless power and malignant passions, and learn betimes, from your own
+observation and experience, to govern and control yourself. Having once
+obtained this self-government, you will find a foundation laid for
+happiness to yourself and usefulness to mankind. 'Virtue alone is
+happiness below;' and consists in cultivating and improving every good
+inclination, and in checking and subduing every propensity to evil. I
+have been particular upon the passion of anger, as it is generally the
+most predominant passion at your age, the soonest excited, and the least
+pains are taken to subdue it;
+
+    'What composes man, can man destroy.'"
+
+With such a mother to counsel him, one is led to ask, how could John
+Quincy Adams _help_ becoming a noble-minded and great man? Who wonders
+that, with good natural endowments and his excellent privileges, coupled
+with maternal training, he fitted himself to fill the highest office in
+the gift of a free people?
+
+In June, 1784, Mrs. Adams sailed for London, to join her husband, who
+was then our Minister at the Court of St. James. While absent, she
+visited France and Netherlands; resided for a time in the former
+country; and returned with her knowledge of human nature, of men,
+manners, etc., enlarged; disgusted with the splendor and sophistications
+of royalty, and well prepared to appreciate the republican simplicity
+and frankness of which, she was herself a model. While Mr. Adams was
+Vice-president and President, she never laid aside her singleness of
+heart and that sincerity and unaffected dignity which had won for her
+many friends before her elevation, and which, in spite of national
+animosity, conquered the prejudices and gained the heart of the
+aristocracy of Great Britain. But her crowning virtue was her Christian
+humility, which is beautifully exemplified in a letter which she wrote
+to Mr. Adams, on the 8th of February, 1797, "the day on which the votes
+for President were counted, and Mr. Adams, as Vice-president, was
+required by law to announce himself the President elect for the ensuing
+term:"
+
+    "'The sun is dressed in brightest beams,
+    To give thy honors to the day.'
+
+"And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have
+this day to declare yourself head of a nation. 'And now, O Lord, my God,
+thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an
+understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before
+this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is
+able to judge this thy so great a people?' were the words of a royal
+sovereign; and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief
+magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of
+royalty.
+
+"My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally absent;
+and my petitions to Heaven are, that 'the things which make for peace
+may not be hidden from your eyes.' My feelings are not those of pride or
+ostentation, upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the
+obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with
+it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself,
+with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to
+this great people, shall be the daily prayer of your A.A."
+
+From her husband's retirement from the Presidency in 1801, to the close
+of her life in 1818, Mrs. Adams remained constantly at Quincy. Cheerful,
+contented, and happy, she devoted her last years, in that rural
+seclusion, to the reciprocities of friendship and love, to offices of
+kindness and charity, and, in short, to all those duties which tend to
+ripen the Christian for an exchange of worlds.
+
+But it would be doing injustice to her character and leaving one of her
+noblest deeds unrecorded, to close without mentioning the influence for
+good which she exerted over Mr. Adams, and her part in the work of
+making him what he was. That he was sensible of the benignant influence
+of wives, may be gathered from the following letter, which was addressed
+to Mrs. Adams from Philadelphia, on the 11th of August, 1777:
+
+"I think I have sometimes observed to you in conversation, that upon
+examining the biography of illustrious men you will generally find some
+female about them, in the relation of mother or wife or sister, to whose
+instigation a great part of their merit is to be ascribed. You will find
+a curious example of this in the case of Aspasia, the wife of Pericles.
+She was a woman of the greatest beauty and the first genius. She taught
+him, it is said, his refined maxims of policy, his lofty imperial
+eloquence, nay, even composed the speeches on which so great a share of
+his reputation was founded.
+
+"I wish some of our great men had such wives. By the account in your
+last letter, it seems the women in Boston begin to think themselves able
+to serve their country. What a pity it is that our generals in the
+northern districts had not Aspasias to their wives!
+
+"I believe the two Howes have not very great women to their wives. If
+they had, we should suffer more from their exertions than we do. This is
+our good fortune. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of
+Philadelphia a long time ago."
+
+While Mr. Adams was wishing that some of our great men had such wives as
+Aspasia, he had such a wife, was himself such a man, and owed half his
+greatness to _his_ Aspasia. The exalted patriotism and cheerful piety
+infused into the letters she addressed to him during the long night of
+political uncertainty that hung over the country, strengthened his
+courage, fired his nobler feelings, nerved his higher purposes, and,
+doubtless, greatly contributed to make him one of the chief pillars of
+the young republic. All honor to a brave wife, and not less heroic
+mother. If her husband and son kept the ship of state from the rocks,
+the light which guided them was largely from her.
+
+      Heroic wife and mother,
+      Whose days were toil and grace,
+    Thy glory gleams for many another,
+      And shines in many a face.
+
+      The heart, as of a nation,
+      Throbs with thy tender love;
+    And all our drama of salvation
+      Thou watchest from above.
+
+      Our days, which yet are evil,
+      And only free in part,
+    Have need of things with Heaven co-eval,
+      Of Faith's unbounded heart.
+
+      God grant the times approaching
+      Be full of glad events,
+    No unheroic aims reproaching
+      Our line of Presidents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TWO NEIGHBOURS.
+
+
+WHAT THEY GOT OUT OF LIFE.
+
+
+It was just two o'clock of one of the warmest of the July afternoons.
+Mrs. Hill had her dinner all over, had put on her clean cap and apron,
+and was sitting on the north porch, making an unbleached cotton shirt
+for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore unbleached shirts at harvest-time.
+Mrs. Hill was a thrifty housewife. She had pursued this economical
+avocation for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to
+"_shu_!" away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about
+the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden shutting
+down of a great blue cotton umbrella caused her to drop her work, and
+exclaim:
+
+"Well, now, Mrs. Troost! who would have thought you ever _would_ come to
+see me!"
+
+"Why, I have thought a great many times I would come," said the visitor,
+stamping her little feet--for she was a little woman--briskly on the
+blue flag-stones, and then dusting them nicely with her white cambric
+handkerchief, before venturing on the snowy floor of Mrs. Hill. And,
+shaking hands, she added, "It _has_ been a good while, for I remember
+when I was here last I had my Jane with me--quite a baby then, if you
+mind--and she is three years old now."
+
+"Is it possible?" said Mrs. Hill, untying the bonnet-strings of her
+neighbor, who sighed as she continued, "Yes, she was three along in
+February;" and she sighed again, more heavily than before, though there
+was no earthly reason that I know of why she should sigh, unless,
+perhaps, the flight of time, thus brought to mind, suggested the
+transitory nature of human things.
+
+Mrs. Hill laid the bonnet of Mrs. Troost on her "spare bed," and covered
+it with a little pale-blue crape shawl, kept especially for such
+occasions; and, taking from the drawer of the bureau a large fan of
+turkey feathers, she presented it to her guest, saying, "A very warm
+day, isn't it?"
+
+"O, dreadful, dreadful! It seems as hot as a bake oven; and I suffer
+with the heat all Summer, more or less. But it's a world of suffering;"
+and Mrs. Troost half closed her eyes, as if to shut out the terrible
+reality.
+
+"Hay-making requires sunshiny weather, you know; so we must put up with
+it," said Mrs. Hill; "besides, I can mostly find some cool place about
+the house; I keep my sewing here on the porch, and, as I bake my bread
+or cook my dinner, manage to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from
+getting overheated; and then, too, I get a good many stitches taken in
+the course of the day."
+
+"This _is_ a nice cool place--completely curtained with vines," said
+Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again. "They must have cost you a great deal
+of pains."
+
+"O, no! no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves; they only
+require to be planted. I will save seed for you this Fall, and next
+Summer you can have your porch as shady as mine."
+
+"And if I do, it would not signify," said Mrs. Troost; "I never get time
+to sit down from one week's end to another; besides, I never had any
+luck with vines. Some folks don't, you know."
+
+Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that might be
+supposed to move about with little agility, and to find excessive warmth
+rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy, cheerful temperament; and
+when it rained she tucked up her skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled
+about the same as ever, saying to herself, "This will make the grass
+grow," or, "It will bring on the radishes," or something else equally
+consolatory.
+
+Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who looked as
+though she could move about nimbly at any .season; but, as she herself
+often said, she was a poor, unfortunate creature, and pitied herself a
+great deal, as she was in justice bound to do, for nobody else cared,
+she said, how much she had to bear.
+
+They were near neighbors, these good women, but their social
+interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent occurrence, for
+sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like other folks; sometimes it
+was too hot and sometimes it was too cold; and then, again, nobody
+wanted to see her, and she was sure she didn't want to go where she
+wasn't wanted. Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no
+other woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood it was
+called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure compensated for
+the pains it cost her. It was, however, as she said, a barn of a place,
+with half the rooms unfurnished, partly because they had no use for
+them, and partly because they were unable to get furniture. So it stood
+right in the sun, with no shutters, and no trees about it, and Mrs.
+Troost said she didn't suppose it ever would have. She was always
+opposed to building it; but she never had her way about any thing.
+Nevertheless, some people said Mr. Troost had taken the dimensions of
+his house with his wife's apron-strings--but that may have been slander.
+
+While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs. Hill sewed on
+the last button, and, shaking the loose threads from the completed
+garment, held it up a moment to take a satisfactory view, as it were,
+and folded it away.
+
+"Well, did you ever!" said Mrs. Troost. "You have made half a shirt, and
+I have got nothing at all done. My hands sweat so I can not use the
+needle, and it's no use to try."
+
+"Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk in the garden."
+
+So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and, taking a little tin basin
+in her hand, the two went to the garden--Mrs. Troost under the shelter
+of the blue umbrella, which she said was so heavy that it was worse than
+nothing. Beans, radishes, raspberries, and currants, besides many other
+things, were there in profusion, and Mrs. Troost said every thing
+flourished for Mrs. Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds.
+"And you have bees, too--don't they sting the children, and give you a
+great deal of trouble? Along in May, I guess it was, Troost [Mrs. Troost
+always called her husband so] bought a hive, or, rather, he traded a
+calf for one--a nice, likely calf, too, it was--and they never did us a
+bit of good;" and the unhappy woman sighed.
+
+"They _do_ say," said Mrs. Hill, sympathizingly, "that bees won't work
+for some folks; in case their king dies they are very likely to quarrel
+and not do well; but we have never had any ill luck with ours; and we
+last year sold forty dollars' worth of honey, besides having all we
+wanted for our own use. Did yours die off, or what, Mrs. Troost?"
+
+"Why," said the ill-natured visitor, "my oldest boy got stung one day,
+and being angry, upset the hive, and I never found it out for two or
+three days; and, sending Troost to put it up in its place, there was not
+a bee to be found high or low."
+
+"You don't tell! the obstinate little creatures! But they must be
+treated kindly, and I have heard of their going off for less things."
+
+The basin was by this time filled with currants, and they returned to
+the house. Mrs. Hill, seating herself on the sill of the kitchen door,
+began to prepare her fruit for tea, while Mrs. Troost drew her chair
+near, saying, "Did you ever hear about William McMicken's bees?"
+
+Mrs. Hill had never heard, and, expressing an anxiety to do so, was told
+the following story:
+
+"His wife, you know, was she that was Sally May, and it's an old
+saying--
+
+    'To change the name and not the letter,
+    You marry for worse and not for better.'
+
+"Sally was a dressy, extravagant girl; she had her bonnet 'done up'
+twice a year always, and there was no end to her frocks and ribbons and
+fine things. Her mother indulged her in every thing; she used to say
+Sally deserved all she got; that she was worth her weight in gold. She
+used to go everywhere, Sally did. There was no big meeting that she was
+not at, and no quilting that she didn't help to get up. All the girls
+went to her for the fashions, for she was a good deal in town at her
+Aunt Hanner's, and always brought out the new patterns. She used to have
+her sleeves a little bigger than anybody else, you remember, and then
+she wore great stiffeners in them--la, me! there was no end to her
+extravagance.
+
+"She had a changeable silk, yellow and blue, made with a surplus front;
+and when she wore that, the ground wasn't good enough for her to walk
+on, so some folks used to say; but I never thought Sally was a bit proud
+or lifted up; and if any body was sick there was no better-hearted
+creature than she; and then, she was always good-natured as the day was
+long, and would sing all the time at her work. I remember, along before
+she was married, she used to sing one song a great deal, beginning
+
+    'I've got a sweetheart with bright black eyes;'
+
+and they said she meant William McMicken by that, and that she might not
+get him after all--for a good many thought they would never make a
+match, their dispositions were so contrary. William was of a dreadful
+quiet turn, and a great home body; and as for being rich, he had nothing
+to brag of, though he was high larnt and followed the river as dark
+sometimes."
+
+Mrs. Hill had by this time prepared her currants, and Mrs. Troost paused
+from her story while she filled the kettle and attached the towel to the
+end of the well-sweep, where it waved as a signal for Peter to come to
+supper.
+
+"Now, just move your chair a leetle nearer the kitchen door, if you
+please," said Mrs. Hill, "and I can make up my biscuit and hear you,
+too."
+
+Meantime, coming to the door with some bread-crumbs in her hands, she
+began scattering them on the ground and calling, "Biddy, biddy,
+biddy--chicky, chicky, chicky"--hearing which, a whole flock of poultry
+was around her in a minute; and, stooping down, she secured one of the
+fattest, which, an hour afterward, was broiled for supper.
+
+"Dear me, how easily you get along!" said Mrs. Troost.
+
+And it was some time before she could compose herself sufficiently to
+take up the thread of her story. At length, however, she began with--
+
+"Well, as I was saying, nobody thought William McMicken would marry
+Sally May. Poor man! they say he is not like himself any more. He may
+get a dozen wives, but he'll never get another Sally. A good wife she
+made him, for all she was such a wild girl.
+
+"The old man May was opposed to the marriage, and threatened to turn
+Sally, his own daughter, out of house and home; but she was headstrong,
+and would marry whom she pleased; and so she did, though she never got a
+stitch of new clothes, nor one thing to keep house with. No; not one
+single thing did her father give her when she went away but a hive of
+bees. He was right down ugly, and called her Mrs. McMicken whenever he
+spoke to her after she was married; but Sally didn't seem to mind it,
+and took just as good care of the bees as though they were worth a
+thousand dollars. Every day in Winter she used to feed
+them--maple-sugar, if she had it; and if she had not, a little Muscovade
+in a saucer or some old broken dish.
+
+"But it happened one day that a bee stung her on the hand--the right
+one, I think it was--and Sally said right away that it was a bad sign;
+and that very night she dreamed that she went out to feed her bees, and
+a piece of black crape was tied on the hive. She felt that it was a
+token of death, and told her husband so, and she told me and Mrs. Hanks.
+No, I won't be sure she told Mrs. Hanks, but Mrs. Hanks got to hear it
+some way."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Hill, wiping the tears away with her apron, "I really
+didn't know, till now, that poor Mrs. McMicken was dead."
+
+"O, she is not dead," answered Mrs. Troost, "but as well as she ever
+was, only she feels that she is not long for this world." The painful
+interest of her story, however, had kept her from work, so the afternoon
+passed without her having accomplished much--she never could work when
+she went visiting.
+
+Meantime Mrs. Hill had prepared a delightful supper, without seeming to
+give herself the least trouble. Peter came precisely at the right
+moment, and, as he drew a pail of water, removed the towel from the
+well-sweep, easily and naturally, thus saving his wife the trouble.
+
+"Troost would never have thought of it," said his wife; and she finished
+with an "Ah, well!" as though all her tribulations would be over before
+long.
+
+As she partook of the delicious honey she was reminded of her own upset
+hive; and the crispred radishes brought thoughts of the weedy garden at
+home; so that, on the whole, her visit, she said, made her perfectly
+wretched, and she should have no heart for a week; nor did the little
+basket of extra nice fruit which Mrs. Hill presented her as she was
+about to take leave heighten her spirits in the least. Her great heavy
+umbrella, she said, was burden enough for her.
+
+"But Peter will take you in the carriage," insisted Mrs. Hill.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Troost, as though charity was offered her; "it will be
+more trouble to get in and out than to walk"--and so she trudged home,
+saying, "Some folks are born to be lucky."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+HORACE GREELEY.
+
+(BORN 1811--DIED 1872.)
+
+
+THE MOLDER OF PUBLIC OPINION--THE BRAVE JOURNALIST.
+
+
+Mr. Greeley lived through the most eventful era in our public history
+since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. For the eighteen years
+between the, formation of the Republican party, in 1854, and his sudden
+death in 1872, the stupendous civil convulsions through which we have
+passed have merely translated into acts, and recorded in our annals, the
+fruits of his thinking and the strenuous vehemence of his moral
+convictions. Whether he was right or wrong, is a question on which
+opinions will differ; but no person conversant with our history will
+dispute the influence which this remarkable and singularly endowed man
+has exerted in shaping the great events of our time. Whatever may be the
+ultimate judgment of other classes of his countrymen respecting the real
+value of his services, the colored race, when it becomes sufficiently
+educated to appreciate his career, must always recognize him as the
+chief author of their emancipation from slavery and their equal
+citizenship. Mr. Lincoln, to whom their ignorance as yet gives the chief
+credit, was a chip tossed on the surface of a resistless wave.
+
+
+THE MOLDER OF PUBLIC OPINION.
+
+
+It was Mr. Greeley, more than any other man, who let loose the winds
+that lifted the waters and drove forward their foaming, tumbling
+billows. Mr. Greeley had lent his hand to stir public feeling to its
+profoundest depths before Mr. Lincoln's election became possible. He
+contributed more than any other man to defeat the compromise and
+settlement for which Mr. Lincoln and his chief adviser, Mr. Seward, were
+anxious in the exciting, expectant Winter of 1860-61, and to precipitate
+an avoidable bloody war. It was he, carrying a majority of the
+Republican party with him, who kept insisting, in the early stages of
+the conflict, that the emancipation of the slaves was an indispensable
+element of success. Mr. Lincoln stood out and resisted, ridiculing an
+emancipation proclamation as 'a bull against the comet.' Mr. Greeley
+roused the Republican party by that remarkable leader signed by his name
+and addressed to Mr. Lincoln, headed 'The Prayer of Twenty Millions,'
+the effect of which the President tried to parry by a public letter to
+the editor of the _Tribune_, written with all the dexterous ingenuity
+and telling aptness of phrase of which Mr. Lincoln was so great a
+master. But Mr. Greeley victoriously carried the Republican party, which
+he had done more than all other men to form, with him; and within two
+months after Mr. Lincoln's reply to 'The Prayer of Twenty Millions,' his
+reluctance was overborne, and he was constrained to issue his celebrated
+Proclamation, which committed the Government to emancipation, and staked
+the success of the war on that issue. This culminating achievement, the
+greatest of Mr. Greeley's life, is the most signal demonstration of his
+talents. It was no sudden, random stroke. It was the effect of an
+accumulated, ever-rising, widening, deepening stream of influence, which
+had been gathering volume and momentum for years, and whose piling
+waters at last burst through and bore down every barrier. Mr. Greeley
+had long been doing all in his power to swell the tide of popular
+feeling against slavery, and it was chiefly in consequence of the
+tremendous force he had given to the movement that that barbarous
+institution was at last swept away. It is the most extraordinary
+revolution ever accomplished by a single mind with no other instrument
+than a public journal.
+
+It may be said, indeed, that Mr. Greeley had many zealous coadjutors.
+But so had Luther able coadjutors in the Protestant Reformation; so had
+Cromwell in the Commonwealth; so had Washington in our Revolution; so
+had Cobden in the repeal of the corn laws. They are nevertheless
+regarded as the leading minds in the respective innovations which they
+championed; and by as just a title Mr. Greeley will hold the first place
+with posterity on the roll of emancipation. This is the light in which
+he will be remembered so long as the history of our times shall be read.
+
+It may be said, again, that Mr. Greeley's efforts in this direction were
+aided by the tendencies of his time. But so were Luther's, and
+Cromwell's, and Washington's, and everybody's who has left a great mark
+on his age, and accomplished things full of consequences to future
+generations. The first qualification for exerting this kind of fruitful
+influence is for the leader to be in complete sympathy with the
+developing tendencies of his own epoch. This is necessary to make him
+the embodiment of its spirit, the representative of its ideas, the
+quickener of its passions, the reviver of its courage in adverse turns
+of fortune, the central mind whom other advocates of the cause consult,
+whose action they watch in every new emergency, and whose guidance they
+follow because he has resolute, unflagging confidence to lead. In the
+controversies in which Mr. Greeley has been behind his age, or stood
+against the march of progress, even he has accomplished little. Since
+Henry Clay's death, he has been the most noted and active champion of
+Protection; but that cause steadily declined until the war forced the
+government to strain every source of revenue, and since the close of the
+war free-trade ideas have made surprising advances in Mr. Greeley's own
+political party. On this subject he was the disciple of dead masters,
+and hung to the skirts of a receding cause; but in this school he
+acquired that dexterity in handling the weapons of controversy which
+proved so effective when he advanced from the position of a disciple to
+that of a master, and led a movement in the direction towards which the
+rising popular feeling was tending. Mr. Greeley's name will always be
+identified with the extirpation of negro slavery as its most
+distinguished, powerful, and effective advocate.
+
+
+THE BRAVE JOURNALIST.
+
+
+This is his valid title to distinction and lasting fame. Instrumental to
+this, and the chief means of its attainment, he founded a public journal
+which grew, under his direction, to be a great moving force in the
+politics and public thought of our time. This alone would have attested
+his energy and abilities; but this is secondary praise. It is the use he
+made of his journal when he had created it, the moral ends to which
+(besides making it a vehicle of news and the discussion of ephemeral
+topics) he devoted it, that will give him his peculiar place in history.
+If he had had no higher aim than to supply the market for current
+intelligence, as a great merchant supplies the market for dry-goods, he
+would have deserved to rank with the builders-up of other prosperous
+establishments by which passing contemporary wants were supplied, but
+would have had no claim on the remembrance of coming generations. But he
+regarded his journal not primarily as a property, but as the instrument
+of high moral and political ends; an instrument whose great potency for
+good or ill he fully comprehended, and for whose salutary direction he
+felt a corresponding responsibility. His simple tastes, inexpensive
+habits, his contempt for the social show and parade which are the chief
+use made of wealth, and the absorption of his mind in other aims, made
+it impossible for him to think of the _Tribune_ merely as a source of
+income, and he always managed it mainly with a view to make it an
+efficient organ for diffusing opinions which he thought conducive to the
+public welfare. It was this which distinguished Mr. Greeley from the
+founders of other important journals, who have, in recent years, been
+taken from us. With him the moral aim was always paramount, the
+pecuniary aim subordinate. Journalism, as he looked upon it, was not an
+end, but a means to higher ends. He may have had many mistaken and some
+erratic opinions on particular subjects; but the moral earnestness with
+which he pursued his vocation, and his constant subordination of private
+interest to public objects, nobly atone for his occasional errors.
+
+Among the means by which Mr. Greeley gained, and so long held, the first
+place among American journalists, was his manner of writing. His
+negative merits as a writer were great; and it would be surprising to
+find these negative merits so rare as to be a title to distinction, if
+observation did not force the faults he avoided so perpetually upon our
+notice. He had no verbiage. We do not merely mean by this that he never
+used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he
+kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning
+and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did
+not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the
+fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith
+of his argument began; and had the secret, possessed by few writers, of
+stopping the moment he was done; leaving his readers no chaff to sift
+out from the simple wheat. This perfect absence of cloudy irrelevance
+and encumbering superfluity was one source of his popularity as a
+writer. His readers had to devour no husks to get at the kernel of what
+he meant.
+
+Besides these negative recommendations, Mr. Greeley's style had positive
+merits of a very high order. The source of these was in the native
+structure of his mind; no training could have conferred them; and it was
+his original mental qualities, and not any special culture, that pruned
+his writing of verbiage and redundancies. Whatever he saw, he saw with
+wonderful distinctness. Whether it happened to be a sound idea or a
+crotchet, it stood before his mind with the clearness of an object in
+sunlight. He never groped at and around it, like one feeling in the
+dark. He saw on which side he could lay hands on it at once with the
+firmest grasp. It was his vividness of conception which made Mr. Greeley
+so clear and succinct a writer. He knew precisely what he would be at,
+and he hastened to say it in the fewest words. His choice of language,
+though often homely, and sometimes quaint or coarse, was always adapted
+to his purpose. He had a great command of racy phrases in common use,
+and frequently gave them an unexpected turn which enlivened his style as
+by a sudden stroke of wit or grotesque humor. But these touches were
+rapid, never detained him; he kept grappling with his argument, and
+hurried on.
+
+This peculiar style was aided by the ardor of his feelings and his
+vehement moral earnestness. Bent on convincing, he tried to flash his
+meaning on the minds of his readers in the readiest and manliest way;
+and he was so impatient to make them see the full force of his main
+points that he stripped them as naked as he could. This combined
+clearness of perception, strength of conviction, and hurrying ardor of
+feeling, were the sources of a style which enabled him to write more
+than any other journalist of his time, and yet always command attention.
+But he is a model which none can successfully imitate without his
+strongly marked individuality and peculiarities of mental structure. We
+have mentioned his occasional coarseness; but it was merely his
+preference of strong direct expression to dainty feebleness; he was
+never vulgar.
+
+Mr. Greeley has contributed to the surprising growth and development of
+journalism in our time, chiefly by his successful efforts to make it a
+guide of public opinion, as well as a chronicle of important news. In
+his hands, it was not merely a mirror which indifferently reflects back
+the images of all objects on which it is turned, but a creative force; a
+means of calling into existence a public opinion powerful enough to
+introduce great reforms and sweep down abuses. He had no faith in
+purposeless journalism, in journalism which has so little insight into
+the tendencies of the time that it shifts its view from day to day in
+accommodation to transient popular caprices. No great object is
+accomplished without constancy of purpose, and a guide of public opinion
+can not be constant unless he has a deep and abiding conviction of the
+importance of what he advocates. Mr. Greeley's remarkable power, when
+traced back to its main source, will be found to have consisted chiefly
+in that vigorous earnestness of belief which held him to the strenuous
+advocacy of measures which he thought conducive to the public welfare,
+whether they were temporarily popular or not. Journalism may perhaps
+gain more success as a mercantile speculation by other methods; but it
+can be respected as a great moral and political force only in the hands
+of men who have the talents, foresight, and moral earnestness which fit
+them to guide public opinion. It is in this sense that Mr. Greeley was
+our first journalist, and nobody can successfully dispute his rank, any
+more than Mr. Bennett's could be contested in the kind that seeks to
+float on the current instead of directing its course. The one did most
+to render our American journals great vehicles of news, the other to
+make them controlling organs of opinion. Their survivors in the
+profession have much to learn from both.--_New York World_.
+
+      Knight of the ready pen,
+      Soldier without a sword,
+    Such eyes hadst thou for other men,
+      So true and grand a word!
+
+      As Caesar led his legions
+      Triumphant over Gaul,
+    And through still wilder, darker regions,
+      So thou didst lead us all!
+
+      Until we saw the chains
+      Which bound our brothers' lives,
+    And heard the groans and felt the pains,
+      Which come from wearing gyves.
+
+      To brave heroic men
+      The false no more was true;
+    And what the Nation needed then
+      Could any soldier do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+WENDELL PHILLIPS
+
+(BORN 1811--DIED 1884.)
+
+
+THE TIMES WHEN HE APPEARED--"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"--A FLAMING ADVOCATE OF
+LIBERTY--LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT--POWER TO DISCERN THE RIGHT--THE
+MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT.
+
+
+Long chapters of history are illumined as by as electric light in the
+following characteristic address from his pulpit by Henry Ward Beecher,
+at the time the name of the great philanthropist was added to the roll
+of American heroes.
+
+
+THE TIMES WHEN HE APPEARED.
+
+
+The condition of the public mind throughout the North at the time I came
+to the consciousness of public affairs and was studying my profession
+may be described, in one word, as the condition of imprisoned moral
+sense. All men, almost, agreed with all men that slavery was wrong; but
+what can we do? The compromises of our fathers include us and bind us to
+fidelity to the agreements that had been made in the formation of our
+Constitution. Our confederation first, and our Constitution after. These
+were regarded everywhere as moral obligations by men that hated slavery.
+"The compromises of the Constitution must be respected," said the priest
+in the pulpit, said the politician in the field, said the statesmen in
+public halls; and men abroad, in England especially, could not
+understand what was the reason of the hesitancy of President Lincoln and
+of the people, when they had risen to arms, in declaring at once the end
+for which arms were taken and armies gathered to be the emancipation of
+the slaves. There never has been an instance in which, I think, the
+feelings and the moral sense of so large a number of people have been
+held in check for reasons of fidelity to obligations assumed in their
+behalf. There never has been in history another instance more notable,
+and I am bound to say, with all its faults and weaknesses, more noble.
+The commercial question--that being the underlying moral element--the
+commercial question of the North very soon became, on the subject of
+slavery, what the industrial and political question of the South had
+made it. It corrupted the manufacturer and the merchant. Throughout the
+whole North every man that could make any thing regarded the South as
+his legal, lawful market; for the South did not manufacture; it had the
+cheap and vulgar husbandry of slavery. They could make more money with
+cotton than with corn, or beef, or pork, or leather, or hats, or
+wooden-ware; and Northern ships went South to take their forest timbers,
+and brought them to Connecticut to be made into wooden-ware and
+ax-helves and rake-handles, and carried them right back to sell to the
+men whose axes had cut down the trees. The South manufactured nothing
+except slaves. It was a great manufacture, that; and the whole market of
+the North was bribed. The harness-makers, the wagon-makers, the
+clock-makers, makers of all manner of implements, of all manner of
+goods, every manufactory, every loom as it clanked in the North said,
+"Maintain," not slavery, but the "compromises of the Constitution." The
+Constitution--that was the veil under which all these cries were
+continually uttered.
+
+The distinction between the Anti-slavery men and Abolitionists was
+simply this: The Abolitionists disclaimed the obligation to maintain
+this government and the compromises of the Constitution, and the
+Anti-slavery men recognized the binding obligation and sought the
+emancipation of slaves by the more circuitous and gradual influence; but
+Abolitionism covered both terms. It was regarded, however, throughout
+the North as a greater sin than slavery itself, and none of you that are
+under thirty years of age can form any adequate conception of the public
+sentiment and feeling during the days of my young manhood. A man that
+was known to be an Abolitionist had better be known to have the plague.
+Every door was shut to him. If he was born under circumstances that
+admitted him to the best society, he was the black sheep of the family.
+If he aspired by fidelity, industry, and genius, to good society, he was
+debarred. "An Abolitionist" was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any
+young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of
+age. It was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was
+enough to expel a man from Church communion, if he insisted on praying
+in the prayer-meeting for the liberation of the slaves. The Church was
+dumb in the North, not in the West. The great publishing societies that
+were sustained by the contributions of the Churches were absolutely
+dumb.
+
+
+"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"
+
+
+It was at the beginning of this Egyptian era in America that the young
+aristocrat of Boston appeared. His blood came through the best colonial
+families. He was an aristocrat by descent and by nature; a noble one,
+but a thorough aristocrat. All his life and power assumed that guise. He
+was noble; he was full of kindness to inferiors; he was willing to be,
+and do, and suffer for them; but he was never of them, nor equaled
+himself to them. He was always above them, and his gifts of love were
+always the gifts of a prince to his subjects. All his life long he
+resented every attack on his person and on his honor, as a noble
+aristocrat would. When they poured the filth of their imaginations upon
+him, he cared no more for it than the eagle cares what the fly is
+thinking about him away down under the cloud. All the miserable
+traffickers, and all the scribblers, and all the aristocratic boobies of
+Boston were no more to him than mosquitoes are to the behemoth or to the
+lion. He was aristocratic in his pride, and lived higher than most men
+lived. He was called of God as much as ever Moses and the prophets were;
+not exactly for the same great end, but in consonance with those great
+ends. You remember, my brother, when Lovejoy was infamously slaughtered
+by a mob in Alton?--blood that has been the seed of liberty all over
+this land! I remember it. At this time it was that Channing lifted up
+his voice and declared that the moral sentiment of Boston ought to be
+uttered in rebuke of that infamy and cruelty, and asking for Faneuil
+Hall in which to call a public meeting. This was indignantly refused by
+the Common Council of Boston. Being a man of wide influence, he gathered
+around about himself enough venerable and influential old citizens of
+Boston to make a denial of their united request a perilous thing; and
+Faneuil Hall was granted to call a public meeting to express itself on
+this subject of the murder of Lovejoy. The meeting was made up largely
+of rowdies. They meant to overawe and put down all other expressions of
+opinion except those that then rioted with the riotous. United States
+District-attorney Austin (when Wendell Phillips's name is written in
+letters of light on one side of the monument, down low on the other
+side, and spattered with dirt, let the name of Austin also be written)
+made a truculent speech, and justified the mob, and ran the whole career
+of the sewer of those days and justified non-interference with slavery.
+Wendell Phillips, just come to town as a young lawyer, without at
+present any practice, practically unknown, except to his own family,
+fired with the infamy, and, feeling called of God in his soul, went upon
+the platform. His first utterances brought down the hisses of the mob.
+He was not a man very easily subdued by any mob. They listened as he
+kindled and poured on that man Austin the fire and lava of a volcano,
+and he finally turned the course of the feeling of the meeting.
+Practically unknown when the sun went down one day, when it rose next
+morning all Boston was saying, "Who is this fellow? Who is this
+Phillips?" A question that has never been asked since.
+
+
+A FLAMING ADVOCATE OF LIBERTY.
+
+
+Thenceforth he has been a flaming advocate of liberty, with singular
+advantages over all other pleaders. Mr. Garrison was not noted as a
+speaker, yet his tongue was his pen. Mr. Phillips, not much given to the
+pen, his pen was his tongue; and no other like speaker has ever graced
+our history. I do not undertake to say that he surpassed all others. He
+had an intense individuality, and that intense individuality ranked him
+among the noblest orators that have ever been born to this continent, or
+I may say to our mother-land. He adopted in full the tenets of Garrison,
+which were excessively disagreeable to the whole public mind. The ground
+which he took was that which Garrison took. Seeing that the conscience
+of the North was smothered and mute by reason of the supposed
+obligations to the compromises of the Constitution, Garrison declared
+that the compromises of the Constitution were covenants with hell, and
+that no man was bound to observe them. This extreme ground Mr. Phillips
+also took,--immediate, unconditional, universal emancipation, at any
+cost whatsoever. That is Garrisonism; that is Wendell Phillipsism; and
+it would seem as though the Lord rather leaned that way, too.
+
+I shall not discuss the merits of Mr. Garrison or Mr. Phillips in every
+direction. I shall say that while the duty of immediate emancipation
+without conditions was unquestionably the right ground, yet in the
+providence of God even that could not be brought to pass except through
+the mediation of very many events. It is a remarkable thing that Mr.
+Phillips and Mr. Garrison both renounced the Union and denounced the
+Union in the hope of destroying slavery; whereas the providence of God
+brought about the love of the Union when it was assailed by the South,
+and made the love of the Union the enthusiasm that carried the great war
+of emancipation through. It was the very antithesis of the ground which
+they took. Like John Brown, Mr. Garrison; like John Brown, Mr. Phillips;
+of a heroic spirit, seeking the great and noble, but by measures not
+well adapted to secure the end.
+
+Little by little the controversy spread. I shall not trace it. I am
+giving you simply the atmosphere in which he sprang into being and into
+power. His career was a career of thirty or forty years of undiminished
+eagerness. He never quailed nor flinched, nor did he ever at any time go
+back one step or turn in the slightest degree to the right or left. He
+gloried in his cause, and in that particular aspect of it which had
+selected him; for he was one that was called rather than one that chose.
+He stood on this platform. It is a part of the sweet and pleasant
+memories of my comparative youth here, that when the mob refused to let
+him speak in the Broadway Tabernacle before it moved up-town--the old
+Tabernacle--William A. Hall, now dead, a fervent friend and
+Abolitionist, had secured the Graham Institute wherein to hold a meeting
+where Mr. Phillips should be heard. I had agreed to pray at the opening
+of the meeting. On the morning of the day on which it was to have taken
+place, I was visited by the committee of that Institute--excellent
+gentlemen, whose feelings will not be hurt now, because they are all now
+ashamed of it; they are in heaven. They visited me to say that in
+consequence of the great peril that attended a meeting at the Institute,
+they had withdrawn the liberty to use it, and paid back the money, and
+that they called simply to say that it was out of no disrespect to me,
+but from fidelity to their supposed trust. Well, it was a bitter thing.
+
+
+LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT.
+
+
+If there is any thing on earth that I am sensitive to, it is the
+withdrawing of the liberty of speech and thought. Henry C. Bowen, who
+certainly has done some good things in his life-time, said to me: "You
+can have Plymouth Church if you want it." "How?" "It is the rule of the
+church trustees that the church may be let by a majority vote when we
+are convened; but if we are not convened, then every trustee must give
+his assent in writing. If you choose to make it a personal matter, and
+go to every trustee, you can have it." He meanwhile undertook, with Mr.
+Hall, to put new placards over the old ones, notifying men quietly that
+the meeting was to be held here, and distributed thousands and tens of
+thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I
+went to the trustees man by man. The majority of the trustees very
+cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to
+decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship. "You
+and I will break, if you don't give me this permission." And they
+signed. So the meeting glided from the Graham Institute to this house. A
+great audience assembled. We had detectives in disguise, and every
+arrangement made to handle the subject in a practical form if the crowd
+should undertake to molest us. The Rev. Dr. R.S. Storrs consented to
+come and pray, for Mr. Wendell Phillips was by marriage a near and
+intimate friend and relation of his. The reporters were here; when were
+they ever not?
+
+Mr. Phillips began his lecture, and, you may depend upon it, by this
+time the lion was in him, and he went careering on. Hie views were
+extreme; he made them extravagant. I remember at one point--for he was a
+man without bluster, serene, self-poised, never disturbed in the
+least--he made an affirmation that was very bitter, and the cry arose
+over the whole congregation. He stood still, with a cold, bitter smile
+in his eye, and waited till they subsided, when he repeated it with more
+emphasis. Again the roar went through. He waited and repeated it, if
+possible, more intensely, and he beat them down with that one sentence
+until they were still, and let him go on.
+
+
+POWER TO DISCERN THE RIGHT.
+
+
+The power to discern right amid all the wrappings of interest and all
+the seductions of ambition was singularly his. To choose the lowly for
+their sake, to abandon all favor, all power, all comfort, all ambition,
+all greatness--that was his genius and glory. He confronted the spirit
+of the nation and of the age. I had almost said he set himself against
+nature, as if he had been a decree of God over-riding all these other
+insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not
+called to be a universal orator any more than he was a universal
+thinker. In literature and in history widely read, in person
+magnificent, in manners most accomplished, gentle as a babe, sweet as a
+new-blown rose, in voice clear and silvery, yet he was not a man of
+tempests, he was not an orchestra of a hundred instruments, he was not
+an organ, mighty and complex. The nation slept, and God wanted a
+trumpet, sharp, wide-sounding, narrow and intense; and that was Mr.
+Phillips. The long-roll is not particularly agreeable in music, or in
+times of war, but it is better than flutes or harps when men are in a
+great battle, or are on the point of it. His eloquence was penetrating
+and alarming. He did not flow as a mighty Gulf Stream; he did not dash
+upon this continent as the ocean does; he was not a mighty rushing
+river. His eloquence was a flight of arrows, sentence after sentence
+polished, and most of them burning. He slung them one after the other,
+and where they struck they slew. Always elegant, always awful. I think
+his scorn is and was as fine as I ever knew it in any human being. He
+had that sublime sanctuary in his pride that made him almost insensitive
+to what would by other men be considered obloquy. It was as if he said
+every day in himself: "I am not what they are firing at. I am not there,
+and I am not that. It is not against me. I am infinitely superior to
+what they think me to be. They do not know me." It was quiet and
+unpretentious, but it was there. Conscience and pride were the two
+concurrent elements of his nature.
+
+
+THE MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT.
+
+
+He lived to see the slave emancipated, but not by moral means. He lived
+to see the sword cut the fetter. After this had taken place, he was too
+young to retire, though too old to gather laurels of literature or to
+seek professional honors. The impulse of humanity was not at all abated.
+His soul still flowed on for the great under-masses of mankind, though,
+like the Nile, it split up into scores of mouths, and not all of them
+were navigable. After a long and stormy life his sun went down in glory.
+All the English-speaking people on the globe have written among the
+names that shall never die the name of that scoffed, detested,
+mob-beaten, persecuted wretch--Wendell Phillips. Boston, that persecuted
+and would have slain him, is now exceedingly busy in building his tomb
+and rearing his statue. The men that would not defile their lips with
+his name are thanking God to-day that he lived.
+
+He has taught some lessons--lessons that the young will do well to take
+heed to--that the most splendid gifts and opportunities and ambitions
+may be best used for the dumb and lowly. His whole life is a rebuke to
+the idea that we are to climb to greatness by climbing up on the backs
+of great men, that we are to gain strength by running with the currents
+of life, that we can from without add any thing to the great within that
+constitutes man. He poured out the precious ointment of his soul upon
+the feet of that diffusive Jesus who suffers here in his poor and
+despised ones. He has taught young ambitions, too, that the way to glory
+is the way often-times of adhesion simply to principle, and that
+popularity and unpopularity are not things to be known or considered. Do
+right and rejoice. If to do right will bring you under trouble, rejoice
+in it that you are counted worthy to suffer with God and the providences
+of God in this world.
+
+He belongs to the race of giants, not simply because he was, in and of
+himself a great soul, but because he had bathed in the providence of God
+and came forth scarcely less than a god; because he gave himself to the
+work of God upon earth, and inherited thereby, or had reflected upon
+him, some of the majesty of his Master. When pigmies are all dead, the
+noble countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look forth, radiant as
+a rising sun, a sun that will never set. He has become to us a lesson,
+his death an example, his whole history an encouragement to manhood--and
+to heroic manhood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MARY WORDSWORTH
+
+(BORN 1770--DIED 1859.)
+
+
+THE KINDLY WIFE OF THE GREAT POET.
+
+    "A creature not too bright or good
+    For human nature's daily food."
+
+
+The last thing that would have occurred to Mrs. Wordsworth would have
+been that her departure, or any thing about her, would be publicly
+noticed amidst the events of a stirring time. Those who knew her well
+regarded her with as true a homage as they ever rendered to any member
+of the household, or to any personage of the remarkable group which will
+be forever traditionally associated with the Lake District; but this
+reverence, genuine and hearty as it was, would not, in all eyes, be a
+sufficient reason for recording more than the fact of her death. It is
+her survivorship of such a group which constitutes an undisputed public
+interest in her decease. With her closes a remarkable scene in the
+history of the literature of our century. The well-known cottage, mount,
+and garden at Rydal will be regarded with other eyes when shut up or
+transferred to new occupants. With Mrs. Wordsworth, an old world has
+passed away before the eyes of the inhabitants of the district, and a
+new one succeeds, which may have its own delights, solemnities, honors,
+and graces, but which can never replace the familiar one that is gone.
+There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady--blind,
+deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but _she_ was not mournful, any
+more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden
+her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago
+that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake
+District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to
+let one be ready to leave it. Within a few years the beloved daughter
+was gone, and then the aged husband, and then the son-in-law, and then
+the devoted friend, Mr. Wordsworth's publisher, Mr. Moxon, who paid his
+duty occasionally by the side of her chair; then she became blind and
+deaf. Still her cheerfulness was indomitable. No doubt, she would in
+reality have been "willing to go," whenever called upon, throughout her
+long life; but she liked life to the end. By her disinterestedness of
+nature, by her fortitude of spirit, and her constitutional elasticity
+and activity, she was qualified for the honor of surviving her
+household--nursing and burying them, and bearing the bereavement which
+they were vicariously spared. She did it wisely, tenderly, bravely, and
+cheerfully; and then she will be remembered accordingly by all who
+witnessed the spectacle.
+
+It was by the accident, so to speak, of her early friendship with
+Wordsworth's sister, that her life became involved with the poetic
+element which her mind would hardly have sought for itself in another
+position. She was the incarnation of good sense, as applied to the
+concerns of the every-day world. In as far as her marriage and course of
+life tended to infuse a new elevation into her views of things, it was a
+blessing; and, on the other hand, in as far as it infected her with the
+spirit of exclusiveness, which was the grand defect of the group in its
+own place, it was hurtful; but that very exclusiveness was less an evil
+than an amusement, after all. It was rather a serious matter to hear the
+poet's denunciation of the railway, and to read his well-known sonnets
+on the desecration of the Lake region by the unhallowed presence of
+commonplace strangers; and it was truly painful to observe how the
+scornful and grudging mood spread among the young, who thought they were
+agreeing with Wordsworth in claiming the vales and lakes as a natural
+property for their enlightened selves. But it was so unlike Mrs.
+Wordsworth, with her kindly, cheery, generous turn, to say that a green
+field, with buttercups, would answer all the purposes of Lancashire
+operatives, and that they did not know what to do with themselves when
+they came among the mountains, that the innocent insolence could do no
+harm. It became a fixed sentiment when she alone survived to uphold it,
+and one demonstration of it amused the whole neighborhood in a
+good-natured way. "People from Birthwaite" were the bugbear--Birthwaite
+being the end of the railway. In the Summer of 1857, Mrs. Wordsworth's
+companion told her (she being then blind) that there were some strangers
+in the garden--two or three boys on the mount, looking at the view.
+"Boys from Birthwaite," said the old lady, in the well-known tone, which
+conveyed that nothing good could come from Birthwaite. When the
+strangers were gone, it appeared that they were the Prince of Wales and
+his companions. Making allowance for prejudices, neither few nor small,
+but easily dissolved when reason and kindliness had opportunity to work,
+she was a truly wise woman, equal to all occasions of action, and
+supplying other persons' needs and deficiencies.
+
+In the "Memoirs of Wordsworth" it is stated that she was the original of
+
+    "She was a phantom of delight;"
+
+and some things in the next few pages look like it; but for the greater
+part of the poet's life it was certainly believed by some, who ought to
+know, that that wonderful description related to another who flitted
+before his imagination in earlier days than those in which he discovered
+the aptitude of Mary Hutchinson to his own needs. The last stanza is
+very like her; and her husband's sonnet to the painter of her portrait,
+in old age, discloses to us how the first stanza might be also, in days
+beyond the ken of the existing generation.
+
+Of her early sorrows, in the loss of two children and a beloved sister,
+who was domesticated with the family, there are probably no living
+witnesses. It will never be forgotten, by those who saw it, how the late
+dreary train of afflictions was met. For many years Wordsworth's sister
+Dorothy was a melancholy charge. Mrs. Wordsworth was wont to warn any
+rash enthusiasts for mountain-walking by the spectacle before them. The
+adoring sister would never fail her brother; and she destroyed her
+health, and then her reason, by exhausting walks and wrong remedies for
+the consequences. Forty miles in a day was not a singular feat of
+Dorothy's. During the long years of this devoted creature's helplessness
+she was tended with admirable cheerfulness and good sense. Thousands of
+lake tourists must remember the locked garden-gate when Miss Wordsworth
+was taking the air, and the garden-chair going round and round the
+terrace, with the emaciated little woman in it, who occasionally called
+out to strangers and amused them with her clever sayings. She outlived
+the beloved Dora, Wordsworth's only surviving daughter.
+
+After the lingering illness of that daughter (Mrs. Quillinan), the
+mother encountered the dreariest portion, probably, of her life. Her
+aged husband used to spend the long Winter evenings in grief and
+tears--week after week, month after month. Neither of them had eyes for
+reading. He could not be comforted. She, who carried as tender a
+maternal heart as ever beat, had to bear her own grief and his too. She
+grew whiter and smaller, so as to be greatly changed in a few months;
+but this was the only expression of what she endured, and he did not
+discover it. When he, too, left her, it was seen how disinterested had
+been her trouble. When his trouble had ceased, she, too, was relieved.
+She followed his coffin to the sacred corner of Grasmere churchyard,
+where lay now all those who had once made her home. She joined the
+household guests on their return from the funeral, and made tea as
+usual. And this was the disinterested spirit which carried her through
+the last few years, till she had just reached the ninetieth. Even then
+she had strength to combat disease for many days. Several times she
+rallied and relapsed; and she was full of alacrity of mind and body as
+long as exertion of any kind was possible. There were many eager to
+render all duty and love--her two sons, nieces, and friends, and a whole
+sympathizing neighborhood.
+
+The question commonly asked by visitors to that corner of Grasmere
+churchyard was: Where would _she_ be laid when the time came? The space
+was so completely filled. The cluster of stones told of the little
+children who died a long life-time ago; of the sisters--Sarah Hutchinson
+and Dorothy Wordsworth; and of Mr. Quillinan, and his two wives, Dora
+lying between her husband and father, and seeming to occupy her mother's
+rightful place. And Hartley Coleridge lies next the family group; and
+others press closely round. There is room, however. The large gray
+stone, which bears the name of William Wordsworth, has ample space left
+for another inscription; and the grave beneath has ample space also for
+his faithful life-companion.
+
+Not one is left now of the eminent persons who rendered that cluster of
+valleys so eminent as it has been. Dr. Arnold went first, in the vigor
+of his years. Southey died at Keswick, and Hartley Coleridge on the
+margin of Rydal Lake; and the Quillinans under the shadow of Loughrigg;
+and Professor Wilson disappeared from Elleray; and the aged Mrs.
+Fletcher from Lancrigg; and the three venerable Wordsworths from Rydal
+Mount.
+
+The survivor of all the rest had a heart and a memory for the solemn
+_last_ of every thing. She was the one to inquire of about the last
+eagle in the district, the last pair of ravens in any crest of rocks,
+the last old dalesman in any improved spot, the last round of the last
+peddler among hills where the broad white road has succeeded the green
+bridal-path. She knew the district during the period between its first
+recognition, through Gray's "Letters," to its complete publicity in the
+age of railways. She saw, perhaps, the best of it. But she contributed
+to modernize and improve it, though the idea of doing so probably never
+occurred to her. There were great people before to give away Christmas
+bounties, and spoil their neighbors, as the established alms-giving of
+the rich does spoil the laboring class, which ought to be above that
+kind of aid. Mrs. Wordsworth did infinitely more good in her own way,
+and without being aware of it. An example of comfortable thrift was a
+greater boon to the people round than money, clothes, meat, or fuel. The
+oldest residents have long borne witness that the homes of the neighbors
+have assumed a new character of order and comfort, and wholesome
+economy, since the poet's family lived at Rydal Mount. It used to be a
+pleasant sight when Wordsworth was seen in the middle of a hedge,
+cutting switches for half a dozen children, who were pulling at his
+cloak, or gathering about his heels; and it will long be pleasant to
+family friends to hear how the young wives of half a century learned to
+make home comfortable by the example of the good housewife at the Mount,
+who never was above letting her thrift be known.
+
+Finally, she who had noted so many last survivors was herself the last
+of a company more venerable than eagles, or ravens, or old-world yeomen,
+or antique customs. She would not, in any case, be the first forgotten.
+As it is, her honored name will live for generations in the traditions
+of the valleys round. If she was studied as the poet's wife, she came
+out so well from that investigation that she was contemplated for
+herself; and the image so received is her true monument. It will be
+better preserved in her old-fashioned neighborhood than many monuments
+which make a greater show.
+
+    "She was a phantom of delight
+    When first she gleamed upon my sight;
+    A lovely apparition, sent
+    To he a moment's ornament;
+    Her eyes, as stars of twilight fair;
+    Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
+    But all things else about her drawn
+    From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
+    A dancing shape, an image gay,
+    To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
+           *       *       *       *       *
+    And now I see, with eye serene,
+    The very pulse of the machine;
+    A being breathing thoughtful breath,
+    A traveler between life and death;
+    The reason firm, the temperate will,
+    Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
+    A perfect woman, nobly planned,
+    To warn, to comfort, and command;
+    And yet a spirit still and bright,
+    With something of an angel light."
+
+          HARRIET MARTINEAU IN 1859.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+MADAME MALIBRAN.
+
+(BORN 1808--DIED 1836.)
+
+
+HER CAREER AS A SINGER--KINDNESS OF HEART.
+
+
+Marie Felicita Garcia, who died at the early age of twenty-eight, was
+one of the greatest singers the world has ever known. Born at Paris in
+1808, according to some biographers at Turin, she was the daughter of
+Manuel Garcia, the famous Spanish tenor singer, by whom she was so
+thoroughly trained that she made her first public appearance in London
+March 25, 1826, and achieved a remarkable and instant success.
+
+She sang with wonderful acceptance in different parts of England, and in
+the Autumn of the same year came to America as prima donna of an opera
+company under the management of her father. In New York her success was
+without precedent. In the memory of many aged people there she still
+holds her place as the Queen of Song.
+
+In the following year she married Eugene Malibran, an elderly French
+merchant, under whose name she was ever afterwards known.
+
+Returning to Europe, she made her first appearance in Paris January 14,
+1828, where she added other jewels to the singer's crown.
+
+We can not follow her throughout her brilliant career, but must hasten
+on to the closing scenes of her life.
+
+In May, 1836, she fell from her horse and was seriously injured. Not
+considering the matter in its true aspect, she kept her engagements
+during the Summer, and in September appeared in England, at the
+Manchester Musical Festival, though warned by her physician to desist.
+As the result of the imprudence a nervous fever set in, and she died
+September 23d, 1836.
+
+In one of the many notices of this great singer, these words are found:
+
+"Madame Malibran's voice was a mezzo-soprano of great volume and purity,
+and had been brought to absolute perfection by the severe training of
+her father. Her private character was irreproachable. Few women have
+been more beloved for their amiability, generosity, and professional
+enthusiasm. Her intellect was of a high order, and the charms of her
+conversation fascinated all who were admitted into the circle of her
+intimate friends. Her benefactions amounted to such considerable sums
+that her friends were frequently obliged to interfere for the purpose of
+regulating her finances."
+
+Many stories are told, which show her kindness of heart. The following
+is one of pathetic interest:
+
+In a humble room in one of the poorest streets of London, Pierre, a
+faithful French boy, sat humming by the bedside of his sick mother.
+There was no bread in the closet, and for the whole day he had not
+tasted food. Yet he sat humming to keep up his spirits. Still at times
+he thought of his loneliness and hunger, and he could scarcely keep the
+tears from his eyes; for he knew that nothing would be so grateful to
+his poor invalid mother as a good, sweet orange, and yet he had not a
+penny in the world.
+
+The little song he was singing was his own--one he had composed, both
+air and words--for the child was a genius.
+
+He went to the window, and, looking out, saw a man putting up a great
+bill with yellow letters, announcing that Madame Malibran would sing
+that night in public.
+
+"O, if I could only go!" thought little Pierre; and then pausing a
+moment, he clasped his hands, his eyes lighted with a new hope.
+
+Running to the little stand, he smoothed his yellow curls, and taking
+from a little box some old, stained paper, gave one eager glance at his
+mother, who slept, and ran speedily from the house.
+
+"Who did you say was waiting for me?" said the madame to her servant; "I
+am already worn out with company."
+
+"It's only a very pretty little boy, with yellow curls, who said if he
+can just see you he is sure you will not be sorry, and he will not keep
+you a moment."
+
+"O, well, let him come in!" said the beautiful singer, with a smile; "I
+can never refuse children."
+
+Little Pierre came in, his hat under his arm, and in his hand a little
+roll of paper. With manliness unusual for a child, he walked straight to
+the lady, and, bowing, said:
+
+"I came to see you because my mother is very sick, and we are too poor
+to get food and medicine. I thought, perhaps, that if you would sing my
+little song at some of your grand concerts, may be some publisher would
+buy it for a small sum, and so I could get food and medicine for my
+mother."
+
+The beautiful woman arose from her seat. Very tall and stately she was.
+She took the little roll from his hand and lightly hummed the air.
+
+"Did you compose it?" she asked; "you, a child! And the words? Would you
+like to come to my concert?" she asked.
+
+"O yes!" and the boy's eyes grew bright with happiness; "but I couldn't
+leave my mother."
+
+"I will send somebody to take care of your mother for the evening, and
+here is a crown with which you may go and get food and medicine. Here is
+also one of my tickets. Come to-night; that will admit you to a seat
+near me."
+
+Almost beside himself with joy, Pierre bought some oranges, and many a
+little luxury besides, and carried them home to the poor invalid,
+telling her, not without tears, of his good fortune.
+
+When evening came, and Pierre was admitted to the concert hall, he felt
+that never in his life had he been in so great a place. The music, the
+myriad lights, the beauty, the flashing of diamonds and rustling of
+silks bewildered his eyes and brain.
+
+At last she came, and the child sat with his glance riveted on her
+glorious face. Could he believe that the grand lady, all blazing with
+jewels, and whom every body seemed to worship, would really sing his
+little song?
+
+Breathless he waited; the band--the whole band--struck up a plaintive
+little melody. He knew it, and clasped his hands for joy. And O, how she
+sang it! It was so simple, so mournful. Many a bright eye dimmed with
+tears, and naught could be heard but the touching words of that little
+song--O, so touching!
+
+Pierre walked home as if he were moving on the air.
+
+What cared he for money now? The greatest singer in all Europe had sung
+his little song, and thousands had wept at his grief.
+
+The next day he was frightened at a visit from Madame Malibran. She laid
+her hand on his yellow curls, and, turning to the sick woman, said,
+"Your little boy, madame, has brought you a fortune. I was offered this
+morning, by the best publisher in London, $1,500 for his little song;
+and, after he has realized a certain amount from the sale, little Pierre
+here is to share the profits. Madame, thank God that your son has a gift
+from heaven."
+
+The noble-hearted singer and the poor woman wept together. As to Pierre,
+always mindful of Him who watches over the tried and tempted, he knelt
+down by his mother's bedside and uttered a simple prayer, asking God's
+blessing on the kind lady who had deigned to notice their affliction.
+
+The memory of that prayer made the singer more tender-hearted, and she,
+who was the idol of England's nobility, went about doing good. And in
+her early, happy death, he who stood beside her bed and smoothed her
+pillow, and lightened her last moments by his undying affection, was
+little Pierre of former days, now rich, accomplished, and the most
+talented composer of the day.
+
+      O singer of the heart,
+      The heart that never dies!
+    The Lord's interpreter thou art,
+      His angel from the skies.
+
+      Thy work on earth is great
+      As his who saves a soul,
+    Or his who guides the ship of state,
+      When mountain-billows roll.
+
+      The life of Heaven comes down
+      In gleams of grace and truth;
+    Sad mortals see the shining crown
+      Of sweet, perennial youth.
+
+      The life of God, in song
+      Becomes the life of man;
+    Ashamed is he of sin and wrong
+      Who hears a Malibran!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+GARFIELD.--MAXIMS.
+
+
+GATHERED FROM HIS SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, LETTERS, ETC.
+
+
+I would rather be beaten in right than succeed in wrong.
+
+I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man. I never meet a
+ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute,
+for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned under his coat.
+
+Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but, nine times out of ten,
+the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard
+and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance, I
+never knew a man to be drowned who was worth the saving.
+
+If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible
+substitute for it.
+
+We can not study nature profoundly without bringing ourselves into
+communion with the spirit of art which pervades and fills the universe.
+
+If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire
+better than another, it is a brave man; it is a man who dares to look
+the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.
+
+It is one of the precious mysteries of sorrow that it finds solace in
+unselfish thought.
+
+Every character is the joint product of nature and nurture.
+
+It has been fortunate that most of our greatest men have left no
+descendants to shine in the borrowed luster of a great name.
+
+An uncertain currency, that goes up and down, hits the laborer, and hits
+him hard. It helps him last and hurts him first.
+
+We no longer attribute the untimely death of infants to the sin of Adam,
+but to bad nursing and ignorance.
+
+The granite hills are not so changeless and abiding as the restless sea.
+
+In their struggle with the forces of nature, the ability to labor was
+the richest patrimony of the colonists.
+
+Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe--human or divine. A
+law is no law without coercion behind it.
+
+For the noblest man who lives there still remains a conflict.
+
+We hold reunions, not for the dead; for there is nothing in all the
+earth that you and I can do for the dead. They are past our help and
+past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give them no
+immortality. They do not need us, but for ever and for evermore we need
+them.
+
+Throughout the whole web of national existence we trace the golden
+thread of human progress toward a higher and better estate.
+
+Heroes did not make our liberties, but they reflected and illustrated
+them.
+
+After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit
+its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells
+its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its
+chief elements of destruction.
+
+It matters little what may be the forms of national institution if the
+life, freedom, and growth of society are secured.
+
+Finally, our great hope for the future--our great safeguard against
+danger--is to be found in the general and thorough education of our
+people, and in the virtue which accompanies such education.
+
+The germ of our political institutions, the primary cell from which they
+were evolved, was in the New England town, and the vital force, the
+informing soul, of the town was the town meeting, which, for all local
+concerns, was kings, lords, and commons in all.
+
+It is as much the duty of all good men to protect and defend the
+reputation of worthy public servants as to detect public rascals.
+
+Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing.
+
+If you are not too large for the place, you are too small for it.
+
+Young men talk of trusting to the spur of the occasion. That trust is
+vain. Occasions can not make spurs. If you expect to wear spurs, you
+must win them. If you wish to use them, you must buckle them to your own
+heels before you go into the fight.
+
+Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of thought ever invented by
+man, and its literature has never been equaled in purity of style and
+boldness of expression.
+
+Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose
+feet were shod with wool.
+
+What the arts are to the world of matter, literature is to the world of
+mind.
+
+History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.
+
+The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every
+nation is a canto and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing
+along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the
+discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian,
+philosopher, and historian--the humble listener--there has been a divine
+melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to
+come.
+
+Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that
+are grown in darkness disappear like owls and bats before the light of
+day.
+
+Liberty can be safe only when suffrage is illuminated by education.
+
+Parties have an organic life and spirit of their own, an individuality
+and character which outlive the men who compose them; and the spirit and
+traditions of a party should be considered in determining their fitness
+for managing the affairs of the nation.
+
+      Of Garfield's finished days,
+      So fair, and all too few,
+    Destruction which at noonday strays
+      Could not the work undo.
+
+      O martyr, prostrate, calm!
+      I learn anew that pain
+    Achieves, as God's subduing psalm,
+      What else were all in vain.
+
+      Like Samson in his death
+      With mightiest labor rife,
+    The moments of thy halting breath
+      Were grandest of thy life.
+
+      And now amid the gloom
+      Which pierces mortal years,
+    There shines a star above thy tomb
+      To smile away our tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+WHAT I CARRIED TO COLLEGE.
+
+
+A REMINISCENCE AT FORTY--PICTURES OF RURAL LIFE.
+
+
+    Nobody has brought me a kiss to-day,
+    As forty comes marching along life's way;
+
+    At least, only such as came in a letter,--
+    And two hundred leagues from home, the debtor!
+
+    So out of my life I will dig a treasure,
+    And feast on a reminiscent pleasure.
+
+    Our old New England folks, you know,
+    Little favor to kissing were wont to show.
+
+    It smacked, they thought, too much of Satan,
+    Whose hook often has a pleasant bate on.
+
+    And even as token of purity's passion,
+    Sometimes, I think, it was out of fashion.
+
+    So at least in the home my boyhood knew,
+    And of other homes, no doubt, it was true.
+
+    My grandsire and grandma, of the olden school,
+    Were strict observers of the proper rule.
+
+    And from New-Year on to the end of December,
+    A kiss is something I do not remember.
+
+    It seemed, I suppose, an abomination,
+    Somewhat like a Christmas celebration,
+
+    Or a twelfth-day pudding in English style,
+    Whose plums are sweet as a maiden's smile.
+
+    Hush! fountains New England fathers quaffed at
+    Were surely something not to be laughed at.
+
+    They drank, the heavens above and under,
+    Eternity's abiding wonder.
+
+    And here, I confess, in the joy of the present,
+    The thought of those days is sacredly pleasant.
+
+    Grandma, with the cares of the household on her,
+    In the morning smoked in the chimney corner.
+
+    She hung the tea-kettle filled with water
+    While still asleep was her youngest daughter.
+
+    Ah! there were reasons, good and plenty,
+    Why she should indulge that baby of twenty.
+
+    The rest were all courted and married and flown,
+    And that little birdie was left alone.
+
+    Grandmother, when she had finished her smoking,
+    Bustled about--she never went poking--
+
+    And fried the pork, and made the tea,
+    And pricked the potatoes, if done to see;
+
+    While grandsire finished his chapter of snores,
+    And uncle and I were doing the chores.
+
+    When breakfast was over, the Bible was read,
+    And a prayer I still remember said.
+
+    The old folks in reverence bowed them down,
+    As those who are mindful of cross and crown.
+
+    My uncle and aunt, who were unconverted,
+    Their right to sit or stand asserted.
+
+    And I, I fear, to example true,
+    The part of a heathen acted too.
+
+    But there was always for me a glory,
+    Morning and night, in that Bible story.
+
+    The heroes and saints of the olden time
+    In beautiful vision moved sublime.
+
+    I wondered much at the valor they had,
+    And in wondering my soul was glad.
+
+    My wonderment, I can hardly tell,
+    At the boldness Jacob showed at the well
+
+    In kissing Rachel, when meeting her first;
+    I wondered not into tears he burst.
+
+    Had I been constrained to choose between
+    That deed at the well and that after-scene
+
+    When David and Goliath met,
+    My heart on the fight would have certainly set.
+
+    And yet there was much for a bashful boy
+    To gather up and remember with joy.
+
+    God bless my grandsire's simple heart,
+    Which made up in faith what it lacked in art,
+
+    And led me on to the best of the knowledge
+    Which years thereafter I carried to college.
+
+    Tending the cattle stalled in the "linter,"
+    Going to school eight weeks in the Winter;
+
+    Planting and hoeing potatoes and corn,
+    Milking the cows at night and morn;
+
+    Spreading and raking the new-mown hay,
+    Stowing it in the mow away;
+
+    Gathering apples, and thinking of all
+    The joys of Thanksgiving late in the Fall--
+
+    So passed I the years in such like scenes
+    Until I had grown well into my teens.
+
+    And then, with many a dream in my heart,
+    I struck for myself and a nobler part;
+
+    I hardly knew what, yet some higher good,
+    Earning and spending as fast as I could;
+
+    Earning and spending in teaching and going
+    To school, what time I to manhood was growing.
+
+    My maiden aunt--and Providence
+    Is approved in its blessed consequence--
+
+    That baby of twenty, to thirty had grown,
+    And from the nest had not yet flown.
+
+    And a childless aunt, my uncle's wife,
+    Had come to gladden that quiet life.
+
+    God bless them both, for they were ever
+    The foremost to second my life's endeavor.
+
+    Our aunts sometimes are almost mothers,
+    Toiling and planning and spending for others.
+
+    Aunt Hannah, the maiden; Aunt Emily, wife,--
+    How they labored to gird me for the strife,
+
+    Cheering me on with words befitting,
+    Doing my sewing and doing my knitting,
+
+    And pressing upon me many a token
+    Whose meaning was more than ever was spoken!
+
+    At length the time for parting came--
+    They both in heaven will have true fame!
+
+    They did not bid me good-bye at the stile;
+    They with me went through the woods a mile.
+
+    It was the still September time,
+    When the Autumn fruits were in their prime.
+
+    Here and there a patch of crimson was seen
+    Where the breath of the early frost had been.
+
+    The songs of the birds were tender and sad,
+    Yet I could not say they were not glad.
+
+    Nature's soft and mellow undertone
+    To a note-like trust in the Father had grown.
+
+    And that trust, I ween, in our hearts had sway,
+    As on through the woods we wended our way.
+
+    Meeting and parting fringe life below;
+    We parted--twenty years ago.
+
+    My aunts turned back, and on went I,
+    Striving my burning tears to dry.
+
+    Almost a thousand miles away
+    Was the _Alma Mater_ I sought that day.
+
+    To a voice I turned me on my track,
+    And saw them both come running back.
+
+    "Is something forgotten?" soon stammered I;
+    And they, without a word in reply,
+
+    Caught me in their arms, a great baby of twenty,
+    And smothered me with kisses not too plenty.
+
+    Some joys I had known before that day,
+    And many since have thronged my way;
+
+    But in all my seeking through forty years,
+    In which rainbow hopes have dried all tears,
+
+    I have nothing found in the paths of knowledge,
+    Surpassing those kisses I carried to college.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
+
+(BORN 1786--DIED 1847.)
+
+
+HEROISM ON THE GREAT DEEP--A MARTYR OF THE POLAR SEA.
+
+
+The life of this great navigator is an epic of the ocean, which will
+stir the brave heart for many ages to come.
+
+One day, toward the close of the last century, a young English lad,
+named John Franklin, spent a holiday with a companion in a walk of
+twelve miles from their school at Louth, to look at the sea from the
+level shores of his native country. It was the first time that the boy
+had ever gazed on the wonderful expanse, and his heart was strangely
+stirred. The youngest of four sons, he had been intended for the
+ministry of the Church of England, but that day's walk fixed His
+purposes in another direction; and though he knew it not, he was to
+serve God and man even more nobly by heroic deeds than he could have
+done by the wisest and most persuasive words.
+
+Mr. Franklin was a wise man, and when he found his son bent on a
+sailor's life, determined to give him a taste-of it, in the hope that
+this would be enough. John was therefore taken from school at the age of
+thirteen, and sent in a merchantman to Lisbon. The Bay of Biscay,
+however, did not cure his enthusiasm; and so we next find John Franklin
+as a midshipman on board the _Polyphemus_, seventy-four guns. These were
+stirring times. In 1801 young Franklin's ship led the line in the battle
+of Copenhagen, and in 1805, having been transferred to the
+_Bellerophon_, he held charge of the signals at the battle of Trafalgar,
+bravely standing at his post and coolly attending to his work while the
+dead and dying fell around him.
+
+Between these two dates Franklin had accompanied an exploring voyage to
+Australia on board the _Investigator_, gaining in that expedition not
+only a great store of facts to be treasured up for use in his eager and
+retentive mind, but those habits of observation which were to be of the
+greatest service to him in after-years. On his return home in another
+vessel--the _Porpoise_--Franklin and his companions were wrecked upon a
+coral reef, where ninety-four persons remained for seven weeks on a
+narrow sand-bank less than a quarter of a mile in length, and only four
+feet above the surface of the water!
+
+It was in 1818 that the young lieutenant first set sail for the Polar
+Sea, as second commander of the _Trent_, under Captain Buchan. The aim
+was to cross between Spitzbergen and Greenland; but the companion
+vessel, the _Dorothea_, being greatly injured by the ice, the two had to
+return to England, after reaching the eightieth degree of latitude.
+
+A year later lieutenants Franklin and Parry were placed at the head of
+expeditions, the latter to carry on the exploration through Baffin's
+Bay, and to find an outlet, if possible, by Lancaster Sound. This was
+splendidly done, and the North-west Passage practically discovered. The
+task of Franklin was more arduous. He had to traverse the vast solitary
+wastes of North-eastern America, with their rivers and lakes, to descend
+to the mouth of the Coppermine River, and to survey the coast eastward.
+The toil and hardship of this wonderful expedition, and the brave
+endurance of Franklin and his friend Richardson, and their trusty
+helpers, have often been related. They had to contend with famine and
+illness, with the ignorance and treachery of the Indians, who murdered
+three of the party. The land journey altogether extended over 5,500
+miles, occupying a year and six months.
+
+In less than two years after their return to England, Franklin,
+Richardson, and Back volunteered for another expedition to the same
+region.
+
+In 1825 this second expedition started, Franklin mournfully leaving the
+death-bed of his wife, to whom he had been married after his last return
+to England. This brave lady not only let him go, though she knew she was
+dying, but begged him not to delay one day for her! At New York Franklin
+heard of her death, but manfully concealed his grief, and pressed on to
+the northern wastes. As before, his object was to survey the northern
+shore, only this time by the Mackenzie River, instead of the Coppermine.
+
+This expedition, too, was full of, stirring adventure among the
+Esquimaux, though without the terrible hardships and calamities of the
+former journey. It was also crowned with great success, leaving in the
+end only 150 miles of the coast from Baffin's Bay to Behring Straits
+unsurveyed. These, too, were explored in later years by Franklin's
+successors, and the great discovery of the North-west Passage completed.
+
+Franklin was now made commander; in 1829 was knighted, and covered with
+honors by the University of Oxford and the great learned societies in
+England and France. He had married his second wife in 1828--the Lady
+Franklin of the later story. In 1832 Sir John Franklin was given the
+command of the _Rainbow_, on the Mediterranean station; and so wise and
+gracious was his rule, that the sailors nicknamed the sloop "The
+Celestial _Rainbow_" and "Franklin's Paradise." But we have no space to
+speak of this now, nor of Franklin's wise and gracious government of Van
+Diemen's Land, now better known as Tasmania, that succeeded. Lady
+Franklin was here his wise and devoted helper in every scheme of
+usefulness and benevolence.
+
+Returning to England, he was appointed, in 1845, to the command of an
+expedition for the further discovery of the North-west Passage. The
+ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_ sailed from England on the 26th of May, and
+were seen by the crew of the _Prince of Wales_, a whaler, on the 26th of
+July, in Melville Bay, _for the last time_.
+
+Toward the close of 1847 serious anxiety was aroused respecting the fate
+of these brave explorers. The brave-hearted, devoted wife of the
+commander expended her whole fortune on these endeavors to ascertain
+what had become of her husband. It is interesting to note that the
+people of Tasmania, Franklin's colony, subscribed the sum of L1,700
+toward the expenses of the search.
+
+In the year 1850 it was discovered that the first Winter of the
+explorers to the following April, or later (1846), had been spent at
+Beechey Island, beyond Lancaster Sound, and that it had been an active
+holiday time.
+
+In 1854 an exploring party under Dr. Rae were told by the Esquimaux that
+several white men, in number about forty, had been seen dragging a boat
+over the ice near the north shore of King William's Land, and that
+bodies and skeletons were afterward found on the mainland opposite, by
+the banks of the Great Fish River. Many relics of this party were
+procured by Dr. Rae from the natives, and being brought to England were
+identified as belonging to the Franklin explorers. On this Dr. Rae
+received the government reward of L10,000.
+
+In 1859 Lady Franklin bought and fitted the yacht _Fox_, which she
+placed under the command of Captain Leopold McClintock. The expedition
+set sail from Aberdeen, and, on reaching King William's Land, divided
+into three sledging parties, under Lieutenant Hobson, Captain Young, and
+McClintock himself. In Boothia several relics were discovered, such as
+would be dropped or left behind by men too weak to carry the usual
+belongings of a boat or sledge. At Point Victory a cairn, or heap of
+stones, was discovered by Lieutenant Hobson, with a paper, inclosed in a
+tin case, which too clearly told its sad story. After a memorandum of
+progress up to May 28, 1847, "All well," it was added on the same paper:
+"April 25, 1848. H.M. ships _Terror_ and _Erebus_ were deserted 22d
+April, five leagues N.W. of this, having been beset since 12th
+September, 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under
+the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier, landed here in latitude 69
+degrees, 37 minutes, 42 seconds N., longitude 98 degrees 41 minutes W.
+Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by
+deaths in the expedition has been, to this date, nine officers and
+fifteen men. Signed, F.E.M. Crozier, Captain and Senior Officer; James
+Fitzjames, Captain H.M.S. _Erebus_. And start on to-morrow, 26th April,
+1848, for Back's Fish River." From this point two boats, with heavily
+laden sledges, seem to have been dragged forward while strength lasted.
+One boat was left on the shore of King William's Land, and was found by
+Captain McClintock, with two skeletons; also boats and stores of various
+kinds, five watches, two double-barreled guns, loaded, a few religious
+books, a copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield," twenty-six silver spoons and
+forks, and many other articles. The Esquimaux related that the men
+dragging the boat "dropped as they walked." The other boat was crushed
+in the ice. No trace, but a floating spar or two, and driftwood embedded
+in ice, was ever found of the _Erebus_ or _Terror_.
+
+Truly the "Franklin relics," brought from amid the regions of snow and
+ice, are a possession of which those know the value who know how great a
+thing it is to walk on in the path of duty, with brave defiance of
+peril, and, above all, a steadfast dependence upon God.
+
+Mr. William L. Bird, a young man of great promise, deaf from his seventh
+year, who died in Hartford, Conn., in 1879, left among his papers a
+little poem which well expresses the mood of Lady Franklin in her lonely
+years:
+
+    THE OCEAN.
+
+        I stand alone
+        On wave-washed stone
+    To fathom thine immensity,
+        With merry glance
+        Thy wide expanse
+    Smiles, O! so brightly upon me.
+    Art thou my friend, blue, sparkling sea?
+
+        With your cool breeze
+        My brow you ease,
+    And brush the pain and care away.
+        Your waves, the while,
+        With sunny smile,
+    Around my feet in snowy spray
+    Of fleecy lightness dance and play.
+
+        So light of heart,
+        So void of art,
+    Your waves' low laugh is mocking me.
+        I hear their voice--
+        "Come, play, rejoice;
+    Come, be as happy as are we;
+    Why should you not thus happy be?"
+
+        Alas! I know
+        That, deep below,
+    And tangled up in sea-weeds, lies,
+        Where light dares not
+        Disturb the spot,
+    He who alone can cheer my eyes.
+    O sea! why wear this sparkling guise!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+ELIZABETH ESTAUGH.
+
+(BORN 1682--DIED 1762.)
+
+
+A QUAKER COURTSHIP, IN WHICH SHE WAS THE PRINCIPAL ACTOR.
+
+
+The story of Elizabeth Haddon is as charming as any pastoral poem that
+was ever written. She was the oldest daughter of John Haddon, a
+well-educated and wealthy Quaker of London. She had two sisters, both of
+whom, with herself, received the best education of that day. Elizabeth
+possessed uncommon strength of mind, earnestness, energy, and
+originality of character, and a heart overflowing with the kindest and
+warmest feelings. The following points in her life, as far as necessary
+for the setting, of the main picture, are drawn chiefly from the
+beautiful narrative by Lydia Maria Child, and almost in her own words.
+
+At one time, during her early childhood, she asked to have a large cake
+baked, because she wanted to invite some little girls. All her small
+funds were expended for oranges and candy on this occasion. When the
+time arrived, her father and mother were much surprised to see her lead
+in six little ragged beggars. They were, however, too sincerely
+religious and sensible to _express_ any surprise. They treated the
+forlorn little ones very tenderly, and freely granted their daughter's
+request to give them some of her books and playthings at parting. When
+they had gone, the good mother quietly said, "Elizabeth, why did'st thou
+invite strangers, instead of thy schoolmates?" There was a heavenly
+expression in her eye, as she looked up earnestly, and answered,
+"Mother, I wanted to invite _them_, they looked _so_ poor."
+
+When eleven years of age, she accompanied her parents to the yearly
+meeting of the Friends, where she heard, among other preachers, a very
+young man named John Estaugh, with whose manner of presenting divine
+truth she was particularly pleased. Many of his words were treasured in
+her memory. At the age of seventeen she made a profession of religion,
+uniting herself with the Quakers.
+
+During her early youth, William Penn visited the house of her father,
+and greatly amused her by describing his adventures with the Indians.
+From that time she became interested in the emigrant Quakers, and began
+to talk of coming to America. Her father at length purchased a tract of
+land in New Jersey, with the view of emigrating, but his affairs took a
+new turn, and he made up his mind to remain in his native land: This
+decision disappointed. She had cherished the conviction that it was her
+duty to come to this country; and when, at length, her father, who was
+unwilling that any of his property should lie unimproved, offered the
+tract of land in New Jersey to any relative who would settle upon it,
+she promptly agreed to accept of the proffered estate. Willing that
+their child should follow in the path of duty, at the end of three
+months, after much prayer, the parents consented to let Elizabeth join
+"the Lord's people" in the New World.
+
+Accordingly, early in the Spring of 1700, arrangements were made for her
+departure, and all things were provided that abundance of wealth or the
+ingenuity of affection could devise.
+
+A poor widow, of good sense and discretion, accompanied her as friend
+and housekeeper, and two trusty men-servants, members of the Society of
+Friends. Among the many singular manifestations of strong faith and
+religious zeal, connected with the settlement of this country, few are
+more remarkable than the voluntary separation of this girl of eighteen
+from a wealthy home and all the pleasant associations of childhood, to
+go to a distant and thinly inhabited country to fulfill what she deemed
+a religious duty. And the humble, self-sacrificing faith of the parents,
+in giving up their child, with such reverent tenderness for the
+promptings of her own conscience, has in it something sublimely
+beautiful, if we look at it in its own pure light. The parting took
+place with more love than words can express, and yet without a tear on
+either side. Even during the long and tedious voyage, Elizabeth never
+wept. She preserved a martyr-like cheerfulness to the end.
+
+The house prepared for her reception stood in a clearing of the forest,
+three miles from any other dwelling. She arrived in June, when the
+landscape was smiling in youthful beauty; and it seemed to her as if the
+arch of heaven was never before so clear and bright, the carpet of the
+earth never so verdant. As she sat at her window and saw evening close
+in upon her in that broad forest home, and heard for the first time the
+mournful notes of the whippowil and the harsh scream of the jay in the
+distant woods, she was oppressed with a sense of vastness, of infinity,
+which she never before experienced, not even on the ocean. She remained
+long in prayer, and when she lay down to sleep beside her matron friend,
+no words were spoken between them. The elder, overcome with fatigue,
+soon sank into a peaceful slumber; but the young enthusiast lay long
+awake, listening to the lone voice of the whippowil complaining to the
+night. Yet, notwithstanding this prolonged wakefulness, she arose early
+and looked out upon the lovely landscape. The rising sun pointed to the
+tallest trees with his golden finger, and was welcomed by a gush of song
+from a thousand warblers. The poetry in Elizabeth's soul, repressed by
+the severe plainness of her education, gushed up like a fountain. She
+dropped on her knees, and, with an outburst of prayer, exclaimed
+fervently; "O Father, very beautiful hast thou made this earth! How
+beautiful are thy gifts, O Lord!"
+
+To a spirit less meek and brave, the darker shades of the picture would
+have obscured these cheerful gleams; for the situation was lonely, and
+the inconveniences innumerable. But Elizabeth easily triumphed over all
+obstacles, by practical good sense and the quick promptings of her
+ingenuity. She was one of those clear, strong natures, who always have a
+definite aim in view, and who see at once the means best suited to the
+end. Her first inquiry was what grain was best suited to the soil of her
+farm, and being informed that rye would yield best, "Then I shall eat
+rye bread," was her answer. But when Winter came, and the gleaming snow
+spread its unbroken silence over hill and plain, was it not dreary then?
+It would have been dreary to one who entered upon this mode of life from
+mere love of novelty, or a vain desire to do something extraordinary.
+But the idea of extended usefulness, which had first lured this
+remarkable girl into a path so unusual, sustained her through all
+trials. She was too busy to be sad, and leaned too trustingly on her
+Father's hand to be doubtful of her way. The neighboring Indians soon
+loved her as a friend, for they found her always truthful, just, and
+kind. From their teachings she added much to her knowledge of simple
+medicines. So efficient was her skill, and so prompt her sympathy, that
+for many miles around, if man, woman, or child were alarmingly ill, they
+were sure to send for Elizabeth Haddon; and, wherever she went, her
+observing mind gathered some hint for farm or dairy. Her house and heart
+were both large, and as her residence was on the way to the Quaker
+meeting-house in Newtown, it became a place of universal resort to
+Friends from all parts of the country traveling that road, as well as an
+asylum for benighted wanderers.
+
+The Winter was drawing to a close, when, late one evening, the sound of
+sleigh-bells was heard, and the crunching of snow beneath the hoofs of
+horses as they passed into the barn-yard gate. The arrival of travelers
+was too common an occurrence to excite or disturb the well-ordered
+family.
+
+Great logs were piled in the capacious chimney, and the flames blazed up
+with a crackling warmth, when two strangers entered. In the younger
+Elizabeth instantly recognized John Estaugh, whose preaching had so
+deeply impressed her at eleven years of age. This was almost like a
+glimpse of home--her dear old English home. She stepped forward with
+more than usual cordiality, saying:
+
+"Thou art welcome, Friend Estaugh, the more so for being entirely
+unexpected."
+
+"I am glad to see thee, Elizabeth," he replied, with a friendly shake of
+the hand. "It was not until after I landed in America that I heard the
+Lord had called thee here before me; but I remember thy father told me
+how often thou hadst played the settler in the woods when thou wast
+quite a little girl."
+
+"I am but a child still," she replied, smiling.
+
+"I trust thou art," he rejoined; "and as for these strong impressions in
+childhood, I have heard of many cases where they seemed to be prophecies
+sent of the Lord. When I saw thy father in London, I had even then an
+indistinct idea that I might sometime be sent to America on a religious
+visit."
+
+"And, hast thou forgotten, friend John, the ear of Indian corn which my
+father begged of thee for me? I can show it to thee now. Since then I
+have seen this grain in perfect growth, and a goodly plant it is, I
+assure thee. See," she continued, pointing to many bunches of ripe corn
+which hung in their braided husks against the walls of the ample
+kitchen, "all that, and more, came from a single ear no bigger than the
+one thou didst give my father. May the seed sown by thy ministry be as
+fruitful!"
+
+"Amen," replied both the guests.
+
+The next morning it was discovered that the snow had fallen during the
+night in heavy drifts, and the roads were impassable. Elizabeth,
+according to her usual custom, sent out men, oxen, and sledges to open
+pathways for several poor families, and for households whose inmates
+were visited by illness. In this duty John Estaugh and his friend joined
+heartily, and none of the laborers worked harder than they. When he
+returned, glowing from this exercise, she could not but observe that the
+excellent youth had a goodly countenance. It was not physical beauty;
+for of that he had but little. It was that cheerful, child-like,
+out-beaming honesty of expression, which we not unfrequently see in
+Germans, who, above all nations, look as if they carried a crystal heart
+within their manly bosoms.
+
+Two days after, when Elizabeth went to visit her patients, with a
+sled-load of medicines and provisions, John asked permission to
+accompany her. There, by the bedside of the aged and the suffering, she
+saw the clear sincerity of his countenance warmed with rays of love,
+while he spoke to them words of kindness and consolation; and then she
+heard his pleasant voice modulate itself into deeper tenderness of
+expression, when he took little children in his arms.
+
+The next First Day, which we call the Sabbath, the whole family attended
+Newtown meeting; and there John Estaugh was gifted with an outpouring of
+the Spirit in his ministry, which sank deep into the hearts of those who
+listened to him. Elizabeth found it so remarkably applicable to the
+trials and temptations of her own soul, that she almost deemed it was
+spoken on purpose for her. She said nothing of this, but she pondered
+upon it deeply. Thus did a few days of united duties make them more
+thoroughly acquainted with each other than they could have been by years
+of fashionable intercourse.
+
+The young preacher soon after bade farewell, to visit other meetings in
+Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Elizabeth saw him no more until the May
+following, when he stopped at her house to lodge, with numerous other
+Friends, on their way to the quarterly meeting at Salem. In the morning
+quite a cavalcade dashed from her hospitable door on horseback; for
+wagons were then unknown in Jersey. John Estaugh, always kindly in his
+impulses, busied himself with helping a lame and very ugly old woman,
+and left his hostess to mount her horse as she could. Most young women
+would have felt slighted; but in Elizabeth's noble soul the quiet, deep
+tide of feeling rippled with an inward joy. "He is always kindest to the
+poor and the neglected," thought she; "verily, he _is_ a good youth."
+She was leaning over the side of her horse, to adjust the buckle of the
+girth, when he came up on horseback and inquired if any thing was out of
+order. She thanked, with a slight confusion of manner, and a voice less
+calm than her usual utterance. He assisted her to mount, and they
+trotted along leisurely behind the procession of guests, speaking of the
+soil and climate of this new country, and how wonderfully the Lord had
+here provided a home for his chosen people. Presently the girth began to
+slip, and the saddle turned so much on one side that Elizabeth was
+obliged to dismount. It took some time to readjust it, and when they
+again started, the company were out of sight. There was brighter color
+than usual in the maiden's cheeks, and unwonted radiance in her mild
+deep eyes. After a short silence she said, in a voice slightly
+tremulous: "Friend John, I have a subject of importance on my mind, and
+one which nearly interests thee. I am strongly impressed that the Lord
+has sent thee to me as a partner for life. I tell thee my impression
+frankly, but not without calm and deep reflection; for matrimony is a
+holy relation, and should be entered into with all sobriety. If thou
+hast no light on the subject, wilt thou gather into the stillness and
+reverently listen to thy own inward revealings? Thou art to leave this
+part of the country to-morrow, and not knowing when I should see thee
+again, I felt moved to tell thee what lay upon my mind."
+
+The young man was taken by surprise. Though accustomed to that
+suppression of emotion which characterizes his religious sect, the color
+went and came rapidly in his face for a moment; but he soon became
+calmer and said: "This thought is new to me, Elizabeth, and I have no
+light thereon. Thy company has been right pleasant to me, and thy
+countenance ever reminds me of William Penn's title-page, 'Innocency
+with her open face.' I have seen thy kindness to the poor, and the wise
+management of thy household. I have observed, too, that thy
+warm-heartedness is tempered by a most excellent discretion, and that
+thy speech is ever sincere. Assuredly, such is the maiden I would ask of
+the Lord as a most precious gift; but I never thought of this connection
+with thee. I came to this country solely on a religious visit, and it
+might distract my mind to entertain this subject at present. When I have
+discharged the duties of my mission, we will speak further."
+
+"It is best so," rejoined the maiden; "but there is one thing which
+disturbs my conscience. Thou hast spoken of my true speech; and yet,
+friend John, I have deceived thee a little, even now, while we conferred
+together on a subject so serious. I know not from what weakness the
+temptation came; but I will not hide it from thee. I allowed thee to
+suppose, just now, that I was fastening the girth of my horse securely;
+but, in plain truth, I was loosening the girth, John, that the saddle
+might slip, and give me an excuse to fall behind our friends; for I
+thought thou wouldst be kind enough to come and ask if I needed thy
+services."
+
+They spoke no further concerning their union; but when he returned to
+England in July, he pressed her hand affectionately, as he said:
+"Farewell, Elizabeth. If it be the Lord's will I shall return to thee
+soon."
+
+In October he returned to America, and they were soon married, at
+Newtown meeting, according to the simple form of the Society of Friends.
+Neither of them made any change of dress for the occasion, and there was
+no wedding-feast. Without the aid of priest or magistrate, they took
+each other by the hand, and, in the presence of witnesses, calmly and
+solemnly promised to be kind and faithful to each other. The wedded pair
+quietly returned to their happy home, with none to intrude on those
+sacred hours of human life, when the heart most needs to be left alone
+with its own deep emotions.
+
+During the long period of their union, she three times crossed the
+Atlantic to visit her aged parents, and he occasionally left her for a
+season, when called abroad to preach. These temporary separations were
+felt as a cross; but the strong-hearted woman always cheerfully gave him
+up to follow his own convictions of duty. In 1742 he parted from her to
+go on a religious visit to Tortola, in the West Indies. He died there in
+the sixty-seventh year of his age. She published a religious tract of
+his, to which she prefixed a preface entitled, "Elizabeth Estaugh's
+Testimony concerning her Beloved Husband, John Estaugh." In this preface
+she says: "Since it pleased divine Providence so highly to favor me with
+being the near companion of this dear worthy, I must give some small
+account of him. Few, if any, in a married state ever lived in sweeter
+harmony than we did. He was a pattern of moderation in all things; not
+lifted up with any enjoyments, nor cast down at any disappointments; a
+man endowed with many good gifts, which rendered him very agreeable to
+his friends and much more to me, his wife, to whom his memory is most
+dear and precious."
+
+Elizabeth survived her excellent husband twenty years, useful and
+honored to the last. The monthly meeting of Haddonfield, in a published
+testimonial, speaks of her thus: "She was endowed with great natural
+abilities, which, being sanctified by the spirit of Christ, were much
+improved; whereby she became qualified to act in the affairs of the
+Church, and was a serviceable member, having been clerk to the women's
+meeting nearly fifty years, greatly to their satisfaction. She was a
+sincere sympathizer with the afflicted, of a benevolent disposition, and
+in distributing to the poor, was desirous to do it in a way most
+profitable and durable to them, and, if possible, not to let the right
+hand know what the left did. Though in a state of affluence as to this
+world's wealth, she was an example of plainness and moderation. Her
+heart and house were open to her friends, whom to entertain seemed one
+of her greatest pleasures. Prudently cheerful, and well knowing the
+value of friendship, she was careful not to wound it herself, nor to
+encourage others by whispering supposed failings or weaknesses. Her last
+illness brought great bodily pain, which she bore with much calmness of
+mind and sweetness of spirit. She departed this life as one falling
+asleep, full of days, like unto a shock of corn, fully ripe."
+
+The town of Haddonfield, in New Jersey, took its name from her; and the
+tradition concerning her courtship is often repeated by some patriarch
+among the Quakers.
+
+Her medical skill is so well remembered, that the old nurses of New
+Jersey still recommend Elizabeth Estaugh's salve as the "sovereignest
+thing on earth."
+
+The following beautiful lines from Whittier, though inspired by another,
+well apply to this Quakeress of the olden time:
+
+    As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
+      Eternal as the sky;
+    And like the brook's low song, her voice,--
+      A sound that could not die.
+
+    And half we deemed she needed not
+      The changing of her sphere,
+    To give to heaven a shining one,
+      Who walked an angel here.
+
+    The blessing of her quiet life
+      Fell on us like the dew;
+    And good thoughts, where her footsteps pressed,
+      Like fairy blossoms grew.
+
+    Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds
+      Were in her very look;
+    We read her face as one who reads
+      A true and holy book.
+
+          *      *      *      *
+
+    We miss her in the place of prayer,
+      And by the hearth-fire's light;
+    We pause beside her door to hear
+      Once more her sweet "Good-night."
+
+          *      *      *      *
+
+    Still let her mild rebuking stand
+      Between us and the wrong,
+    And her dear memory serve to make
+      Our faith in goodness strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+"CHINESE" GORDON.
+
+
+IN THE TRENCHES OF THE CRIMEA--PUTS DOWN THE GREAT TAIPING REBELLION IN
+CHINA IN 1863-4--HERO OF THE SOUDAN--BEARDS THE MEN-STEALERS IN THEIR
+STRONGHOLDS, AND MAKES THE PEOPLE LOVE HIM.
+
+
+At the present writing (Summer of 1884), General Gordon, who has won the
+heart of the world by his brave deeds, is exciting a great deal of
+interest on account of his perilous position in Khartoum. A sketch of
+his career will be acceptable to not a few readers.
+
+The likeness which accompanies this chapter is from a photograph taken
+not long ago at Southampton, England; but no portrait gives the
+expression of the man. His smile and his light-blue eyes can not be
+painted by the sun. The rather small physique, and mild and gentle look,
+would not lead the ordinary observer to recognize in General Gordon a
+ruler and leader of men; but a slight acquaintance shows him to be a man
+of unusual power and great force of character.
+
+His religious fervor and boundless faith are proverbial--so much so that
+some men call him a fatalist; whilst others say, like Festus, "Thou art
+beside thyself." Neither of these judgments is true, though it is
+certainly true that, from a desire to oblige others, Gordon has
+sometimes made errors in judgment that have led him into sad dilemmas.
+To say nothing of his second visit to the Soudan, to oblige Ismail
+Pasha, and his rash and most dangerous embassy to King John of
+Abyssinia, to oblige Tewfik Pasha, we need but allude to his unwise
+acceptance of the post of private secretary to Lord Ripon in India. He
+was overpersuaded, and to please others he sacrificed himself. To those
+who knew him, it was not surprising that almost the first thing he did
+on landing at Bombay was to throw up his appointment and rush off to
+China, where he was instrumental in preventing war between that country
+and Russia.
+
+The active life of General Gordon, who is about fifty years old, may be
+divided into the following sections: the Crimea and Bessarabia; China
+(the suppression of the Taiping rebellion); Gravesend (the making of the
+defenses at Tilbury); and the Soudan. A later and shorter episode occurs
+in his visit to Mauritius and the Cape, the latter colony being the only
+place in which his great capabilities and high character were
+unappreciated.
+
+In the Crimea General Gordon worked steadily in the trenches, and won
+the praise of his superior officers for his skill in detecting the
+movements of the Russians. Indeed, he was specially told off for this
+dangerous duty. Lord Wolseley, then a captain, was a fellow-worker with
+Gordon before Sebastopol.
+
+In 1856 Gordon was occupied in laying down the boundaries of Russia, in
+Turkey and Roumania, for which work he was in a peculiar manner well
+fitted, and he resided in the East, principally in Armenia, until the
+end of 1858. During this time he ascended both Little and Great Ararat.
+
+In 1860 he was ordered to China, and assisted at the taking of Pekin and
+the sacking and burning of the Summer Palace. This work did not seem to
+be much to his taste.
+
+China was the country destined to give to the young engineer the
+sobriquet by which he is now best known--"Chinese" Gordon. Here he first
+developed that marvelous power, which he still holds above all other
+men, of engaging the confidence, respect, and love of wild and irregular
+soldiery.
+
+The great Taiping rebellion, which was commenced soon after 1842 by a
+sort of Chinese Mahdi--a fanatical village schoolmaster--had attained
+such dimensions that it had overrun and desolated a great portion of
+Southern China, and threatened to drive the foreigners into the sea.
+Nanking, with its porcelain tower, had been taken, and was made the
+capital of the Heavenly King, as the rebel chieftain, Hung, now called
+himself. His army numbered some hundreds of thousands, divided under
+five Wangs, or kings, and the Imperialists were driven closer and closer
+to the cities of the seacoast.
+
+In 1863 the British Government was applied to for assistance, and
+Captain Gordon was selected to take command of the Imperial forces in
+the place of an American adventurer named Burgevine, who had been
+cashiered for corrupt practices. The _Ever-victorious Army_, as it was
+called, numbered 4,000 men, when the young engineer took the command.
+Carefully and gradually he organized and increased it, and as he always
+led his men himself, and ever sought the post of danger, he soon
+obtained their fullest confidence, and never failed to rally them to his
+support.
+
+He wore no arms, but always carried a small cane, with which he waved on
+his men, and as stockade after stockade fell before him, and city after
+city was taken, that little cane was looked upon as Gordon's magic wand
+of victory. He seemed to have a charmed life, and was never disconcerted
+by a hailstorm of bullets. Occasionally, when the Chinese officers
+flinched and fell back before the terrible fusillade, he would quietly
+take one by the arm and lead him into the thickest of the enemy's fire,
+as calmly as though he were taking him in to dinner. Once, when his men
+wavered under a hail of bullets, Gordon coolly lighted his cigar, and
+waved his magic wand; his soldiers accepted the omen, came on with a
+rush, and stormed the defense. He was wounded once only, by a shot in
+the leg, but even then he stood giving his orders till he nearly
+fainted, and had to be carried away.
+
+Out of 100 officers he lost almost one-half in his terrible campaign,
+besides nearly one-third of his men. But he crushed the rebellion, and
+rescued China from the grasp of the most cruel and ruthless of spoilers.
+His own estimate was that his victories had saved the lives of 100,000
+human beings.
+
+Then he left China without taking one penny of reward. Honors and wealth
+were poured at his feet, but he accepted only such as were merely
+honorary. He was made a _Ti-Tu_--the highest title to which a subject
+can attain--and he received the Orders of the Star, the Yellow Jacket,
+and the Peacock's Feather. When, however, the Imperial messengers
+brought into his room great boxes containing L10,000 in coin, he drove
+them out in anger. The money he divided amongst his troops. And yet he
+might well have taken even a larger sum. One who knew how deeply the
+empire was indebted to him, wrote, "Can China tell how much she is
+indebted to Colonel Gordon? Would 20,000,000 taels repay the actual
+service he has rendered to the empire?"
+
+Gordon returned home to England, and, avoiding all the flattering notice
+that was continually thrust upon him, he retired to his work at
+Gravesend, where, from 1865 to 1871, he labored at the construction of
+the Thames Defenses.
+
+Here he passed six of the happiest years of his life--in active work, in
+deep seclusion from the world of wealth and fashion, but in a state of
+happiness and peace. His house was school, hospital, and almshouse, and
+he lived entirely for others. "The poor, the sick, the unfortunate were
+welcome, and never did supplicant knock vainly at his door."
+
+Gutter children were his especial care. These he cleansed and clothed,
+and the boys he trained for a life at sea. His evening classes were his
+delight, and he read and taught his children with the same ardor with
+which he had led the Chinese troops into battle. For the boys he found
+suitable places on board vessels respectably owned, and he never lost
+sight of his _proteges_. A large map of the world, stuck over with pins,
+showed him at a glance where he had last heard from one of these rescued
+waifs. "God bless the Kernel," was chalked upon many a wall in
+Gravesend; and well might the poor bless the man who personified to them
+the life and daily walk of one who "had been with Jesus." To them he was
+the "Good Samaritan," pouring in oil and wine; and they blessed and
+reverenced him, and gave him a love which he valued more than royal
+gifts.
+
+We must, however, hasten on, and see him transferred from Gravesend to
+the Danube, and thence to the Soudan. He succeeded Sir Samuel Baker in
+the government of these distant territories in Egypt in 1873. The
+Khedive Ismail offered him L10,000 a year, but he would only accept
+L2,000, as he knew the money would have to be extorted from the wretched
+fellaheen. His principal work was to conquer the insurgent slave-dealers
+who had taken possession of the country and enslaved the inhabitants.
+The lands south of Khartoum had long been occupied by European traders,
+who dealt in ivory, and had thus "opened up the country." This opening
+up was a terrible scourge to the natives, because these European
+traffickers soon began to find out that "black ivory" was more valuable
+than white. So they formed fortified posts, called sceribas, and
+garrisoned them with Arab ruffians, who harried the country and
+organized manhunts on a gigantic scale. The profits were enormous, but
+the "bitter cry" of Africa began to make itself heard in distant Europe,
+and the so-called Christian slave-dealers found it more prudent to
+withdraw. This they did without loss, for they sold their stations to
+Arabs, and the trade in human beings went on as merrily as ever. Dr.
+Schweinfurth, the African explorer and botanist, visited one of these
+slave-dealing princes in 1871, and found him surrounded by an almost
+regal court, and possessed of more than vice-regal power. He was lord of
+thirty stations, all strongly fortified, and stretching like a chain
+into the very heart of Africa. Thus his armies of fierce soldiery, Arab
+and black, were able to make raids over whole provinces, and gather in
+the great human harvest to supply the demands of Egypt, Turkey, and
+Arabia. This famous man was named Sebehr Rahma; and although he was
+defeated by Colonel Gordon and sent down to Cairo, he never quite lost
+favor at the Egyptian Court, and was not long since appointed commander
+in chief of the Soudan, to uphold the power of Egypt against the Mahdi!
+The scandals of the slave-trade, combined with the lust of conquest,
+were the causes out of which grew the famous expedition of Sir Samuel
+Baker to the Soudan. The love of conquest made it pleasing in the eyes
+of the Khedive Ismail, and the desire to uproot the infamous slave-trade
+obtained for the enterprise the warm approval of the Prince of Wales,
+and the hearty co-operation of Sir Samuel Baker, who displayed the
+greatest courage and energy in the conduct of the enterprise.
+
+From this first expedition the two succeeding ones of Colonel Gordon may
+be said to have arisen. The struggle against the slave-hunters had
+developed into a war, and the Khedive began to fear that their power
+would grow until his own position at Cairo might become endangered. The
+slave-king Sebehr must be destroyed, together with his numerous
+followers and satellites.
+
+Gordon was not long in perceiving why he was selected for the office of
+governor; for we find him writing home, "I think I can see the true
+motive of the expedition, and believe it to be a sham to catch the
+attention of the English people." With him, however, it was no sham. He
+was determined to do what he was professedly sent to do, viz.: put down
+the slave-trade. "I will do it," he said, "for I value my life as
+naught, and should only leave much weariness for perfect peace."
+
+How hard he found his task to ameliorate the condition of the wretched
+inhabitants, we perceive from such an outburst as this, amongst many
+similar: "What a mystery, is it not? Why are they created? A life of
+fear and misery, night and day! One does not wonder at their not fearing
+death. No one can conceive the utter misery of these lands--heat and
+mosquitoes day and night all the year round. But I like the work, for I
+believe I can do a great deal to ameliorate the lot of the people."
+
+This spirit of unselfishness and of a sublime charity runs through all
+his work. Every man, black or white, was "neighbor" to him, and he ever
+fulfilled the command of his Lord, to "love his neighbor as himself."
+Against oppression he could, however, be stern and severe. Not a few
+ruffians whom he caught red-handed in flagrant acts of cruelty were
+executed without mercy. So that the same man who, by the down-trodden
+people, was called the "Good Pasha," was to the robber and murderer a
+terror and avenger.
+
+When at Khartoum he was on one occasion installed with a royal salute,
+and an address was presented, and in return he was expected to make a
+speech. His speech was as follows: "With the help of God, I will hold
+the balance level." The people were delighted, for a level balance was
+to them an unknown boon. And he held it level all through his long and
+glorious reign, which lasted, with small break, from February, 1874,
+until August, 1879.
+
+During those five years and a half he had traveled over every portion of
+the huge territory which was placed under him--provinces extending all
+the way to the Equatorial Lakes. Besides riding through the deserts on
+camels and mules 8,490 miles in three years, he made long journeys by
+river. He conveyed a large steamer up the Nile as far as Lake Albert
+Nyanza, and succeeded in floating her safely on the waters of that
+inland sea. He had established posts all the way from Khartoum to
+Gondokora, and reduced that enormous journey from fifteen months to only
+a few weeks. He writes respecting these posts in January, 1879: "I am
+putting in all the frontier posts European Vakeels, to see that no slave
+caravans come through the frontier. I do not think that any now try to
+pass; but the least neglect of vigilance would bring it on again in no
+time."
+
+This is only one out of hundreds of instances of the hawk-eyed vigilance
+of the governor-general. The vast provinces under his sway had never
+been ruled in this fashion before.
+
+One strain runs through all his numerous letters written during the five
+years he remained in the Soudan, and that is the heart-rending condition
+of the thousands of slaves who were driven through the country, and the
+cruelty of the slave-hunters. Were we to begin quoting from those
+letters, we should outrun the limits of this sketch. He had broken the
+neck of the piratical army of man-stealers, and their forces were
+scattered and comparatively powerless. So many slaves were set free that
+they became a serious inconvenience, as they had to be fed and provided
+for.
+
+And yet there was no shout of joy at the capital, whence he had set out
+years before, armed with the firman of the khedive to put an end to the
+slave trade. On the contrary, We find him saying: "What I complain of in
+Cairo is the complete callousness with which they treat all these
+questions, while they worry me for money, knowing by my budgets that I
+can not make my revenue meet my expenses by L90,000 a year. The
+destruction of Sebehr's gang is the turning-point of the slave-trade
+question, and yet, never do I get one word from Cairo to support me."
+
+One more extract:
+
+"Why should I, at every mile, be stared at by the grinning skulls of
+those who are at rest?
+
+"I said to Yussef Bey, who is a noted slave-dealer, 'The inmate of that
+ball has told Allah what you and your people have done to him and his.'
+
+"Yussef Bey says, 'I did not do it!' and I say, 'Your nation did, and
+the curse of God will be on your land till this traffic ceases.'"
+
+This man, Yussef Bey, was one of the most cruel of the slave-hunters,
+and renowned for the manner in which he tortured his victims, more
+especially the young boys. He also cruelly murdered the interesting and
+peaceful king of the Monbuttos, so graphically described in
+Schweinfurth's "Heart of Africa."
+
+In June, 1882, Yussef Bey met his deserts, for going out with an army of
+Egyptian troops to meet the Mahdi, he and all his men were cut to
+pieces, scarcely one surviving.
+
+Much of Gordon's time, during his first expedition, had been occupied in
+strengthening the Egyptian posts south of Gondokoro, stretching away
+toward the country of King M'tesa. So badly were they organized that it
+took him twenty-one months to travel from Gondokoro to Foweira and
+Mrooli, his southernmost points. There he found that it would be
+impossible to interfere with the rival kings of that region without
+becoming involved in a war, and he returned from the lake districts
+"with the sad conviction that no good could be done in those parts, and
+that it would have been better had no expedition ever been sent."
+
+We conclude our imperfect sketch with the following quotation,
+describing General Gordon's resignation:
+
+"I am neither a Napoleon nor a Colbert," was his reply to some one who
+spoke to him in praise of his beneficent rule in the Soudan; "I do not
+profess either to have been a great ruler or a great financier; but I
+can say this: I have bearded the slave-dealers in their strongholds, and
+I made the people love me."
+
+What Gordon had done was to justify Ismail's description of him eight
+months before. "They say I do not trust Englishmen; do I mistrust Gordon
+Pasha? That is an honest man; an administrator, not a diplomatist!"
+
+Apart from the difficulties of serving the new khedive, Gordon longed
+for rest. The first year of his rule, during which he had done his own
+and other men's work, the long marches, the terrible climate, the
+perpetual anxieties, had all told upon him. Since then he had had three
+years of desperate labor, and had ridden some 8,500 miles. Who can
+wonder that he resented the impertinences of the pashas, whose
+interference was not for the good of his government or of his people,
+but solely for their own?
+
+But it was not for him to stay on and complain. To one of the worst of
+these pashas he sent a telegram which ran, "_Mene, Mene, Tekel,
+Upharsin_." Then he sailed for England, bearing with him the memory of
+the enthusiastic crowd of friends who bade him farewell at Cairo. It is
+said that his name sends a thrill of love and admiration through the
+Soudan even yet. A hand so strong and so beneficent had never before
+been laid on the people of that unhappy land.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+MEN'S WIVES.
+
+
+BITS OF COMMON SENSE AND WISDOM ON A GREAT SUBJECT.
+
+
+Homely phrases sometimes carry in them a truth which is passed over on
+account of its frequent repetition, and thus they fail to effect the
+good they are intended to do. For instance, there is one with reference
+to woman, which asserts that she is man's "better half;" and this is
+said so often, half in satire and half in jest, that few stop to inquire
+whether woman really be so. Yet she is in good truth his better half;
+and the phrase, met with in French or Latin, looks not only true but
+poetical, and in its foreign dress is cherished and quoted. She is not
+the wiser--in a worldly sense--certainly not the stronger, nor the
+cleverer, notwithstanding what the promoters of the Woman's Rights
+movements may say; but she is the better. All must feel, indeed, that,
+if the whole sins of the present world could be, and were, parceled into
+two huge heaps, those committed by the men would far exceed those of the
+women. We doubt whether any reflective man will deny this. On the other
+hand, the active virtues of man, his benevolence and good deeds, might
+equal those of woman; but his passive virtues, his patience and his
+endurance, would be much smaller. On the whole, therefore, woman is the
+much better half; and there is no good man but owes an immense deal to
+the virtues of the good women about him. He owes, too, a considerable
+deal of evil to their influence, not only of the absolutely bad, for
+those a pure man shuns, but the half-good and respectably selfish women
+of society--these are they who undermine his honesty, his benevolence,
+and his purity of mind.
+
+The influence man receives from woman is of a very mixed character. But
+of all the influence which woman has over man, that which is naturally
+most permanent, for good or evil, arises from the marriage tie. How we
+of the cold North have been able to emancipate woman from the deplorable
+depth into which polygamy would place her, it is not easy to say. That
+it is a state absolutely countenanced--nay, enjoined--in the Old
+Testament, it would be useless to deny. But custom and fair usance are
+stronger than the Old Testament; and the Jews, who readily adopt the
+laws of the country under which they live, forbid polygamy to their
+brethren in Christian lands, whilst they permit and practice it where it
+exists, as with the Mahometan and Hindoo. Under its influence the
+character of woman is terribly dwarfed. She sinks to nothing where she
+would be, as she should be, of half the importance of life at least.
+
+To preserve her position, it will be necessary for all good women to try
+and elevate the condition of their sisters. With all of us, "the world
+is too much with us, day by day;" and worldly success plays so large a
+part in the domestic drama, that woman is everywhere perceptibly
+influenced by it. Hence, to return to the closer consideration of the
+subject from our own point of view, the majority of men's wives in the
+upper and middle classes fall far short of that which is required of a
+good wife. They are the wives not made by love, but by the chance of a
+good match. They are the products of worldly prudence, not of a noble
+passion; and, although they may be very comfortable and very well clad,
+though they may think themselves happy, and wear the very look of health
+and beauty, they can never be to their husbands what a wife of true and
+real tender love would be.
+
+The consequence is that, after the first novelty has passed away, the
+chain begins to rub and the collar to gall. "The girl who has married
+for money," writes a clergyman, "has not by that rash and immoral act
+blinded her eyes to other and nobler attractions. She may still love
+wisdom, though the man of her choice may be a fool; she will none the
+less desire gentle, chivalrous affection because he is purse-proud and
+haughty; she may sigh for manly beauty all the more because he is coarse
+and ugly; she will not be able to get rid of her own youth, and all it
+longs for, by watching his silver hair." No; and, while there comes a
+curse upon her union--whilst in the long, long evenings, in the cold
+Spring mornings, and in the still Summer days, she feels that all worth
+living for is gone, while she is surrounded by all her body wants--her
+example is corrupting others. The scorned lover, who was rejected
+because he was poor, goes away to curse woman's fickleness and to marry
+some one whom he can not love; and the thoughtless girls, by whom the
+glitter of fortune is taken for the real gold of happiness, follow the
+venal example, and flirt and jilt till they fancy that they have secured
+a good match.
+
+Many women, after they have permanently attached a husband of this sort,
+sit down, with all the heroism of martyrs, to try to love the man they
+have accepted, but not chosen. They find it a hard, almost an impossible
+task. Then comes the moment so bitterly predicted by Milton, who no
+doubt drew from his own feeling and experience, when he put into the
+mouths of our first parents the prophecy that either man should never
+find the true partner of his choice, or that, having found her, she
+should be in possession of another. This is far too often true, and can
+not fail to be the source of a misery almost too bitter to be long
+endured.
+
+It says much for our Anglo-Saxon wives that their constancy has passed
+into many proverbs. When a woman really loves the man who marries her,
+the match is generally a happy one; but, even where it is not, the
+constancy of the wife's affection is something to be wondered at and
+admired. No after ill-usage, no neglect, or want of love, will remove
+the affection once given. No doubt all women, when they fall in love, do
+so with that which they conceive to be great and noble in the character
+of the object. But they still love on when all the glitter of novelty
+has fallen off, and when they have been behind the scenes and found how
+bare and gloomy was the framework of the scene they admired. All
+illusions may be gone; the hero may have sunk into the cowardly
+braggart; the saint into the hypocritical sinner; the noble aspirant
+into a man whose mouth alone utters but empty words which his heart can
+never feel; but still true love remains, "nor alters where it alteration
+finds." The duration of this passion, the constancy of this affection,
+surprises many; but, adds a writer, such persons--
+
+             "Know not woman, the blest being
+    Who, like a pitying angel, gifts the mean
+    And sordid nature even with more love
+    Than falls to the lot of him who towers above
+    His fellow-men; like parasitic flowers
+    That grow not on high temples, where the showers
+    And light of heaven might nourish, but alone
+    Cloth the rent altar and the fallen stone."
+
+There must be some great reason, some combination of feeling, for this.
+M. Ernest Feydeau, in a popular story of very bad principles, seems to
+hit the right nail on the head. "What woman," he asks, "would not love
+her husband, and be ever true to him, without thinking of a lover, if
+her husband would give her that which a lover gives her, not alone
+attention, politeness, and a cold friendship, but a little of that balm
+which is the very essense of our existence--a little love?" Probably
+these very bad men, for whom women will so generously ruin themselves,
+are, by their nature, soft and flattering; and, after cruelties and
+excesses, will, by soft words and Belial tongues, bind to them yet more
+closely the hearts of their victims.
+
+The ideal wife has been often painted, but the real far exceeds her.
+When Ulric von Hutten wrote to Frederick, he painted such a portrait as
+must have made that staunch advocate for the marriage of the clergy glow
+with admiration. "_Da mihi uxorem_," he commences. "Get me a wife,
+Frederick, after my own heart, such as you know I should like--neat,
+young, fairly educated, modest, patient; one with whom I may joke and
+play, and yet be serious; to whom I may babble and talk, mixing hearty
+fun and kisses together; one whose presence will lighten my anxiety and
+soften the tumult of my cares."
+
+It is not too much to say that the great majority of wives equal this
+ideal. United to such a woman, a man becomes better. He can never be the
+perfect man unless married. With marriage he undertakes those duties of
+existence which he is born to fulfill. The excitements of life and of
+business, the selfishness of daily existence, diminish; the generosities
+of the heart expand; the health of the mind becomes daily more robust;
+small repressions of selfishness, daily concessions, and daily trials,
+render him better; the woman of his choice becomes his equal, and in
+lifting her he lifts himself. He may not be a genius, nor she very
+clever; but, once truly married, the real education of life begins. That
+is not education which varnishes a man or a woman over with the pleasant
+and shining accomplishments which fit us for society, but that which
+tends to improve the heart, to bring forward the reflective qualities,
+and to form a firm and regular character; that which cultivates the
+reason, subdues the passions, restrains them in their proper place,
+trains us to self-denial, makes us able to bear trials, and to refer
+them, and all our sentiments and feelings to their proper source; which
+makes us look beyond this world into the next. A man's wife, if properly
+chosen, will aid in all this. The most brilliant and original thinker,
+and the deepest philosopher we have--he who has written books which
+educate the statesmen and the leaders of the world--has told us in his
+last preface that he, having lost his wife, has lost his chief
+inspiration. Looking back at his works, he traces all that is noble, all
+that is advanced in thought and grand in idea, and all that is true in
+expression, not to a poet or a teacher, but to his own wife; in losing
+her he says he has lost much, but the world has lost more. So, also, two
+men, very opposite in feelings, in genius, and in character, and as
+opposite in their pursuits, declared at a late period in their
+lives--lives spent in industry and hard work, and in expression of what
+the world deemed their own particular genius--"that they owed all to
+their wives." These men were Sir Walter Scott and Daniel O'Connell. "The
+very gods rejoice," says Menu the sage, "when the wife is honored. When
+the wife is injured, the whole family decays; when the contrary is the
+case, it flourishes." This may be taken as an eternal truth--as one of
+those truths not to be put by, not to be argued down by casual
+exceptions. It is just as true of nations as it is of men; of the whole
+people as it is of individual families. So true it is, that it may be
+regarded as a piece of very sound advice when we counsel all men,
+married or single, to choose only such men for their friends as are
+happy in their wedded lives. No man can afford to know a broken family.
+Quarreling, discord, and connubial disagreements are catching. With
+unhappiness at home, no man is safely to be trusted, no woman to be
+sought in friendship. The fault may not be his or hers, but it must be
+between them. A man and woman must prove that they can be a good husband
+and wife before they can be admitted to have proved that they are good
+citizens. Such a verdict may seem harsh, but it is necessary and just.
+Young people just married can not possibly afford to know unhappy
+couples; and they, in their turn, may, with mutual hypocrisy, rub on in
+the world; but in the end they feel that the hypocrisy can not be played
+out. They gradually withdraw from their friends and acquaintance, and
+nurse their own miseries at home.
+
+All good men feel, of course, that any distinctive separation of the
+sexes, all those separate gatherings and marks which would divide woman
+from man, and set her upon a separate pedestal, are as foolish as they
+are really impracticable. You will find no one who believes less in what
+certain philanthropists call the emancipation of women than a happy
+mother and wife. She does not want to be emancipated; and she is quite
+unwilling that, instead of being the friend and ally of man, she should
+be his opponent. She feels truly that the woman's cause is man's.
+
+    "For woman is not undeveloped man,
+    But diverse. Could we make her as the man,
+    Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this--
+    Not like to like, but like in difference."
+
+The very virtues of woman, not less than her faults, fit her for her
+attachment to man. There is no man so bad as not to find some pitying
+woman who will admire and love him; and no man so wise but that he shall
+find some woman equal to the full comprehension of him, ready to
+understand him and to strengthen him. With such a woman he will grow
+more tender, ductile, and appreciative; the man will be more of woman,
+she of man. Whether society, as it is at present constituted, fits our
+young women to be the good wives they should be is another question. In
+lower middle life, and with the working classes, it is asserted that the
+women are not sufficiently taught to fulfill their mission properly;
+but, if in large towns the exigencies of trade use up a large portion of
+the female population, it is no wonder that they can not be at the same
+time good mill-hands, bookbinders, shopwomen, and mothers, cooks, and
+housewives. We may well have recourse to public cookery, and talk about
+working men's dinners--thus drifting from an opposite point into the
+coming socialism--when we absorb all the home energies of the woman in
+gaining money sufficient for her daily bread. Yet these revelations, nor
+those yet more dreadful ones which come out daily in some of our law
+courts, are not sufficient to make us overlook the fact that with us by
+far the larger portion of marriages are happy ones, and that of men's
+wives we still can write as the most eloquent divine who ever lived,
+Jeremy Taylor, wrote, "A good wife is Heaven's last, best gift to
+man--his angel and minister of graces innumerable--his gem of many
+virtues--his casket of jewels. Her voice is sweet music--her smiles his
+brightest day--her kiss the guardian of his innocence--her arms the pale
+of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life--her
+industry his surest wealth--her economy his safest steward--her lips his
+faithful counselors--her bosom the softest pillow of his cares--and her
+prayers the ablest advocate of Heaven's blessings on his head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+WOMEN'S HUSBANDS.
+
+
+WHAT THE "BREAD WINNERS" LIKE IN THEIR WIVES--A LITTLE CONSTITUTIONAL
+OPPOSITION.
+
+
+It would not be holding the balance of the sexes fairly, if after saying
+all that can be said in favor of men's wives, we did not say something
+on the side of women's husbands. In these clever days the husband is a
+rather neglected animal. Women are anxious enough to secure a specimen
+of the creature, but he is very soon "shelved" afterwards; and women
+writers are now so much occupied in contemplating the beauties of their
+own more impulsive sex that they neglect to paint ideals of good
+husbands. There has been also too much writing tending to separate the
+sexes. It is plain that in actual life all the virtues can not be on one
+side, and all the faults on the other; yet some women are not ashamed to
+write and speak as if such were really the case. The wife is taught to
+regard herself as a woman with many wrongs, because her natural rights
+are denied her. She is cockered up into a domestic martyr, and is bred
+into an impatience of reproof which is very harmful and very ungraceful.
+If we look about us, we find that in our cities, especially, this is
+producing some very sad results. Some of the men are getting very
+impatient at the increasing demands of women for attention, for place,
+and for consideration; and, on merely selfish grounds, it is hardly
+doubtful whether our women in the upper and middle classes do not demand
+too much. It is evident that, as society is constituted, man is the
+working and woman, generally, the ornamental portion, of it, at least in
+those classes to which Providence or society has given what we call
+comfortable circumstances. Woman may do, and does do, a great deal of
+unpleasant, tiresome work; she fritters away her time upon occupations
+which require "frittering;" but beyond that she does not do the "paying"
+work. The husband, or houseband, still produces the money. He is the
+poor, plain, working bee; and the queen bee too often sits in regal
+state in her comfortable hive while he is toiling and moiling abroad.
+
+It results from the different occupations of the two sexes, that the
+husband comes home too often worried, cross, and anxious; that he finds
+in his wife a woman to whom he can not tell his doubts and fears, his
+humiliations and experience. She, poor woman, with little sense of what
+the world is, without any tact, may bore him to take her to fresh
+amusements and excitements; for, while he has been expending both brain
+and body, she has been quietly at home. A certain want of tact, not
+unfrequently met with in wives, often sets the household in a flame of
+anger and quarreling, which might be avoided by a little patience and
+care on the part of the wife.
+
+It is not in human nature for a man who has been hard at work all day to
+return to his home toiled and weary, or with his mind agitated after
+being filled with many things, and to regard with complacency little
+matters which go awry, but which at another time would not trouble him.
+The hard-working man is too apt to regard as lazy those who work less
+than himself, and he therefore looks upon the slightest unreadiness or
+want of preparation in his wife as neglect. Hence a woman, if she be
+wise, will be constantly prepared for the return of her husband. He,
+after all, is the bread-winner; and all that he requires is an attention
+less by far than we should ordinarily pay to a guest. In the good old
+Scotch song, which thrills our heart every time it is sung, and makes us
+remember, however skeptical we may have grown, the true worth and
+divinity of love, the wife's greatest pleasure is that of looking
+forward to the return of her husband. She puts on-her best clothes and
+her sweetest smile; she clothes her face with that fondness which only a
+wife's look can express; she makes her children look neat and
+pretty--"gi'es little Kate her cotton gown, and Jock his Sunday coat"
+because the husband is returning. There is not a prettier picture
+throughout the whole range of literature. How her love breathes forth--
+
+    "Sae sweet his voice, sae smooth his tongue;
+      His breath like caller air;
+    His very foot has music in 't
+      As he comes up the stair."
+
+And the love which thus colors with its radiant tints the common things
+of this life, which makes poverty beautiful, and the cottage richer than
+the palace, will be sure to teach the heart which possesses it how to
+manage the husband.
+
+In "managing a man"--an important lesson, which some women are very
+anxious to impress upon others--immense tact and delicacy are wanted,
+but are very seldom found. Wives should remember that they had better,
+very much better, never try to manage, than try and not succeed. And yet
+all men like to be managed, and require management. No one can pretend
+to be the be-all and end-all in a house. It is from his wife that the
+husband should learn the true value of things--his own dignity, his
+position, and even his secondary position by her side as manageress.
+But, if she be wise, she will not make this too apparent. Directly the
+voice gets too loud, the tone too commanding, and the manner too fussy,
+the unhappy man begins to suspect that he is being "managed," and in
+nine cases out of ten sinks into utter imbecility, or breaks away like
+an obstinate pig. Both these symptoms are bad, and perhaps the first is
+the worst. No true woman can love and reverence a man who is morally and
+intellectually lower than herself, and who has driveled down into a mere
+assenting puppet. On the other hand, the pig-headed husband is very
+troublesome. He requires the greatest care; for whatever his wife says
+he will refuse to do; nay, although it may be the very essence of
+wisdom, he will refuse it because he knows the behest proceeds from his
+wife. He is like a jibbing horse, which you have to turn one way because
+you want him to start forward on the other; or he more closely resembles
+the celebrated Irish pig, which was so obstinate that his master was
+obliged to persuade him that he was being driven to Dublin, when his
+back was towards that city, and he was going to Athlone!
+
+One part of management in husbands lies in a judicious mixture of good
+humor, attention, flattery, and compliments. All men, as well as women,
+are more or less vain; the rare exceptions of men who do not care to be
+tickled by an occasional well-turned compliment only prove the rule.
+But, in the case of a husband, we must remember that this love of being
+occasionally flattered by his wife is absolutely a necessary and natural
+virtue. No one needs to be ashamed of it. We are glad enough to own, to
+remember, to treasure up every little word of approval that fell from
+the lips of the woman we courted. Why should we forget the dear sounds
+now she is our wife? If we love her, she may be sure that any little
+compliment--an offered flower, a birthday gift, a song when we are
+weary, a smile when we are sad, a look which no eye but our own will
+see--will be treasured up, and will cheer us when she is not there.
+Judiciously used, this conduct is of the greatest effect in managing the
+husband. A little vanity does not, moreover, in such cases as these,
+prove a man to be either a bad man or a fool. "All clever men," says a
+great observer, "are more or less affected with vanity. It may be
+blatant and offensive, it may be excessive, but not unamusing, or it may
+show itself just as a large _soupcon,_ but it is never entirely absent."
+The same writer goes on to say that this vanity should by no means be
+injudiciously flattered into too large a size. A wife will probably
+admire the husband for what he is really worth; and the vanity of a
+really clever man probably only amounts to putting a little too large a
+price on his merits, not to a mistake as to what those merits are. The
+wife and husband will therefore think alike; but, if she be wise, she
+will only go to a certain point in administering the domestic lumps of
+sugar. "A clever husband," says the writer we have quoted, "is like a
+good despot; all the better for a little constitutional opposition." Or
+the same advice may be thus put, as it often is, by a wise and cautious
+mother-in-law: "My dear," she would say, "you must never let your
+husband have matters all his own way."
+
+A woman who abdicates all her authority, who is not queen over her
+kitchen, her chamber, and her drawing-room or best parlor, does a very
+dangerous and foolish thing, and will soon dwarf down into a mere
+assenting dummy. Now old Burleigh, the wise counselor of Queen
+Elizabeth, has, in his advice to his son, left it upon record that "thou
+shalt find there is nothing so irksome in life as a female fool." A wife
+who is the mere echo of her husband's opinions; who waits for his advice
+upon all matters; who is lazy, indolent, and silly in her household;
+fussy, troublesome, and always out of the way or in the way when she is
+traveling; who has no opinions of her own, no temper of her own; who
+boasts that "she bears every thing like a lamb;" and who bears the
+breakage of her best china and the desecration of her white curtains
+with tobbaco-smoke with equal serenity; such a woman may be very
+affectionate and very good, but she is somewhat of a "she-fool." Her
+husband will too often first begin to despise and then to neglect her.
+She will follow so closely on the heels of her husband's ideas and her
+husband's opinions that she will annoy him like an echo. Her genuine
+love will be construed into something like cunning flattery; her very
+devotion will be mistaken; her sweet nature become tiresome and irksome,
+from want of variety; and, from being the mistress of the house, she
+will sink into the mere slave of the husband. A wife should therefore
+learn to think, to walk alone, to bear her full share of the troubles
+and dignities of married life, never to become a cipher in her own
+house, but to rise to the level of her husband, and to take her full
+share of the matrimonial throne. The husband, if a wise man, will never
+act without consulting his wife; nor will she do any thing of importance
+without the aid and advice of her husband.
+
+There is, however--and in these days of rapid fortune-making we see it
+constantly--a certain class of men who rise in the world without the
+slightest improvement in their manners, taste, or sense. Such men are
+shrewd men of business, or perhaps have been borne to the haven of
+fortune by a lucky tide; and yet these very men possess wives who,
+although they are of a lower sphere, rise at once with their position,
+and in manner, grace, and address are perfect ladies, whilst their
+husbands are still the same rude, uncultivated boors. These wives must
+be wise enough to console themselves for their trials; for indeed such
+things are a very serious trial both to human endurance and to human
+vanity. They must remember that they married when equals with their
+husbands in their lowliness, and that their husbands have made the
+fortune which they pour at their feet. They will recollect also that
+their husbands must have industry, and a great many other sterling good
+qualities, if they lack a little polish; and, lastly, that they are in
+reality no worse off than many other women in high life who are married
+to boors, to eccentric persons, or, alas! too often to those who, with
+many admirable virtues, may blot them all by the indulgence in a bosom
+sin or an hereditary vice.
+
+The last paragraph will lead us naturally enough to the faults of
+husbands. Now, although we are inclined to think that these are greatly
+exaggerated, and that married men are, on the whole, very
+good--excellent men and citizens, brave men, battling with the world and
+its difficulties, and carrying forward the cumbrous machine in its path
+of progress and civilization--although we think that, as a class, their
+merits are actually not fully appreciated, and that the bachelors (sly
+fellows!) get very much the best of it--still, we must admit that there
+is a very large class of thoroughly bad husbands, and that this class
+may be divided into the foolish, the careless, and the vicious
+sub-classes, each of which would require at least a volume to be devoted
+to their treatment and castigation. Nay, more than a volume. Archdeacon
+Paley notes that St. John, apologizing for the brevity and
+incompleteness of Gospel directions, states that, if all the necessary
+books were written, the world would not contain them. So we may say of
+the faults of foolish husbands; we will, therefore, say no more about
+them, but return to the part which the wives of such men ought to play.
+
+In the first place, as a true woman, a wife will be as tender of those
+faults as she can be. She will not talk to her neighbors about them, nor
+magnify them, nor dwell upon them. She, alas! will never be without her
+share of blame; for the world, rightly or wrongly, often dowers the wife
+with the faults of the husband, and, seeing no possibility of
+interfering and assigning to each his or her share, suspects both.
+Moreover, in many cases she will have to blame herself chiefly. We take
+it that the great majority of women marry the men that they choose. If
+they do not do so, they should do so. They may have been unwise and vain
+enough to have been pleased and tickled by the flattery of a fool. When
+they have married him, they find him, as Dr. Gregory wrote to his
+daughters, "the most intractable of husbands; led by his passions and
+caprices, and incapable of hearing the voice of reason." A woman's
+vanity may be hurt when she finds that she has a husband for whom she
+has to blush and tremble every time he opens his lips. She may be
+annoyed at his clownish jealousy, his mulish obstinacy, his incapability
+of being managed, led, or driven; but she must reflect that there was a
+time when a little wisdom and reflection on her own part would have
+prevented her from delivering her heart and her person to so unworthy a
+creature.
+
+Women who have wicked husbands are much more to be pitied: In early life
+the wives themselves are innocent; and, from the nature of things, their
+innocence is based upon ignorance. Here the value of the almost
+intuitive wisdom and perception of the gentler sex comes into full play.
+During courtship, when this perception is in its full power and vigor,
+it should be freely exercised. Scandal and common report, in themselves
+to be avoided, are useful in this.
+
+Women should choose men of character and of unspotted name. It is a very
+old and true remark--but one may as well repeat what is old and trite
+when that which is new would be but feeble repetition at the best--that
+a good son generally makes a good husband; a wise companion in a walk
+may turn out a judicious companion through life. The wild attempt to
+reform a rake, or to marry a man of a "gay" life, in the hope that he
+will sow "his wild oats," is always dangerous, and should never be
+attempted. A woman who has a sense of religion herself should never
+attach herself to a man who has none. The choice of a husband is really
+of the greatest consequence to human happiness, and should never be made
+without the greatest care and circumspection. No sudden caprice, no
+effect of coquetry, no sally of passion, should be dignified by the name
+of love. "Marriage," says the apostle, "is honorable in all;"' but the
+kind of marriage which is so is that which is based upon genuine love,
+not upon fancy or caprice; which is founded on the inclination of
+nature, on honorable views, cemented by a similarity of tastes, and
+strengthened by the true sympathy of souls.
+
+      Love is the tyranny
+      So blessed to endure!
+    Who mourns the loss of liberty,
+      With all things else secure?
+
+      Live on, sweet tyranny!
+      (Cries heart within a heart)
+    God's blossom of Eternity,
+      How beautiful thou art!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+JOHN PLOUGHMAN.
+
+
+WHAT HE SAYS OF RELIGIOUS GRUMBLERS--GOOD-NATURE AND
+FIRMNESS--PATIENCE--OPPORTUNITIES--FAULTS--HOME--MEN WHO ARE
+DOWN--HOPE--HINTS AS TO THRIVING, ETC.
+
+
+John Ploughman's Talk, says the author, Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, the famous
+London preacher, "has not only obtained an immense circulation, but it
+has exercised an influence for good." As to the "influence for good,"
+the reader will judge when he has read the following choice bits from
+the pages of that unique book. And we feel sure that he will thank us
+for including John among our "Brave Men and Women."
+
+
+RELIGIOUS GRUMBLERS.
+
+
+When a man has a particularly empty head, he generally sets up for a
+great judge, especially in religion. None so wise as the man who knows
+nothing. His ignorance is the mother of his impudence and the nurse of
+his obstinacy; and, though he does not know B from a bull's foot, he
+settles matters as if all wisdom were in his fingers' ends--the pope
+himself is not more infallible. Hear him talk after he has been at
+meeting and heard a sermon, and you will know how to pull a good man to
+pieces, if you never knew it before. He sees faults where there are
+none, and, if there be a few things amiss, he makes every mouse into an
+elephant. Although you might put all his wit into an egg-shell, he
+weighs the sermon in the balances of his conceit, with all the airs of a
+bred-and-born Solomon, and if it be up to his standard, he lays on his
+praise with a trowel; but, if it be not to his taste, he growls and
+barks and snaps at it like a dog at a hedgehog. Wise men in this world
+are like trees in a hedge, there is only here and there one; and when
+these rare men talk together upon a discourse, it is good for the ears
+to hear them; but the bragging wiseacres I am speaking of are vainly
+puffed up by their fleshly minds, and their quibbling is as senseless as
+the cackle of geese on a common. Nothing comes out of a sack but what
+was in it, and, as their bag is empty, they shake nothing but wind out
+of it. It is very likely that neither ministers nor their sermons are
+perfect--the best garden may have a few weeds in it, the cleanest corn
+may have some chaff--but cavilers cavil at any thing or nothing, and
+find fault for the sake of showing off their deep knowledge; sooner than
+let their tongues have a holiday, they would complain that the grass is
+not a nice shade of blue, and say that the sky would have looked neater
+if it had been whitewashed.
+
+
+GOOD-NATURE AND FIRMNESS.
+
+
+Do not be all sugar, or the world will suck you down; but do not be all
+vinegar, or the world will spit you out. There is a medium in all
+things; only blockheads go to extremes. We need not be all rock or all
+sand, all iron or all wax. We should neither fawn upon every body like
+silly lap-dogs, nor fly at all persons like surly mastiffs. Blacks and
+whites go together to make up a world, and hence, on the point of
+temper, we have all sorts of people to deal with. Some are as easy as an
+old shoe, but they are hardly ever worth more than the other one of the
+pair; and others take fire as fast as tinder at the smallest offense,
+and are as dangerous as gunpowder. To have a fellow going about the farm
+as cross with every body as a bear with a sore head, with a temper as
+sour as verjuice and as sharp as a razor, looking as surly as a
+butcher's dog, is a great nuisance; and yet there may be some good
+points about the man, so that he may be a man for all that; but poor,
+soft Tommy, as green as grass and as ready to bend as a willow, is
+nobody's money and every body's scorn. A man must have a backbone, or
+how is he to hold his head up? But that backbone must bend, or he will
+knock his brow against the beam.
+
+There is a time to do as others wish, and a time to refuse. We may make
+ourselves asses, and then every body will ride us; but, if we would be
+respected, we must be our own masters, and not let others saddle us as
+they think fit. If we try to please every body, we shall be like a toad
+under a harrow, and never have peace; and, if we play lackey to all our
+neighbors, whether good or bad, we shall be thanked by no one, for we
+shall soon do as much harm as good. He that makes himself a sheep will
+find that the wolves are not all dead. He who lies on the ground must
+expect to be trodden on. He who makes himself a mouse, the cats will eat
+him. If you let your neighbors put the calf on your shoulders, they will
+soon clap on the cow. We are to please our neighbor for his good to
+edification, but this is quite another matter.
+
+
+PATIENCE.
+
+
+Patience is better than wisdom; an ounce of patience is worth a pound of
+brains. All men praise patience, but few enough can practice it; it is a
+medicine which Is good for all diseases, and therefore every old woman
+recommends it; but it is not every garden that grows the herbs to make
+it with. When one's flesh and bones are full of aches and pains, it is
+as natural for us to murmur as for a horse to shake his head when the
+flies tease him, or a wheel to rattle when a spoke is loose; but nature
+should not be the rule with Christians, or what is their religion worth?
+If a soldier fights no better than a plowboy, off with his red coat. We
+expect more fruit from an apple-tree than from a thorn, and we have a
+right to do so. The disciples of a patient Savior should be patient
+themselves. Grin and bear it is the old-fashioned advice, but sing and
+bear it is a great deal better. After all, we get very few cuts of the
+whip, considering what bad cattle we are; and when we do smart a little,
+it is soon over. Pain past is pleasure, and experience comes by it. We
+ought not to be afraid of going down into Egypt, when we know we shall
+come out of it with jewels of silver and gold.
+
+
+ON SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES.
+
+
+Some men never are awake when the train starts, but crawl into the
+station just in time to see that every body is off, and then sleepily
+say, "Dear me, is the train gone? My watch must have stopped in the
+night!" They always come into town a day after the fair, and open their
+wares an hour after the market is over. They make their hay when the sun
+has left off shining, and cut their corn as soon as the fine weather is
+ended. They cry "Hold hard!" after the shot has left the gun, and lock
+the stable-door when the steed is stolen. They are like a cow's tail,
+always behind; they take time by the heels and not by the forelock, if
+indeed they ever take him at all. They are no more worth than an old
+almanac; their time has gone for being of use; but, unfortunately, you
+can not throw them away as you would the almanac, for they are like the
+cross old lady who had an annuity left to her, and meant to take out the
+full value of it--they won't die, though they are of no use alive.
+Take-it-easy and Live-long are first cousins, they say, and the more's
+the pity. If they are immortal till their work is done, they will not
+die in a hurry, for they have not even begun to work yet. Shiftless
+people generally excuse their laziness by saying, "they are only a
+little behind;" but a little too late is much too late, and a miss is as
+good as a mile. My neighbor Sykes covered up his well after his child
+was drowned in it, and was very busy down at the Old Farm bringing up
+buckets of water after every stick of the house had been burned; one of
+these days, he'll be for making his will when he can't hold a pen, and
+he'll be trying to repent of his sins when his senses are going.
+
+
+FAULTS.
+
+
+He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I have been a good
+deal up and down in the world, and I never did see either a perfect
+horse or a perfect man, and I never shall till two Sundays come
+together. You can not get white flour out of a coal sack, nor perfection
+out of human nature; he who looks for it had better look for sugar in
+the sea. The old saying is, "Lifeless, faultless;" of dead men we should
+say nothing but good; but as for the living, they are all tarred more or
+less with the black brush, and half an eye can see it. Every head has a
+soft place in it, and every heart has its black drop. Every rose has its
+prickles, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the
+skies are darkened with clouds. Nobody is so wise but he has folly
+enough to stock a stall at Vanity Fair. Where I could not see the fool's
+cap, I have nevertheless heard the bells jingle. As there is no sunshine
+without some shadows, so is all human good mixed up with more or less of
+evil; even poor-law guardians have their little failings, and parish
+beadles are not wholly of heavenly nature. The best wine has its lees.
+All men's faults are not written on their foreheads, and it's quite as
+well they are not, or hats would need very wide brims; yet as sure as
+eggs are eggs, faults of some sort nestle in every bosom. There's no
+telling when a man's sins may show themselves, for hares pop out of the
+ditch just when you are not looking for them. A horse that is weak in
+the legs may not stumble for a mile or two, but it is in him, and the
+driver had better hold him up well. The tabby cat is not lapping milk
+just now, but leave the dairy door open, and see if she is not as bad a
+thief as the kitten. There's fire in the flint, cool as it looks: wait
+till the steel gets a knock at it, and you will see. Every body can read
+that riddle, but it is not every body that will remember to keep his
+gunpowder out of the way of the candle.
+
+If we would always recollect that we live among men who are imperfect,
+we should not be in such a fever when we find out our friend's failings;
+what's rotten will rend, and cracked pots will leak. Blessed is he who
+expects nothing of poor flesh and blood, for he shall never be
+disappointed. The best of men are men at the best, and the best wax will
+melt.
+
+    "It is a good horse that never stumbles,
+    And a good wife that never grumbles."
+
+
+HOME.
+
+
+That word _home_ always sounds like poetry to me. It rings like a peal
+of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper
+into the ears of my heart. It does not matter whether it means thatched
+cottage or manor-house, home is home; be it ever so homely, there is no
+place on earth like it. Green grows the house-leek on the roof forever,
+and let the moss flourish on the thatch. Sweetly the sparrows chirrup
+and the swallows twitter around the chosen spot which is my joy and
+rest. Every bird loves its own nest; the owls think the old ruins the
+fairest spot under the moon, and the fox is of opinion that his hole in
+the hill is remarkably cozy. When my master's nag knows that his head is
+toward home he wants no whip, but thinks it best to put on all steam;
+and I am always of the same mind, for the way home, to me, is the best
+bit of road in the country. I like to see the smoke out of my own
+chimney better than the fire on another man's hearth; there's something
+so beautiful in the way in which it curls up among the trees. Cold
+potatoes on my own table taste better than roast meat at my neighbor's,
+and the honeysuckle at my own door is the sweetest I ever smell. When
+you are out, friends do their best, but still it is not home. "Make
+yourself at home," they say, because every body knows that to feel at
+home is to feel at ease.
+
+    "East and west,
+    Home is best."
+
+Why, at home you are at home, and what more do you want? Nobody grudges
+you, whatever your appetite may be; and you don't get put into a damp
+bed.
+
+
+MEN WHO ARE DOWN.
+
+
+No man's lot is fully known till he is dead; change of fortune is the
+lot of life. He who rides in the carriage may yet have to clean it.
+Sawyers change-places, and he who is up aloft may have to take his turn
+in the pit. In less than a thousand years we shall all be bald and poor
+too, and who knows what he may come to before that? The thought that we
+may ourselves be one day under the window, should make us careful when
+we are throwing out our dirty water. With what measure we mete, it shall
+be measured to us again, and therefore let us look well to our dealings
+with the unfortunate.
+
+Nothing makes me more sick of human nature than to see the way in which
+men treat others when they fall down the ladder of fortune: "Down with
+him," they cry, "he always was good for nothing."
+
+    "Down among the dead men, down, down, down,
+    Down among the dead men, there let him lie."
+
+Dog won't eat dog, but men will eat each other up like cannibals, and
+boast of it too. There are thousands in this world who fly like vultures
+to feed on a tradesman or a merchant as soon as ever he gets into
+trouble. Where the carcass is thither will the eagles be gathered
+together. Instead of a little help, they give the sinking man a great
+deal of cruelty, and cry, "Serves him right." All the world will beat
+the man whom fortune buffets. If providence smites him, all men's whips
+begin to crack. The dog is drowning, and therefore all his friends empty
+their buckets over him. The tree has fallen, and every body runs for his
+hatchet. The house is on fire, and all the neighbors warm themselves.
+The man has ill luck, therefore his friends give him ill usage; he has
+tumbled into the road, and they drive their carts over him; he is down,
+and selfishness cries, "Let him be kept down, then there will be the
+more room for those who are up."
+
+How aggravating it is when those who knocked you down kick you for not
+standing up! It is not very pleasant to hear that you have been a great
+fool, that there were fifty ways at least of keeping out of your
+difficulty, only you had not the sense to see them. You ought not to
+have lost the game; even Tom Fool can see where you made a bad move.
+"_He ought to have looked the stable-door;_" every body can see that,
+but nobody offers to buy the loser a new nag. "_What a pity he went so
+far on the ice!_" That's very true, but that won't save the poor fellow
+from drowning. When a man's coat is threadbare, it is an easy thing to
+pick a hole in it. Good advice is poor food for a hungry family.
+
+    "A man of words and not of deeds
+    Is like a garden full of weeds."
+
+Lend me a bit of string to tie up the traces, and find fault with my old
+harness when I get home. Help my old horse to a few oats, then tell him
+to mend his pace. Feel for me and I shall be much obliged to you, but
+mind you, feel in your pocket, or else a fig for your feelings.
+
+
+HOPE.
+
+
+Eggs are eggs, but some are rotten; and so hopes are hopes, but many of
+them are delusions. Hopes are like women, there is a touch of angel
+about them all, but there are two sorts. My boy Tom has been blowing a
+lot of birds'-eggs, and threading them on a string; I have been doing
+the same thing with hopes, and here's a few of them, good, bad, and
+indifferent.
+
+The sanguine man's hope pops up in a moment like Jack-in-the-box; it
+works with a spring, and does not go by reason. Whenever this man looks
+out of the window he sees better times coming, and although it is nearly
+all in his own eye and nowhere else, yet to see plum-puddings in the
+moon is a far more cheerful habit than croaking at every thing like a
+two-legged frog. This is the kind of brother to be on the road with on a
+pitch-dark night, when it pours with rain, for he carries candles in his
+eyes and a fireside in his heart. Beware of being misled by him, and
+then you may safely keep his company. His fault is that he counts his
+chickens before they are hatched, and sells his herrings before they are
+in the net. All his sparrows'-eggs are bound to turn into thrushes, at
+the least, if not partridges and pheasants. Summer has fully come, for
+he has seen one swallow. He is sure to make his, fortune at his new
+shop, for he had not opened the door five minutes before two of the
+neighbors crowded in; one of them wanted a loaf of bread on trust, and
+the other asked change for a shilling. He is certain that the squire
+means to give him his custom, for he saw him reading the name over the
+shop door as he rode past. He does not believe in slips between cups and
+lips, but makes certainties out of perhapses. Well, good soul, though he
+is a little soft at times, there is much in him to praise, and I like to
+think of ope of his odd sayings, "Never say die till you are dead, and
+then it's no use, so let it alone." There are other odd people in the
+world, you see, besides John Ploughman.
+
+
+MY FIRST WIFE.
+
+
+My experience of my first wife, who will, I hope, live to be my last, is
+much as follows: matrimony came from Paradise and leads to it. I never
+was half so happy before I was a married man as I am now. When you are
+married, your bliss begins. I have no doubt that where there is much
+love there will be much to love, and where love is scant faults will be
+plentiful. If there is only one good wife in England, I am the man who
+put the ring on her finger, and long may she wear it. God bless the dear
+soul, if she can put up _with_ me, she shall never be put down _by_ me.
+
+
+HINTS AS TO THRIVING.
+
+
+Hard work is the grand secret of success. Nothing but rags and poverty
+can come of idleness. Elbow-grease is the only stuff to make gold with.
+No sweat, no sweet. He who would have the crow's eggs must climb the
+tree. Every man must build up his own fortune nowadays. Shirt-sleeves
+rolled up lead on to best broad cloth; and he who is not ashamed of the
+apron will soon be able to do without it. "Diligence is the mother of
+good luck," as Poor Richard says; but "idleness is the devil's bolster,"
+John Ploughman says.
+
+Make as few changes as you can; trees often transplanted bear little
+fruit. If you have difficulties in one place, you will have them in
+another; if you move because it is damp in the valley, you may find it
+cold on the hill. Where will the ass go that he will not have to work?
+Where can a cow live and not get milked? Where will you find land
+without stones, or meat without bones? Everywhere on earth men must eat
+bread in the sweat of their faces. To fly from trouble men must have
+eagle's wings. Alteration is not always improvement, as the pigeon said
+when she got out of the net and into the pie. There is a proper time for
+changing, and then mind you bestir yourself, for a sitting hen gets no
+barley; but do not be forever on the shift, for a rolling stone gathers
+no moss. Stick-to-it is the conqueror. He who can wait long enough will
+win. This, that, and the other, any thing and every thing, all put
+together, make nothing in the end; but on one horse a man rides home in
+due season. In one place the seed grows, in one nest the bird hatches
+its eggs, in one oven the bread bakes, in one river the fish lives.
+
+Do not be above your business. He who turns up his nose at his work
+quarrels with his bread and butter. He is a poor smith who is afraid of
+his own sparks: there's some discomfort in all trades, except
+chimney-sweeping. If sailors gave up going to sea because of the wet, if
+bakers left off baking because it is hot work, if ploughmen would not
+plough because of the cold, and tailors would not make our clothes for
+fear of pricking their fingers, what a pass we should come to! Nonsense,
+my fine fellow, there's no shame about any honest calling; don't be
+afraid of soiling your hands, there's plenty of soap to be had. All
+trades are good to good traders. A clever man can make money out of
+dirt. Lucifer matches pay well, if you sell enough of them.
+
+You can not get honey if you are frightened at bees, nor sow corn if you
+are afraid of getting mud on your boots. Lackadaisical gentlemen had
+better emigrate to fool's-land, where men get their living by wearing
+shiny boots and lavender gloves. When bars of iron melt under the south
+wind, when you can dig the fields with toothpicks, blow ships along with
+fans, manure the crops with lavender-water, and grow plum-cakes in
+flower-pots, then will be a fine time for dandies; but until the
+millennium comes we shall all have a deal to put up with, and had better
+bear our present burdens than run helter-skelter where we shall find
+matters a deal worse.
+
+Keep your weather eye open. Sleeping poultry are carried off by the fox.
+Who watches not, catches not. Fools ask what's o'clock, but wise men
+know their time. Grind while the wind blows, or if not do not blame
+Providence. God sends every bird its food, but he does not throw it into
+the nest: he gives us our daily bread, but it is through our own labor.
+Take time by the forelock. Be up early and catch the worm. The morning
+hour carries gold in its mouth. He who drives last in the row gets all
+the dust in his eyes: rise early, and you will have a clear start for
+the day.
+
+
+TRY.
+
+
+_Can't do it_ sticks in the mud, but Try soon drags the wagon out of the
+rut. The fox said Try, and he got away from the hounds when they almost
+snapped at him. The bees said Try, and turned flowers into honey. The
+squirrel said Try, and up he went to the top of the beech-tree. The
+snow-drop said Try, and bloomed in the cold snows of Winter. The sun
+said Try, and the Spring soon threw Jack Frost out of the saddle. The
+young lark said Try, and he found his new wings took him over hedges and
+ditches, and up where his father was singing. The ox said Try, and
+ploughed the field from end to end. No hill too steep for Try to climb,
+no clay too stiff for Try to plough, no field too wet for Try to drain,
+no hole too big for Try to mend. As to a little trouble, who expects to
+find cherries without stones, or roses without thorns! Who would win
+must learn to bear. Idleness lies in bed sick of the mulligrubs where
+industry finds health and wealth. The dog in the kennel barks at the
+fleas; the hunting dog does not even know they are there. Laziness waits
+till the river is dry, and never gets to market; "Try" swims it, and
+makes all the trade. Can't do it couldn't eat the bread and butter which
+was cut for him, but Try made meat out of mushrooms.
+
+If you want to do good in the world, the little word "Try" comes in
+again. There are plenty of ways of serving God, and some that will fit
+you exactly as a key fits a lock. Don't hold back because you can not
+preach in St. Paul's; be content to talk to one or two in a cottage;
+very good wheat grows in little fields. You may cook in small pots as
+well as big ones. Little pigeons can carry great messages. Even a little
+dog can bark at a thief, and wake up the master and save the house. A
+spark is fire. A sentence of truth has heaven in it. Do what you do
+right thoroughly; pray over it heartily, and leave the result to God.
+
+Alas! advice is thrown away on many, like good seed on a bare rock.
+Teach a cow for seven years, but she will never learn to sing the Old
+Hundreth. Of some it seems true that when they were born Solomon went by
+the door, but would not look in. Their coat-of-arms is a fool's cap on a
+donkey's head. They sleep when it is time to plough, and weep when
+harvest comes. They eat all the parsnips for supper, and wonder they
+have none left for breakfast.
+
+    Once let every man say _Try_,
+    Very few on straw would lie,
+    Fewer still of want would die;
+    Pans would all have fish to fry;
+    Pigs would fill the poor man's sty;
+    Want would cease and need would fly;
+    Wives,and children cease to cry;
+    Poor rates would not swell so high;
+    Things wouldn't go so much awry--
+    You'd be glad, and so would I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL.
+
+(BORN 1750--DIED 1848)
+
+
+A NOBLE, SELF-SACRIFICING WOMAN.
+
+
+March 16, 1750, and January 9, 1848. These are the dates that span the
+ninety-eight years of the life of a woman whose deeds were great in the
+service of the world, but of whom the world itself knows all too little.
+Of the interest attaching to the life of such a woman, whose
+recollections went back to the great earthquake at Lisbon; who lived
+through the American War, the old French Revolution, the rise and fall
+of Napoleon; who saw the development of the great factors of modern
+civilization, "from the lumbering post wagon in which she made her first
+journey from Hanover to the railroads and electric telegraphs which have
+intersected all Europe;" of the interest which such a life possesses,
+apart from that which attaches to it as that of a noble,
+self-sacrificing woman, who was content to serve when she might have led
+in a great cause, but few will be insensible.
+
+Caroline Herschel was born on the 16th of March 1750, and was the eighth
+child of ten children. Her father, Isaac Herschel, traced his ancestry
+back to the early part of the seventeenth century, when three brothers
+Herschel left Moravia through religious differences, they being
+Protestant. The father, Isaac, was passionately fond of music, to the
+study of which, as a youth, he devoted himself, and, at the time of his
+marriage in Hanover, was engaged as hautboy player in the band of the
+Guards. When, in the course of time, his family grew up around him, each
+child received an education at the garrison school, to which they were
+sent between the ages of two and fourteen; and at home the father strove
+to cultivate the musical talents of his sons, one of whom, William, soon
+taught his teacher, while another, Jacob, was organist of the garrison
+church.
+
+Of her very early childhood one gets the impression that Caroline was a
+quiet, modest little maiden, "deeply interested in all the family
+concerns," content to be eclipsed by her more brilliant and less patient
+elder sister, and overlooked by her thoughtless brothers, toward one of
+whom, William, she already began to cherish that deep affection which
+she maintained throughout their lives. The lives of this brother and
+sister, indeed, in this respect, recall to mind those of Charles and
+Mary Lamb. When she was five years old the family life was disturbed by
+war, which took away temporarily father and sons, and left the little
+girl at home, her mother's sole companion. Her recollections of this
+time are very dismal, and may be read at length in the memoir by Mrs.
+John Herschel, to which we are indebted for much aid. When she was
+seventeen her father died, and the polished education which he had hoped
+to give her was supplanted by the rough but useful knowledge which her
+mother chose to inculcate in her--an education which was to help to fit
+her to earn her bread, and to be of great assistance to her beloved
+brother William. He had now for some years been living at Bath, England,
+from which he wrote in 1772, proposing that his sister should join him
+there to assist him in his musical projects, for he had now become a
+composer and director. In August of this year she accomplished a most
+adventurous and wearisome journey to London, encountering storms by land
+and sea, and on the 28th of the month found herself installed in her
+brother's lodgings at Bath.
+
+It will be necessary here to speak a little more at length of her
+brother's life as she found it when she joined him, as thereafter her
+own existence was practically merged in his, and, as she has said
+modestly of herself and her service: "I did nothing for my brother but
+what a well-trained puppy-dog would have done; that is to say, I did
+what he commanded me. I was a mere tool, which he had the trouble of
+sharpening." Posterity discredits this self-depreciation, while it
+admires it, and Miss Herschel's services are now esteemed at their true
+worth. Her brother then, when she came to Bath, had established himself
+there as a teacher of music, as organist of the Octagon Chapel, and, as
+we have said before, was a composer and director of more than ordinary
+merit. This was all a side issue, however. It was but a means to an end.
+His music was the goose that laid the golden egg, which, once in his
+possession, he turned over to the mistress of his soul--Astronomy.
+
+Every spare moment of the day, we are told, and many hours stolen from
+the night, had long been devoted to the studies which were compelling
+him to become himself an observer of the heavens. He had worked wonders
+of mechanical invention, forced thereto by necessity; had become a
+member of a philosophical society, and his name was beginning to be
+circulated among the great, rumors of his work reaching and arresting
+even royal attention.
+
+At this point his sister arrived, the quiet domestic life she had been
+living in Hanover being suddenly changed for one of "ceaseless and
+inexhaustible activity" in her brother's service, being at once his
+astronomical and musical assistant, and his housekeeper and guardian. Of
+the latter, his erratic habits made him in great need. "For ten years
+she persevered at Bath," says her biographer, "singing when she was told
+to sing, copying when she was told to copy, 'lending a hand' in the
+workshop, and taking her full share in all the stirring and exciting
+changes by which the musician became the king's astronomer and a
+celebrity; but she never, by a single word, betrays how these wonderful
+events affected her, nor indulges in the slightest approach to an
+original sentiment, comment, or reflection not strictly connected with
+the present fact." In an ordinary case this would not be remarkable, but
+in the present instance it acquires considerable significance from the
+fact that, to our best knowledge, Miss Herschel's was a temperament
+which would be strongly affected by the life she was leading, and her
+silence as to personal sentiment shows to what an extent she had become
+a tool in her brother's hands--rejoicing in his successes, and
+sympathizing in his sorrows, but never revealing to what depth of
+self-sacrifice she may have been plunged by her voluntary surrender and
+devotion to her brother.
+
+As we understand her, Miss Herschel would have been eminently fitted to
+fill a position of high domestic responsibility; and no woman of this
+sort, who has once dreamed of a home of her own, with its ennobling and
+divine responsibilities, can, without a pang, give up so sweet a vision
+for a life of sacrifice, although it be brilliant with the cold
+splendors of science. Her life with her brother, as has been said, was
+one of ceaseless activity in all the capacities in which she served him.
+As housekeeper, she occupied a small room in the attic, while her
+brother occupied the ground-floor, furnished in new and handsome style.
+She received a sum for weekly expenses, of which she must keep a careful
+account, and all the marketing fell to her. She had to struggle with
+hot-tempered servants, and with the greatest irregularity and disorder
+in the household; while her imperfect knowledge of English (this was
+soon after her arrival at Bath) added a new pang to her homesickness and
+low spirits. Later on, in her capacity as musical assistant, we are told
+that she once copied the scores of the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabaeus"
+into parts for an orchestra of nearly one hundred performers, and the
+vocal parts of "Samson," besides instructing the treble singers, of whom
+she was now herself the first. As astronomical assistant, she has
+herself given a glimpse of her experience in the following words: "In my
+brother's absence from home, I was, of course, left solely to amuse
+myself with my own thoughts, which were any thing but cheerful. I found
+I was to be trained for an assistant astronomer, and, by way of
+encouragement, a telescope adapted for 'sweeping,' consisting of a tube
+with two glasses, such as are commonly used in a 'finder,' was given me.
+I was 'to sweep for comets,' and I see by my journal that I began August
+22, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in
+my 'sweeps,' which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two
+months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the
+star-light nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar-frost,
+without a human being near enough to be within call. I knew too little
+of the real heavens to be able to point out every object so as to find
+it again without losing too much time by consulting the atlas." And, in
+another place, she says: "I had, however, the comfort to see that my
+brother was satisfied with my endeavors to assist him, when he wanted
+another person either to run to the clocks, write down a memorandum,
+fetch and carry instruments, or measure the ground with poles, etc., of
+which something of the kind every moment would occur." How successful
+she was in her sky-sweeping may be judged from the fact that she herself
+discovered no less than eight different comets at various times during
+her apprenticeship. Her work was not unattended by danger and accidents,
+and on one occasion, on a cold and cloudy December night, when a strip
+of clear sky revealed some stars and there was great haste made to
+observe them, in assisting her brother with his huge telescope she ran
+in the dark on ground covered with melting snow a foot deep, tripped,
+and fell on a large iron hook such as butchers use, and which was
+attached for some purpose to the machine. It entered her right leg,
+above the knee, and when her brother called, "Make haste," she could
+only answer by a pitiful cry, "I am hooked." He and the workmen were
+instantly with her; but they did not free her from the torturing
+position without leaving nearly two ounces of her flesh behind, and it
+was long before she was able to take her place again at the instrument.
+
+It would be interesting, if it were but practicable, to give a brief
+journal of her life during the fifty years she lived in England, from
+the time of her arrival in Bath, August 28, 1772, till the time of her
+brother's death, August 25, 1822, after which she returned to Hanover.
+
+We have given enough, perhaps, to suggest the mode and the activity of
+her life; but of her brother's marriage, and the trial it brought upon
+her in giving up the supreme place she had held in his love and
+companionship for sixteen years; of the details of her discoveries, and
+the interesting correspondence which accompanied them; of her various
+great and noble friends, and her relations with them; of the death of
+her brother, then Sir William Herschel, and the terrible blow it proved
+to her; of her return to Holland, to the home of another brother; of her
+sorrow and disappointment at the changes which had taken place in the
+home of her youth during the long years which had brought her to old
+age--she was then seventy-two--and to face "the blank of life after
+having lived within the radiance of genius;" of the comfort she derived
+from the members of her brother's family whom she had left behind in
+"happy England;" of the honors which the chief scientific men in the
+kingdom bestowed upon her--of all these matters we can do no more than
+to simply touch upon them as above, although, if we might refer to them
+at greater length, it would be but to increase our admiration and esteem
+for one of the strongest, most serviceable, and most faithful women that
+ever lived.
+
+She died at eleven o'clock on the night of the 9th of January, 1848, at
+the age of ninety-eight; and the holy words were spoken in the same
+little chapel in the garrison in which, "nearly a century before, she
+had been christened and afterward confirmed." In the coffin with her was
+placed, at her request, "a lock of her beloved brother's hair, and an
+old, almost obliterated almanac that had been used by her father;" and
+with these tokens of the unswerving love and fidelity she had always
+borne to parent and brother, she was laid away to rest, leaving the
+memory of a noble woman, great in wisdom, and greater in womanliness,
+without which, in woman, wisdom is unhallowed.--S.A. CHAPIN, JR., _in
+the Christian Union_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+PESTIFEROUS LITERATURE.
+
+
+THE PRINTING-PRESS THE MIGHTIEST AGENCY ON EARTH FOR GOOD AND FOR
+EVIL--THE FLOOD OF IMPURE AND LOATHSOME LITERATURE--WHAT CAN WE DO TO
+ABATE THIS PESTILENCE?--WHAT BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS SHALL WE READ?--HOW
+PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.
+
+
+He is a brave man, who, at the right time and in the right place and
+manner, lifts his voice against a great evil of the day. Dr. Talmage has
+recently done this, with an earnestness like that of the old Hebrew
+prophets. His timely words of warning >an not be unfruitful:
+
+"Of making books there is no end." True in the times so long B.C., how
+much more true in the times so long A.D.! We see so many books we do not
+understand what a book is. Stand it on end. Measure it, the height of
+it, the depth of it, the length of it, the breadth of it. You can not do
+it. Examine the paper, and estimate the progress made from the time of
+the impressions on clay, and then on the bark of trees, and from the
+bark of trees to papyrus, and from papyrus to the hide of wild beasts,
+and from the hide of wild beasts on down until the miracles of our
+modern paper manufactories, and then see the paper, white and pure as an
+infant's soul, waiting for God's inscription. A book! Examine the type
+of it; examine the printing, and see the progress from the time when
+Solon's laws were written on oak planks, and Hesiod's poems were written
+on tables of lead, and the Sinaitic commands were written on tables of
+stone, on down to Hoe's perfecting printing-press. A book! It took all
+the universities of the past, all the martyr-fires, all the
+civilizations, all the battles, all the victories, all the defeats, all
+the glooms, all the brightnesses, all the centuries, to make it
+possible. A book! It is the chorus of the ages--it is the drawing-room
+in which kings and queens, and orators, and poets, and historians, and
+philosophers come out to greet you. If I worshiped any thing on earth, I
+would worship that. If I burned incense to any idol, I would build an
+altar to that. Thank God for good books, helpful books, inspiring books,
+Christian books, books of men, books of women, books of God. The
+printing-press is the mightiest agency on earth for good and for evil.
+The minister of the Gospel standing in a pulpit has a responsible
+position, but I do not think it is as responsible as the position of an
+editor or a publisher. Take the simple statistics that our New York
+dailies now have a circulation of 450,000 per day, and add to it the
+fact that three of our weekly periodicals have an aggregate circulation
+of about one million, and then cipher, if you can, how far up and how
+far down and how far out reach the influences of the American
+printing-press. I believe the Lord intends the printing-press to be the
+chief means for the world's rescue and evangelization, and I think that
+the great last battle of the world will not be fought with swords or
+guns, but with types and press--a purified Gospel literature triumphing
+over, trampling down, and crushing out forever that which is depraved.
+The only way to right a bad book is by printing a good one. The only way
+to overcome unclean newspaper literature is by scattering abroad that
+which is healthful. May God speed the cylinders of an honest,
+intelligent, aggressive, Christian printing-press.
+
+I have to tell you this morning that I believe that the greatest scourge
+that has ever come upon this nation has been that of unclean journalism.
+It has its victims in all occupations and departments. It has helped to
+fill insane asylums and penitentiaries, and alms-houses and dens of
+shame. The bodies of this infection lie in the hospitals and in the
+graves, while their souls are being tossed over into a lost eternity, an
+avalanche of horror and despair. The London plague was nothing to it.
+That counted its victims by thousands; but this modern pest has already
+shoveled its millions into the charnel-house of the morally dead. The
+longest rail train that ever ran over the Erie or the Hudson tracks was
+not long enough or large enough to carry the beastliness and the
+putrefaction which have gathered up in the bad books and newspapers of
+this land in the last twenty years. Now, it is amid such circumstances
+that I put the questions of overmastering importance to you and your
+families: What can we do to abate this pestilence? What books and
+newspapers shall we read? You see I group them together. A newspaper is
+only a book in a swifter and more portable shape, and the same rules
+which apply to book-reading will apply to newspaper-reading. What shall
+we read? Shall our minds be the receptacle of every thing that an author
+has a mind to write? Shall there be no distinction between the tree of
+life and the tree of death? Shall we stoop down and drink out of the
+trough which the wickedness of men has filled with pollution and shame?
+Shall we mire in impurity, and chase fantastic will-o'-the-wisps across
+the swamps, when we might walk in the blooming gardens of God? O, no.
+For the sake of our present and everlasting welfare, we must make an
+intelligent and Christian choice.
+
+Standing, as we do, chin-deep in fictitious literature, the first
+question that many of the young people are asking me is, "Shall we read
+novels?" I reply, there are novels that are pure, good, Christian,
+elevating to the heart, and ennobling to the life. But I have still
+further to say, that I believe three-fourths of the novels in this day
+are baneful and destructive to the last degree. A pure work of fiction
+is history and poetry combined. It is a history of things around us,
+with the licenses and the assumed names of poetry. The world can never
+repay the debt which it owes to such fictitious writers as Hawthorne,
+Mackenzie, and Landor and Hunt, and others whose names are familiar to
+all. The follies of high life were never better exposed than by Miss
+Edgeworth. The memories of the past were never more faithfully embalmed
+than in the writings of Walter Scott. Cooper's novels are healthfully
+redolent with the breath of the seaweed and the air of the American
+forest. Charles Kingsley has smitten the morbidness of the world, and
+led a great many to appreciate the poetry of sound health, strong
+muscles, and fresh air. Thackeray did a grand work in caricaturing the
+pretenders to gentility and high blood. Dickens has built his own
+monument in his books, which are an everlasting plea for the poor and
+the anathema of injustice. Now, I say books like these, read at right
+times and read in right proportion with other books, can not help but be
+ennobling and purifying. But, alas! for the loathsome and impure
+literature that has come upon this country in the shape of novels like a
+freshet overflowing all the banks of decency and common sense. They are
+coming from some of the most celebrated publishing houses in the
+country. They are coming with the recommendation of some of our
+religious newspapers. They lie on your center-table, to curse your
+children and blast with their infernal fires generations unborn. You
+find these books in the desk of the school-miss, in the trunk of the
+young man, in the steamboat cabin, and on the table of the hotel
+reception-room. You see a light in your child's room late at night. You
+suddenly go in and say: "What are you doing?". "I am reading." "What are
+you reading?" "A book." You look at the book. It is a bad book. "Where
+did you get it?" "I borrowed it." Alas! there are always those abroad
+who would like to loan your son or daughter a bad book. Everywhere,
+everywhere an unclean literature. I charge upon it the destruction of
+ten thousand immortal souls; and I bid you this morning to wake up to
+the magnitude of the theme. I shall take all the world's
+literature--good novels and bad; travels, true or false; histories,
+faithful and incorrect; legends, beautiful and monstrous; all tracts,
+all chronicles, all epilogues, all family, city, state, national
+libraries--and pile them up in a pyramid of literature; and then I shall
+bring to bear upon it some grand, glorious, infallible, unmistakable
+Christian principles. God help me to speak with reference to the account
+I must at last render! God help you to listen.
+
+I charge you, in the first place, to stand aloof from all books that
+give false pictures of human life. Life is neither a tragedy nor a
+farce. Men are not all either knaves or heroes. Women are neither angels
+nor furies. And yet if you depended upon much of the literature of the
+day, you would get the idea that life, instead of being something
+earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantastic and extravagant
+thing. How poorly prepared are that young man and woman for the duties
+of to-day who spent last night wading through brilliant passages
+descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness! The man will be
+looking all day long for his heroine in the tin-shop, by the forge or in
+the factory, in the counting-room, and he will not find her, and he will
+be dissatisfied. A man who gives himself up to the indiscriminate
+reading of novels will be nerveless, inane, and a nuisance. He will be
+fit neither for the store, nor the shop, nor the field. A woman who
+gives herself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be
+unfitted for the duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There she is,
+hair disheveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands trembling,
+bursting into tears at midnight over the woes of some unfortunate. In
+the day-time, when she ought to be busy, staring by the half-hour at
+nothing; biting her finger-nails to the quick. The carpet that was plain
+before will be plainer after having through a romance all night long
+wandered in tessellated halls of castles, and your industrious companion
+will be more unattractive than ever now that you have walked in the
+romance through parks with plumed princesses or lounged in the arbor
+with the polished desperado. O, these confirmed novel-readers! They are
+unfit for this life, which is a tremendous discipline. They know not how
+to go through the furnaces of trial where they must pass, and they are
+unfitted for a world where every thing we gain we achieve by hard, long
+continuing, and exhaustive work.
+
+Again, abstain from all those books which, while they have some good
+things about them, have also an admixture of evil. You have read books
+that had the two elements in them--the good and the bad. Which stuck to
+you? The bad! The heart of most people is like a sieve, which lets the
+small particles of gold fall through, but keeps the great cinders.
+
+Again, abstain from those books which are apologetic of crime. It is a
+sad thing that some of the best and most beautiful bookbindery, and some
+of the finest rhetoric, have been brought to make sin attractive. Vice
+is a horrible thing, anyhow. It is born in shame, and it dies howling in
+the darkness. In this world it is scourged with a whip of scorpions, but
+afterward the thunders of God's wrath pursue it across a boundless
+desert, beating it with ruin and woe. When you come to paint carnality,
+do not paint it as looking from behind embroidered curtains, or through
+lattice of royal seraglio, but as writhing in the agonies of a city
+hospital. Cursed be the books that try to make impurity decent, and
+crime attractive, and hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the books that swarm
+with libertines and desperadoes, who make the brain of the young people
+whirl with villainy. Ye authors who write them, ye publishers who print
+them, ye book-sellers who distribute them, shall be cut to pieces; if
+not by an aroused community, then at last by a divine vengeance, which
+shall sweep to the lowest pit of perdition all ye murderers of souls. I
+tell you, though you may escape in this world, you will be ground at
+last under the hoof of eternal calamities, and you will be chained to
+the rock, and you will have the vultures of despair clawing at your
+soul, and those whom you have destroyed will come around to torment you
+and to pour hotter coals of fury upon your head and rejoice eternally in
+the outcry of your pain and the howl of your damnation! "God shall wound
+the hairy scalp of him that goeth on in his trespasses." The clock
+strikes midnight, a fair form bends over a romance. The eyes flash fire.
+The breath is quick and irregular. Occasionally the color dashes to the
+cheek, and then dies out. The hands tremble as though a guardian spirit
+were trying to shake the deadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall.
+She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dead at its own sound. The
+sweat on her brow is the spray dashed up from the river of Death. The
+clock strikes four, and the rosy dawn soon after begins to look through
+the lattice upon the pale form, that looks like a detained specter of
+the night. Soon in a mad-house, she will mistake her ringlets for
+curling serpents, and thrust her white hand through the bars of the
+prison and smite her head, rubbing it back as though to push the scalp
+from the skull, shrieking, "My brain! my brain!" O, stand off from that.
+Why will you go sounding your way amidst the reefs and warning buoys,
+when there is such a vast ocean in which you may voyage, all sail set?
+
+There is one other thing I shall say this morning before I leave you,
+whether you want to hear it or not; that is, that I consider the bad
+pictorial literature of the day as most tremendous for ruin. There is no
+one who can like good pictures better than I do. But what shall I say to
+the prostitution of this art to purposes of iniquity? These
+death-warrants of the soul are at every street corner. They smite the
+vision of the young with pollution. Many a young man buying a copy has
+bought his eternal discomfiture. There may be enough poison in one bad
+picture to poison one soul, and that soul may poison ten, and the ten
+fifty, and the hundreds thousands, until nothing but the measuring line
+of eternity can tell the height and depth and ghastliness and horror of
+the great undoing. The work of death that the wicked author does in a
+whole book the bad engraver may do on half a side of pictorial. Under
+the disguise of pure mirth the young man buys one of these sheets. He
+unrolls it before his comrades amid roars of laughter; but long after
+the paper is gone the results may perhaps be seen in the blasted
+imaginations of those who saw it. The Queen of Death every night holds a
+banquet, and these periodicals are the printed invitations to her
+guests. Alas! that the fair brow of American art should be blotched with
+this plague spot, and that philanthropists, bothering themselves about
+smaller evils, should lift up no united and vehement voice against this
+great calamity! Young man, buy not this moral strychnine for your soul!
+Pick not up this nest of coiled adders for your pocket! Patronize no
+news-stand that keeps them! Have your room bright with good engravings,
+but for these iniquitous pictorials have not one wall, not one bureau,
+not one pocket. A man is no better than the picture he loves to look at.
+If your eyes are not pure, you heart can not be. One can guess the
+character of a man by the kind of pictorial he purchases. When the devil
+fails to get a man to read a bad book, he sometimes succeeds in getting
+him to look at a bad picture. When Satan goes a-fishing he does not care
+whether it is a long line or a short line, if he only draws his victim
+in.
+
+If I have this morning successfully laid down any principles by which
+you may judge in regard to books and newspapers, then I have done
+something of which I shall not be ashamed on the day which shall try
+every man's work, of what sort it is. Cherish good books and newspapers.
+Beware of the bad ones. One column may save your soul; one paragraph may
+ruin it. Go home to-day and look through your library, and then look on
+the stand where you keep your pictorials and newspapers, and apply the
+Christian principles I have laid down this morning. If there is any
+thing in your home that can not stand the test do not give it away, for
+it might spoil an immortal soul; do not sell it, for the money you get
+would be the price of blood; but rather kindle a fire on your kitchen
+hearth, or in your back yard, and then drop the poison in it, and keep
+stirring the blaze until, from preface to appendix, there shall not be a
+single paragraph left.
+
+Once in a while there is a mind like a loadstone, which, plunged amidst
+steel and brass filings, gathers up the steel and repels the brass. But
+it is generally just the opposite. If you attempt to plunge through a
+hedge of burs to get one blackberry, you get more burs than
+blackberries. You can not afford to read a bad book, however good you
+are. You say: "The influence is insignificant." I tell you that the
+scratch of a pin has sometimes produced the lock-jaw. Alas, if through
+curiosity, as many do, you pry into an evil book, your curiosity is as
+dangerous as that of the man who would stick a torch into a gunpowder
+mill, merely to see whether it would blow up or not. In a menagerie in
+New York a man put his hand through the bars of a black leopard's cage.
+The animal's hide looked so slick and bright and beautiful. He just
+stroked it once. The monster seized him, and he drew forth a hand, torn,
+and mangled, and bleeding. O, touch not evil, even with the faintest
+stroke; though it may be glossy and beautiful, touch it not, lest you
+pull forth your soul torn and bleeding under the clutch of the black
+leopard. "But," you say, "how can I find out whether a book is good or
+bad, without reading it?" There is always something suspicious about a
+bad book. I never knew an exception. Something suspicious in the index
+or the style of illustration. This venomous reptile almost always
+carries a warning rattle.
+
+Again, I charge you to stand off from all those books which corrupt the
+imagination and inflame the passions. I do not refer now to that kind of
+a book which the villain has under his coat, waiting for the school to
+be out, and then looking both ways to see that there is no policeman
+around the block, offers the book to your son on his way home. I do not
+speak of that kind of literature, but that which evades the law and
+comes out in polished style, and with acute plot sounds the tocsin that
+rouses up all the baser passions of the soul. Years ago a French lady
+came forth as an authoress, under the assumed name of George Sand, She
+smoked cigars. She wore gentlemen's apparel. She stepped off the bounds
+of decency. She wrote with a style ardent, eloquent, mighty in its
+gloom, horrible in its unchastity, glowing in its verbiage, vivid in its
+portraiture, damning in its effects, transfusing into the libraries and
+homes of the world an evil that has not even begun to relent, and she
+has her copyists in all lands. To-day, under the nostrils of your city,
+there is a fetid, reeking, unwashed literature enough to poison all the
+fountains of public virtue and smite your sons and daughters as with the
+wing of a destroying angel, and it is time that the ministers of the
+Gospel blew the trumpet and rallied the forces of righteousness, all
+armed to the teeth, in this great battle against a depraved literature.
+Why are fifty per cent of the criminals in the jails and penitentiaries
+of the United States to-day under twenty-one years of age? Many of them
+under seventeen, under sixteen, under fifteen, under fourteen, under
+thirteen. Walk along one of the corridors of the Tombs Prison in New
+York and look for yourselves. Bad books, bad newspapers bewitched them
+as soon as they got out of the cradle. "O," says some one, "I am a
+business man, and I have no time to examine what my children read. I
+have no time to inspect the books that come into my household." If your
+children were threatened with typhoid fever would you have time to go
+for the doctor? Would you have time to watch the progress of the
+disease? Would you have time for the funeral? In the presence of my God,
+I warn you of the fact that your children are threatened with moral and
+spiritual typhoid, and that unless this thing be stopped, it will be to
+them funeral of body, funeral of mind, funeral of soul, three funerals
+in one day.
+
+Against every bad pamphlet send a good pamphlet; against every unclean
+picture send an innocent picture; against every scurrilous song send a
+Christian song; against every bad book send a good book. The good
+literature, the Christian literature, in its championship for God and
+the truth, will bring down the evil literature in its championship for
+the devil. I feel tingling to the tips of my fingers, and through all
+the nerves of my body, and all the depths of my soul, the certainty of
+our triumph. Cheer up! O men and women who are toiling for the
+purification of society. Toil with your faces in the sunlight. If God be
+for us, who can be against us?
+
+      Ye workers in the light,
+      There is a grand to-morrow,
+    After the long and gloomy night,
+     After the pain and sorrow
+
+      The purposes of God
+      Do not forever linger;
+    With peace and consolation shod,
+      Do ye not see the finger
+
+      Which points the way of life
+      To all down in the valley?
+    Then gird ye, gird ye for the strife;
+      Against the darkness rally.
+
+      The victory is yours,
+      And ye are God's forever;
+    For all things He for you secures
+      Through brave and right endeavor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+SATISFIED
+
+
+AND OTHER POEMS.
+
+
+    Sleeping, waking, on we glide,
+     Dreamful, and unsatisfied,
+
+     In the heart a vague surprise,
+     Master of the thoughtful eyes.
+
+     What though Spring is in the air,
+     And the world is bright and fair?
+
+     Something hidden from the sight
+     Dashes fullness of delight.
+
+     Soothed are we in duty done,
+     And in something new begun,
+
+     Like a kissed and flattered child
+     To denial reconciled;
+
+     Yet the something unattained
+     Keeps us like Prometheus chained,
+
+     And our hearts intenser grow
+     As the vultures come and go.
+
+     Sleeping, waking, on we glide,
+     Dreamful and unsatisfied,
+
+     Pilgrims on a foreign shore,
+     Wanting something evermore,
+
+     All the shadow in our eyes,
+     All the substance in the skies.
+
+      By and by another sleep,
+      Angels watch and ward to keep.
+
+      By and by, from wakeful eyes,
+      Nothing of the old surprise,
+
+      All pure dreams of earth fulfilled,
+      Every sense with gladness thrilled.
+
+      Then are we, no more denied,
+      _With Thy likeness satisfied_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+SACRIFICE
+
+
+      Sacrifice! therein
+    I find no superstition of the past,
+    But one of Truth's great words, all life within,
+      As into chaos cast.
+
+      God, God put it there,
+    A trumpet-note to every living soul,
+    A prophecy of all that is most fair
+      Through darkness to the goal.
+
+      I can not efface
+    The record of this wonder-working Word,
+    Nor in my memory but faintly trace
+      Stern voices I have heard.
+
+      Voices come by day
+    Between life's lightning-flash and thunder-peal,
+    And sooner heaven and earth shall pass away
+      Than what they there reveal.
+
+      Voices come at night
+    Amid the silence of deluding cares,
+    And pain flows through the darkness and grows bright,
+      And knowledge unawares.
+
+      Voices fill the strife
+    To which I give the beauty of my days,
+    And testify that sacrifice is life,
+      Availing prayer and praise.
+
+      Life retained is lost,
+    The tocsin of interminable war;
+    And life relinquished is of life the cost,
+      Which shineth as a star.
+
+      Tongue can never tell
+    God's revelations in this mighty Word,
+    Nor how the mystery of life they spell,
+      With which all hearts are stirred.
+
+      I continue mute,
+    In joyful awe before the Infinite,
+    Until at length eternity transmute
+      My darkness into light.
+
+      I can only speak
+    An earth-born language, that does not reveal
+    The infinitude of duty which I seek
+      To utter and but feel.
+
+      Duty! heart of joy!
+    Which giveth strength to suffer and endure,
+    Till self-forgetfulness in God's employ
+      Enthrones a life secure.
+
+      Shepherd of the sheep,
+    To whom God gives the universal charge,
+    I think of Thy devotion and I weep,
+      Thy love appears so large!
+
+      And I think of all
+    The grief which strengthened Thy exalting hand,
+    Until great tears of Easter gladness fall,
+      To think in Thee I stand,
+
+
+         Out of whose great heart
+    So glorious is death's sacrificial knife--
+    To think I know Thee now somewhat, who art
+         The way, the truth, the life;
+
+         Who art with Thine own,
+    Where Thou hast been through immemorial years,
+    In every touch of consolation known,
+         In every flood of tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Way of the Lord.
+
+
+    I cast my lot with the surging world,
+      To find out the way of the Lord;
+    A pebble hither and thither hurled,
+      To find out the way of the Lord.
+
+    I sought where the foot of man was unknown,
+      To find out the way of the Lord;
+    In the desert alone, alone, alone,
+      To find out the way of the Lord.
+
+    I bowed my heart to the voice of the sea,
+      To find out the way of the Lord;
+    To the sob of unuttered mystery,
+      To find out the way of the Lord.
+
+    I went down into the depths of my soul,
+      To find out the way of the Lord;
+    Down where the years of eternity roll,
+      To find out the way of the Lord.
+
+    Ah, me! I had no interpreter
+      To tell me the way of the Lord;
+    For Nature, it was not in her
+      To tell me the way of the Lord.
+
+    I heard of One who came out from God
+     To show me the way of the Lord;
+    I entered the path which here He trod
+    To show me the way of the Lord.
+
+    I walked the way of humility
+     To find out the way Of the Lord;
+    It turned to the way of sublimity,
+     To show me the way of the Lord.
+
+    From grief and loss came joy and gain,
+     To show me the way of the Lord;
+    And the dead came back to life again,
+     To show me the way of the Lord.
+
+    Yea, into the heaven of heavens He went,
+     To show me the way of the Lord;
+    And the Comforter from the Father He sent,
+     To show me the way of the Lord.
+
+    I learned how for me He lived and died,
+     To show me the way of the Lord;
+    And bearing the cross, which He glorified,
+     _I found out the way of the Lord_:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Via Crucis.
+
+
+    Cross uplifted, clouds are rifted,
+    Vision clearer, God grown dearer!
+    _Via crucis via lucis_.[1]
+
+    Cross, thy way is where the day is;
+    Thy surprises sweet sunrises!
+    _Via crucis via lucis_.
+
+    Life eternal, fair and vernal,
+    Is the glory of the story,
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    Dawns in beauty, born of duty,
+    Joins thereafter Heaven's sweet laughter--
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    Finds probation tribulation,
+    Onward presses and confesses,
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    Bursts the fetter of the letter,
+    Reckons sorrow joy to-morrow--
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    To the Master in disaster
+    Bravely clinging, journeys singing,
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    Ranges crownward, never downward,
+    Always loving, always proving,
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    Drinks forever from the river
+    Everlasting, still forecasting,
+    _Via crucis via lucis_;
+
+    And presages all the ages,
+    Light-enfolden, growing golden,
+    _Via crucis via lueis_.
+
+    O the shinings and refinings!
+    O the sweetness of completeness!
+    _Via crucis via lucis_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+HEROES OF SCIENCE.
+
+
+MICHAEL FARADAY--SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS--M. PASTEUR.
+
+
+The loftiest class of scientists pursue science because they love truth.
+They derive no animation from the thought of any practical application
+which they can make from their scientific discoveries. They have no
+dreams of patents and subsequent royalties, although these sometimes
+come. They enter upon their work, smit with a passion for truth. If to
+any one of them it should happen to be pointed out--as Sir Humphrey Davy
+showed the ardent young Michael Faraday--at the beginning of his career,
+that science is a hard mistress who pays badly, they are so in love with
+science that, really and truly, they prefer from their very hearts to
+live with her on bread and water in a garret to living without her in
+palaces in which they might fare sumptuously every day.
+
+There are others by whom science is regarded only in the measure of its
+fruitfulness in producing material wealth. Their great men are not the
+discoverers of principles, but the inventors, the men who can apply the
+discoveries of others to supplying such wants as men are willing to pay
+largely to have satisfied. As has been said--
+
+    "To some she is the goddess great;
+      To some the milch-cow of the field;
+    Their business is to calculate
+      The butter she will yield."
+
+Our highest admiration must be for the discoverers; but we may do well
+to remind ourselves, from time to time, that to such men we are indebted
+not only for thrilling insight into the beautiful mysteries of nature,
+and for the withdrawal of the veil which shuts out from ordinary sight
+the august magnificences of nature, but also for the discovery of those
+principles which can be turned to the best practical account,
+ministering to us in our kitchens and bed-chambers and drawing-rooms and
+factories and shops and fields, filling our nights with brilliancy and
+our days with potencies, giving to each man the capability of
+accomplishing in one year what his ancestors, who lived in unscientific
+ages, could not have achieved in twenty; not only exhibiting the forces
+of nature as steeds, but also showing how they may be harnessed to the
+chariots of civilization.
+
+To keep us in healthful gratitude to the men who, having turned away
+from the marts of the money-makers, have unselfishly set themselves to
+discover what will enrich the money-makers, and, content to live in
+simple sorts of ways, have sent down beauty and comfort into the homes
+of rich and poor, it is well to make an occasional _resume_ of the
+results of the work of useful scientists, and ponder the lessons of
+their single-mindedness.
+
+
+FARADAY.
+
+
+Few names on the roll of the worthies of science are better known
+through all the world than that of Michael Faraday, who was born in
+England in 1791 and died in 1867. Rising from poverty, he became
+assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy, in the Royal Institution, London, where
+he soon exhibited great ability as an experimenter, and a rare genius
+for discovering the secret relation of distant phenomena to one another,
+which gave him his skill as a discoverer, so that he came to be
+regarded, according to Professor Tyndall, "the prince of the physical
+investigators of the present age," "the greatest experimental
+philosopher the world has ever seen."
+
+His greatest discoveries may be stated to have been magneto-electric
+induction, electro-chemical decomposition, the magnetization of light,
+and diamagnetism, the last announced in his memoir as the "magnetic
+condition of all matter." There were many minor discoveries. The results
+of his labors are apparent in every field of science which has been
+cultivated since his day. Indeed, they made a great enlargement of that
+field. His life of simple independence was a great contribution to the
+highest wealth of the world. He might have been rich. He lived in
+simplicity and died poor. It is calculated that, if he had made
+commercial uses of his earlier discoveries, he might easily have
+gathered a fortune of a million of dollars. He preferred to use his
+extraordinary endowments for the promotion of science, from which he
+would not be turned away by honors or money, declining the presidency of
+the Royal Institution, which was urged upon him, preferring to "remain
+plain Michael Faraday to the last," that he might make mankind his
+legatees.
+
+While Faraday does not claim the parentage of the electric telegraph, he
+was among the earliest laborers in the practical application of his own
+discoveries, without which the telegraph would probably never have had
+existence. It was on his advice that Mr. Cyrus W. Field determined to
+push the enterprise of the submarine cable. His labors were essential to
+the success of the efforts of his friend Wheatstone in telegraphy. It
+was his genius which discovered the method of preventing the
+incrustation by ice of the windows of light-houses, and also a method
+for the prevention of the fouling of air in brilliantly lighted rooms,
+by which health was impaired and furniture injured. He discovered a
+light, volatile oil, which he called "bicarburet of hydrogen." It is now
+known to us as benzine, which is so largely employed in the industrial
+arts. Treated by nitric acid, that has produced a substance largely used
+by the perfumer and the confectioner. From that came the wonderful base
+aniline, which was not only useful in the study of chemistry, as
+throwing light on the internal structure of organic compounds, but has
+come also into commerce, creating a great branch of industry, by giving
+strong and high colors which can be fixed on cotton, woolen, and silken
+fabrics. It may be worth while to notice what gratifying beauty was
+provided for the eye, while profitable work was afforded to the
+industrious.
+
+It is not to be forgotten that, whatever we have of magneto-electric
+light, in all its various applications, is due to Faraday's discoveries.
+
+Faraday's distinguished successor, Professor Tyndall, in his admirable
+and generous tribute to his famous predecessor, says: "As far as
+electricity has been applied _for medical purposes_, it is almost
+exclusively Faraday's." How much of addition to human comfort that one
+sentence includes, who can estimate? And who can calculate the
+money-value to commerce in the production of instruments used in the
+application of electricity to medicine? Professor Tyndall continues:
+"You have noticed those lines of wire which cross the streets of London.
+It is Faraday's currents that speed from place to place through these
+wires. Approaching the point of Dungeness, the mariner sees an unusually
+brilliant light, and from the noble Pharos of La Heve the same light
+flashes across the sea. These are Faraday's sparks, exalted by suitable
+machinery to sunlight splendor. At the present moment (1868), the Board
+of Trade and the Brethren of the Trinity House, as well as the
+Commissioners of Northern Lights, are contemplating the introduction of
+the magneto-electric light at numerous points upon our coast; and future
+generations will be able to point to those guiding stars in answer to
+the question, what has been the practical use of the labors of Faraday?"
+
+
+SIEMENS
+
+
+One of the most useful of modern men was Sir William Siemens, who was
+born in 1823 and died in 1883. The year before his death he was
+president of the British Association, and was introduced by his
+predecessor, Sir J. Lubbock, with the statement that "the leading idea
+of Dr. Siemens's life had been to economize and utilize the force of
+Nature for the benefit of man." It is not our purpose to give a sketch
+of his life, or a catalogue of his many inventions, all of which were
+useful. It was his comprehensive and accurate study of the universe
+which led him to discover, as he thought, that it is a vast regenerative
+gas furnace. The theory has been that the sun is cooling down; but Dr.
+Siemens saw that the water, vapor, and carbon compounds of the
+interstellar spaces are returned to the sun, and that the action of the
+sun on these literally converted the universe into a regenerative
+furnace. On a small scale, in a way adapted to ordinary human uses, and
+by ingenious contrivances, he produced a regenerative gas furnace which
+so utilized what had hitherto been wasted that, in the last lecture
+delivered by Michael Faraday (1862) before the Royal Society, he praised
+the qualities of the furnace for its economy and ease of management; and
+it soon came into general use. It is probably impossible to calculate
+the amount of saving to the world due to his practical application of
+the theory of the conservation of force to the pursuits of industry. It
+has changed the processes for the production of steel so as to make it
+much cheaper, and so revolutionized ship-building. The carrying power of
+steel ships is so much greater than that of iron ships that the former
+earn twenty-five per centum more than the latter. So great a gain is
+this, that one-fourth the total tonnage of British ship-building in 1883
+consisted of steel vessels.
+
+Sir William Siemens's name is popularly associated with electric light.
+Perhaps it can not be claimed that he was the sole inventor of it, since
+Faraday had discovered the principle, and at the meeting of the Royal
+Society, in 1867, at which Siemens's paper was read, the same
+application of the principle was announced in a paper which had been
+prepared by Sir Charles Wheatstone, and a patent had been sought by Mr.
+Cromwell Varley, whose application involved the same idea. But it is
+believed that Sir William did more than any other man to make the
+discovery of wide and great practical benefit. His dynamo machine is
+capable of transforming into electrical energy ninety per cent of the
+mechanical energy employed. His inventions for the application of
+electricity to industry are too numerous to mention. He has made it a
+hewer of wood and a drawer of water and a general farm-hand, and has
+shown how it can be applied to the raising and ripening of fruits. He
+has shown us how gas can be made so that its "by-products" shall pay for
+its production, and demonstrated that a pound of gas yields, in burning,
+22,000 units, being double that produced by the combustion of a pound of
+common coal. He has put the world in the way of making gas cheap and
+brilliant. His sudden death prevented the completion of plans by which
+London will save three-fourths of its coal bill by getting rid of its
+hideous fog. His suggestions will, undoubtedly, be carried out. He was
+also the inventor of the "chronometric governor," an apparatus which
+regulates the movements of the great transit instruments at Greenwich.
+
+These are some of the practical benefits bestowed upon mankind by Sir
+William Siemens. He did much, by stimulating men, to make science
+practically useful, and has left suggestions which, if followed out with
+energy and wisdom, will add greatly to the comfort of the world. He
+calculated that "all the coal raised throughout the world would barely
+suffice to produce the amount of power that runs to waste at Niagara
+alone," and said that it would not be difficult to realize a large
+proportion of this wasted power by-turbines, and to use it at greater
+distances by means of dynamo-electrical machines. Myriads of future
+inhabitants of America are probably to reap untold wealth and comfort
+from what was said and done by Sir William Siemens.
+
+
+PASTEUR.
+
+
+M. Pasteur, now a member of the French Academy, after years of
+scientific training and study and teaching, began a career of public
+usefulness which has been a source of incalculable pecuniary profit to
+his country and to the world.
+
+He began to study the nature of fermentation; and the result of this
+study made quite a revolution in the manufacture of wine and beer. He
+discovered a process which took its name from him; and now
+"pasteurization" is practiced on a large scale in the German breweries,
+to the great improvement of fermented beverages.
+
+This attracted the attention of the French Government. At that time an
+unknown disease was destroying the silk-worm of France and Italy. It was
+so wide-spread as to threaten to destroy the silk manufacture in those
+countries. M. Pasteur was asked to investigate the cause. At that time
+he had scarcely ever seen a silk-worm; but he turned his acute, and
+practical intellect to the study of this little worker, and soon
+detected the trouble. He showed that it was due to a microscopic
+parasite, which was developed from a germ born with the worm; and he
+pointed out how to secure healthy eggs, and so rear healthy worms. He
+thus gave his countrymen the knowledge necessary to the saving of the
+French silk industry, and to a very large increase of the value of the
+annual productiveness of the country.
+
+Of course, a man who had gone thus far could not stop. If he "could save
+the silk-worm, he might save larger animals. France was losing sheep and
+oxen at the rate of from fifteen to twenty millions annually. The
+services of M. Pasteur were again in demand. Again he discovered that
+the devastator was a microscopic destroyer. It was anthrax. The result
+of his experimenting was the discovery of an antidote, a method of
+prevention by inoculation with attenuated microbes. Similar studies and
+experiments and discoveries enabled him to furnish relief to the hog, at
+a time when the hog-cholera was making devastations. As he had
+discovered a preventive remedy for anthrax, he also found a remedy for
+chicken-cholera, to the saving of poultry to an incalculable extent.
+
+Having thus contributed more to the material wealth of his country than
+any other living Frenchman, M. Pasteur naturally turned his discovery of
+the parasitic origin of disease toward human sufferers. A man of
+convictions and of faith, he has had the courage to ask the French
+minister of commerce to organize a scientific commission to go to Egypt
+to study the cholera there under his guidance.
+
+M. Paul Best, who was M. Pasteur's early rival in scientific discussion,
+paid a generous tribute to his great ability and services, and declared
+that the discovery of the prevention of anthrax was the grandest and
+most fruitful of all French discoveries. M. Pasteur's native town, Dole,
+on the day of the national _fete_ last year (1883), placed a
+commemorative tablet on the house in which he was born. The government's
+grant of a pension of $5,000 a year, to be continued to his widow and
+children, was made on the knowledge that if M. Pasteur had retained
+proprietary right in his discovery, he might have amassed a vast
+fortune; but he had freely given all to the public. According to an
+estimate made by Professor Huxley, the labors of M. Pasteur are equal in
+money value alone to the _one thousand millions of dollars_ of indemnity
+paid by France to Germany in the late war. It is also to be remembered
+that M. Pasteur's labors imparted stimulus to discovery in many
+directions, setting many discoverers at work, who are now experimenting
+on the working hypothesis of the parasitic origin of all other
+infectious diseases.
+
+Now here are three men, to whom the world is probably more indebted than
+to any other twenty men who have lived this century; indebted for
+health, wealth, comfort, and enjoyment; indebted in kitchen, chamber,
+drawing-room, counting-house; at home and abroad, by day and by night,
+for gratification of the bodily and aesthetic taste. They were the
+almoners of science. Practical men would have no tools to work with if
+they did not receive them from those who, in abstraction, wrought in the
+secluded heights of scientific investigation. It is base to be
+ungrateful to the studious recluses who are the devotees of science.
+
+These three men were Christians--simple, honest, devout Christians.
+Faraday was a most "just and faithful knight of God," as Professor
+Tyndall says. Sir William Siemens, it is said, was a useful elder in the
+Presbyterian Church, and M. Pasteur, still living, is a reverent Roman
+Catholic. Surely, when we find these men walking a lofty height of
+science, higher than that occupied by any of their contemporaries, and
+when we find these men sending down more enriching gifts to the lowly
+sons of toil, and all the traders in the market places, and all seekers
+of pleasure in the world, than any other scientific men, we must be safe
+in the conclusion that to be an earnest Christian is not incompatible
+with the highest attainments in science; and we can not find fault with
+those who look with contempt upon the men who disdain Christianity, as
+if it were beneath them, when it is remembered that among the rejecters
+of our holy faith are no men to whom we have a right to be grateful for
+any discovery that has added a dollar to the world's exchequer, or a
+"ray to the brightness of the world's civilization."--DR. DEEMS, _in the
+New York Independent_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+MY UNCLE TOBY
+
+
+ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL CREATIONS OF A GREAT GENIUS.
+
+
+"If I were requested," says Leigh Hunt in his "Essay on Wit and Humor,"
+"to name the book of all others which combines wit and humor under their
+highest appearance of levity with the profoundest wisdom, it would be
+'Tristram Shandy,'" the chief work of Laurence Sterne, who was born in
+1713, and died in 1768. The following story of LeFevre, drawn from that
+unique book, full of simple pathos and gentle kindness, presents,
+perhaps, the best picture of the character that names this chapter:
+
+It was some time in the Summer of that year in which Dendermond was
+taken by the allies--which was about seven years before my father came
+into the country, and about as many after the time that my uncle Toby
+and Trim had privately decamped from my father's house in town, in order
+to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest fortified cities
+in Europe--when my uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper, with
+Trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard, the landlord of a little
+inn in the village came into the parlor, with an empty phial in his
+hand, to beg a glass or two of sack. "'Tis for a poor gentleman, I
+think, of the army," said the landlord, "who has been taken ill at my
+house four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a
+desire to taste any thing till just now, that he has a fancy for a glass
+of sack and a thin toast. 'I think,' says he, taking his hand from his
+forehead, 'it would comfort me.'"
+
+"If I could neither beg, borrow, nor buy such a thing," added the
+landlord, "I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so ill.
+I hope in God he will still mend," continued he; "we are all of us
+concerned for him."
+
+"Thou art a good-natured soul, I will answer for thee," cried my uncle
+Toby; "and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman's health in a glass of
+sack thyself--and take a couple of bottles, with my service, and tell
+him he is heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do
+him good."
+
+"Though I am persuaded," said my uncle Toby, as the landlord shut the
+door, "he is a very compassionate fellow, Trim, yet I can not help
+entertaining a very high opinion of his guest, too; there must be
+something more than common in him, that in so short a time should win so
+much upon the affections of his host." "And of his whole family," added
+the corporal, "for they are all concerned for him." "Step after him,"
+said my uncle Toby; "do, Trim; and ask if he knows his name."
+
+"I have quite forgot it, truly," said the landlord, coming back into the
+parlor with the corporal, "but I can ask his son again." "Has a son with
+him then?" said my uncle Toby. "A boy," replied the landlord, "of about
+eleven or twelve years of age; but the poor creature has tasted almost
+as little as his father; he does nothing but mourn and lament for him
+night and day; he has not stirred from the bedside these two days."
+
+My uncle Toby laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from
+before him, as the landlord gave him the account; and Trim, without
+being ordered, took them away without saying one word, and in a few
+minutes after brought him his pipe and tobacco.
+
+"Stay in the room a little," says my uncle Toby. "Trim," said my uncle
+Toby, after he had lighted his pipe and smoked about a dozen whiffs.
+Trim came in front of his master and made his bow; my uncle Toby smoked
+on and said no more. "Corporal," said my uncle Toby. The corporal made
+his bow. My uncle Toby proceeded no farther, but finished his pipe.
+"Trim," said my uncle Toby, "I have a project in my head, as it is a bad
+night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a visit
+to this poor gentleman." "Your honor's roquelaure," replied the
+corporal, "has not been had on since the night before your honor
+received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the
+gate of St. Nicholas; and, besides, it is so cold and rainy a night,
+that what with the roquelaure and what with the weather, 't will be
+enough to give your honor your death, and bring on your honor's torment
+in your groin." "I fear so," replied my uncle Toby; "but I am not at
+rest in my mind, Trim, since the account the landlord has given me. I
+wish I had not known so much of this affair," added my uncle Toby, "or
+that I had known more of it. How shall we manage it!" "Leave it, an 't
+please your honor, to me," quoth the corporal; "I'll take my hat and
+stick, and go to the house, reconnoitre, and act accordingly; and I will
+bring your honor a full account in an hour." "Thou shalt go, Trim," said
+my uncle Toby, "and here's a shilling for thee to drink with his
+servant." "I shall get it all out of him," said the corporal, shutting
+the door. My uncle Toby filled his second pipe; and, had it not been
+that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether
+it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight
+line as a crooked one, he might be said to have thought of nothing else
+but poor LeFevre and his boy the whole time he smoked it.
+
+My uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, when Trim
+returned and gave the following account:
+
+"I despaired at first," said the corporal, "of being able to bring back
+your honor any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick
+lieutenant." "Is he in the army, then?" said my uncle Toby. "He is,"
+said the corporal. "And in what regiment?" said my uncle Toby. "I'll
+tell your honor," replied the corporal, "every thing straight forward,
+as I learnt it." "Then, Trim, I'll fill another pipe," said my uncle
+Toby, "and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy
+ease, Trim, in the window-seat, and begin thy story again." The corporal
+made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow could speak
+it. "Your honor is good," and, having done that, he sat down as he was
+ordered, and began the story to my uncle Toby over again, in pretty
+nearly the same words.
+
+"I despaired at first," said the corporal, "of being able to bring back
+any intelligence to your honor about the lieutenant and his son; for
+when I asked where his servant was, from whom I made myself sure of
+knowing every thing which was proper to be asked"--"That's a right
+distinction, Trim," said my uncle Toby. "I was answered, an please your
+honor, that he had no servant with him; that he had come to the inn with
+hired horses, which, upon finding himself unable to proceed (to join, I
+suppose, the regiment), he had dismissed the morning after he came. 'If
+I get better, my dear,' said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay
+the man, 'we can hire horses from hence.' 'But, alas! the poor gentleman
+will never get from hence,' said the landlady to me, 'for I heard the
+death-watch all night long; and when he dies, the youth, his son, will
+certainly die with him, for he is broken-hearted already.'
+
+"I was hearing this account," continued the corporal, "when the youth
+came into the kitchen to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of;
+'but I will do it for my father myself,' said the youth. 'Pray let me
+save you the trouble, young gentleman,' said I, taking up a fork for the
+purpose, and offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst
+I did it. 'I believe, sir,' said he, very modestly, 'I can please him
+best myself.' 'I am sure,' said I, 'his honor will not like the toast
+the worse for being toasted by an old soldier.' The youth took hold of
+my hand and instantly burst into tears."
+
+"Poor youth," said my uncle Toby, "he has been bred up from an infant in
+the army, and the name of a soldier, Trim, sounded in his ears like the
+name of a friend; I wish I had him here."
+
+"I never, in the longest march," said the corporal, "had so great a mind
+to my dinner as I had to cry with him for company. What could be the
+matter with me, an' please your honor?" "Nothing in the world, Trim,"
+said my uncle Toby, blowing his nose; "but that thou art a good-natured
+fellow."
+
+"When I gave him the toast," continued the corporal, "I thought it was
+proper to tell him I was Captain Shandy's servant, and that your honor
+(though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father; and that if
+there was any thing in your house or cellar, ('and thou mightst have
+added my purse, too,' said my uncle Toby,) he was heartily welcome to
+it. He made a very low bow (which was meant to your honor), but no
+answer--for his heart was full--so he went upstairs with the toast. 'I
+warrant you, my dear,' said I, as I opened the kitchen door, 'your
+father will be well again.' Mr. Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by
+the kitchen fire, but said not a word, good or bad, to comfort the
+youth. I thought it was wrong," added the corporal. "I think so, too,"
+said my uncle Toby.
+
+"When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt
+himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen to let me know
+that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would come upstairs. 'I
+believe,' said the landlord, 'he was going to say his prayers, for there
+was a book laid upon the chair by his bedside; and as I shut the door I
+saw his son take up a cushion.'
+
+"'I thought,' said the curate, 'that you gentlemen of the army, Mr.
+Trim, never said your prayers at all.' 'I heard the poor gentleman say
+his prayers last night,' said the landlady, 'very devoutly, and with my
+own ears, or I could not have believed it.' 'Are you sure of it,'
+replied the curate. 'A soldier, an' please your reverence,' said I,
+'prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting
+for his king and for his own life, and for his honor too, he has the
+most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world.'" "'Twas well
+said of thee, Trim," said my uncle Toby. "'But when a soldier,' said I,
+'an' please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together
+in the trenches up to his knees in cold water, or engaged,' said I, 'for
+months together in long and dangerous marches; harassed, perhaps, in his
+rear to-day; harassing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded
+there; resting this night upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the next;
+benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on,
+he must say his prayers how and when he can, I believe,' said I, for I
+was piqued," quoth the corporal, "for the reputation of the army. 'I
+believe, an't please your reverence,' said I, 'that when a soldier gets
+time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson, though not with all his
+fuss and hypocrisy.'" "Thou shouldst not have said that, Trim," said my
+uncle Toby, "for God only knows who is a hypocrite and who is not. At
+the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment
+(and not till then), it will be seen who has done their duties in this
+world and who has not; and we shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly." "I
+hope we shall," said Trim. "It is in the Scripture," said my uncle Toby,
+"and I will show it thee to-morrow. In the meantime, we may depend upon
+it, Trim, for our comfort," said my uncle Toby, "that God Almighty is so
+good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our
+duties in it, it will never be inquired into whether we have done them
+in a red coat or a black one." "I hope not," said the corporal. "But go
+on, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "with thy story."
+
+"When, I went up," continued the corporal, "into the lieutenant's room,
+which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes, he was lying
+in his bed with his head raised up on his hand, with his elbow upon the
+pillow, and a clean white cambric handkerchief beside it. The youth was
+just stooping down to take up the cushion upon which I supposed he had
+been kneeling; the book was laid upon the bed, and as he rose, in taking
+up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away
+at the same time. 'Let it remain there, my dear,' said the lieutenant.
+
+"He did not offer to speak to me till I had walked up close to his
+bedside. 'If you are Captain Shandy's servant,' said he, 'you must
+present my thanks to your master, with my little boy's thanks along with
+them, for his courtesy to me, if he was of the Leven's,' said the
+lieutenant. I told him your honor was. 'Then,' said he, 'I served three
+campaigns with him in Flanders, and remember him; but 't is most likely,
+as I had not the honor of any acquaintance with him, that he knows
+nothing of me. You will tell him, however, that the person his good
+nature has laid under obligations to him, is one LeFevre, a lieutenant
+in Angus's; but he knows me not,' said he a second time, musing.
+'Possibly, he may my story,' added he; 'pray tell the captain I was the
+ensign at Breda whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a
+musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.' 'I remember the story,
+an't please your honor,' said I, very well.' 'Do you so?' said he,
+wiping his eyes with his handkerchief; 'then well may I.' In saying
+this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a
+black ribbon about his neck, and kissed it twice. 'Here, Billy,' said
+he. The boy flew across the room to the bedside, and, falling down upon
+his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it, too; then kissed his
+father, and sat down upon the bed and wept."
+
+"I wish," said my uncle Toby, with a deep sigh, "I wish, Trim, I was
+asleep."
+
+"Your honor," replied the corporal, "is too much concerned. Shall I pour
+your honor out a glass of sack to your pipe?" "Do, Trim," said my uncle
+Toby.
+
+"I remember," said my uncle Toby, sighing again, "the story of the
+ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted; and
+particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other (I
+forget what), was universally pitied by the whole regiment; but finish
+the story thou art upon." "Tis finished already," said the corporal,
+"for I could stay no longer, so wished his honor good-night." Young
+LeFevre rose from off the bed and saw me to the bottom of the stairs;
+and, as we went down together, told me they had come from Ireland, and
+were on their route to join their regiment in Flanders. "But, alas,"
+said the corporal, "the lieutenant's last day's march is over." "Then
+what is to become of his poor boy?" cried my uncle Toby.
+
+It was to my uncle Toby's eternal honor, though I tell it only for the
+sake of those who, when cooped in betwixt a natural and a positive law,
+know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn themselves,
+that, notwithstanding my uncle Toby was warmly engaged at that time in
+carrying on the siege of Dendermond, parallel with the allies, who
+pressed theirs on so vigorously that they scarce allowed him to get his
+dinner, that, nevertheless, he gave up Dendermond, although he had
+already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp, and bent his whole
+thoughts-toward the private distresses at the inn, and that, except that
+he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to
+have turned the siege of Dendermond into a blockade, he left Dendermond
+to itself, to be relieved or not by the French king as the French king
+thought good, and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor
+lieutenant and his son.
+
+That kind Being, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompense
+thee for this.
+
+"Thou hast left this matter short," said my uncle Toby to the corporal,
+as he was putting him to bed, "and I will tell thee in what, Trim. In
+the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to LeFevre, as
+sickness and traveling are both expensive, and thou knewest he was but a
+poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his
+pay, that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse, because, had
+he stood in need, thou knowest, Trim, he had been as welcome to it as
+myself."
+
+"Your honor knows," said the corporal, "I had no orders." "True," quoth
+my uncle Toby, "thou did'st very right, Trim, as a soldier, but
+certainly very wrong as a man."
+
+"In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse,"
+continued my uncle Toby, "when thou offeredst him whatever was in my
+house, thou shouldst have offered him my house, too. A sick brother
+officer should have the best quarters, Trim, and if we had him with us,
+we could tend and look to him. Thou art an excellent nurse thyself,
+Trim, and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's
+and mine together, we might recruit him again at once and set him upon
+his legs."
+
+"In a fortnight, or three weeks," added my uncle Toby, smiling, "he
+might march." "He will never march, an', please your honor, in this
+world," said the corporal. "He will march," said my uncle Toby, rising
+from the side of the bed with one shoe off. "An', please your honor,"
+said the corporal, "he will never march, but to his grave." "He shall
+march," cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on,
+though without advancing an inch, "he shall march to his regiment." "He
+can not stand it," said the corporal. "He shall be supported," said my
+uncle Toby. "He'll drop at last," said the corporal, "and what will
+become of his boy?" "He shall not drop," said my uncle Toby, firmly.
+"Ah, welladay, do what we can for him," said Trim, maintaining his
+point, "the poor soul will die." "He shall not die, by G--d," cried my
+uncle Toby.
+
+The _accusing spirit_ which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath,
+blushed as he gave it in, and the _recording angel_, as he wrote it
+down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.
+
+My uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches
+pocket, and, having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for
+a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep.
+
+The sun looked bright the morning after to every eye in the village but
+LeFevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death pressed heavy upon
+his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its
+circle when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted
+time, entered the lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology,
+set himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and independently of all
+modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and
+brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did; how he had
+rested in the night; what was his complaint; where was his pain, and
+what could he do to help him? and without giving him time to answer any
+one of the inquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he
+had been concerting with the corporal, the night before, for him.
+
+"You shall go home directly, LeFevre," said my uncle Toby, "to my house,
+and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter, and we'll have an
+apothecary, and the corporal shall be your nurse and I'll be your
+servant, LeFevre."
+
+There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity,
+but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul and showed you
+the goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his looks,
+and voice, and manner superadded, which eternally beckoned to the
+unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that before my uncle
+Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had
+the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of
+the breast of his coat and was pulling it toward him. The blood and
+spirits of LeFevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were
+retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back, the film
+forsook his eyes for a moment, and he looked up wishfully in my uncle
+Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy, and that ligament, fine as
+it was, was never broken.
+
+Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the pulse
+fluttered--stopped--went on--throbbed--stopped
+again--moved--stopped--shall I go on? No.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD
+
+(BORN 1750--DIED 1831.)
+
+
+THE NAPOLEON OF MERCHANTS--HIS LIFE SUCCESSFUL, AND YET A FAILURE.
+
+
+Imagine the figure of an old man, low in stature, squarely built,
+clumsily dressed, and standing on large feet. To this uncouth form, add
+a repulsive face, wrinkled, cold, colorless, and stony, with one eye
+dull and the other blind--a "wall-eye." His expression is that of a man
+wrapped in the mystery of his own hidden thoughts. He looks--
+
+    "Like monumental bronze, unchanged his look--
+    A soul which pity never touched or shook--
+    Trained, from his lowly cradle to his bier,
+    The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
+    Unchanging, fearing but the charge of fear--
+    A stoic of the mart, a man without a tear."
+
+Such a man was Stephen Girard, one of the most distinguished merchants
+in the annals of commerce, and the founder of the celebrated Girard
+College in Philadelphia. Let us briefly trace his history and observe
+his character.
+
+Girard was a Frenchman by birth, born in the environs of Bordeaux, in
+May, 1750, of obscure parents. His early instruction was very limited;
+and, being deformed by a wall-eye, he was an object of ridicule to the
+companions of his boyhood. This treatment, as is supposed by his
+biographer, soured his temper, made him shrink from society, and led him
+to live among his own thoughts rather than in mental communion with his
+fellows.
+
+The precise cause of his leaving his native hearth-stone is unknown. The
+fact is certain that he did leave it, when only ten or twelve years old,
+and sailed, a poor cabin-boy, to the West Indies. This was his
+starting-point in life. Never had any boy a smaller capital on which to
+build his fortune. He went out from his unhappy home, ignorant, poor,
+unfriended, and unknown. That from such a cheerless beginning he should
+rise to the rank of a merchant prince must be accounted one of the
+marvels of human history.
+
+His first step was to gain the confidence of his superiors, not so much
+by affability and courtesy--for of these social virtues he was never
+possessed--as by steady good conduct, fidelity to his employers,
+temperance, and studied effort to do his humble duties well. Whatsoever
+his hands found to do he did with his might. As a consequence, we find
+him, in a few years, in high favor with a Captain Randall, of New York,
+who always spoke of him as "my Stephen," and who promoted him from one
+position to another, until he secured him the command of a small vessel,
+and sent him on trading voyages between the ports of New York and New
+Orleans. That the poor cabin-boy should rise, by his own merits, in some
+six or seven years, to be the commander of a vessel was success such as
+few lads have ever won with such slender means and few helps as were
+within reach of young Girard.
+
+When only nineteen, we find him in Philadelphia, driving a thrifty but
+quiet trade in a little shop in Water Street. Shortly after opening this
+store, his fancy was taken captive by a maiden of sixteen Summers, named
+Mary, but familiarly called Polly, Lum. She was a shipwright's daughter,
+a pretty brunette, who was in the habit of going to the neighboring
+pump, barefooted, "with her rich, glossy, black hair hanging in
+disheveled curls about her neck." Her modesty pleased him, her beauty
+charmed him, and, after a few months of rude courtship, he was married
+to her, in 1770.
+
+His marriage, instead of carrying happiness into the home over which he
+installed his beautiful bride, only embittered two lives. It was a union
+of mere fancy on his side, and of self-interest on hers, not of genuine
+affection. Their dispositions were not congenial. She was ignorant,
+vulgar, slovenly. He was arbitrary, harsh, rude, imperious, unyielding.
+How could their lives flow on evenly together? It was impossible. The
+result was misery to both, and, as we shall see hereafter, the once
+beautiful Polly Lum ended her days in a mad-house--a sad illustration of
+the folly of premature, ill-assorted marriages.
+
+Finding little at his fireside to move his heart, Girard gave his whole
+soul to business, now trading to San Domingo and New Orleans, and then
+in his store in Water Street. When the Revolutionary War began, it swept
+his commercial ventures from the ocean, but he, still bent on gain and
+indifferent as to the means of winning it, then opened a grocery, and
+engaged in bottling cider and claret. When the British army occupied
+Philadelphia, he moved this bottling business to Mount Holly, in New
+Jersey, where he continued until the American flag again floated over
+Independence Hall.
+
+But times were hard and money scarce, and for awhile Girard added very
+little to his means. Yet his keen eye was sharply watching for golden
+opportunities, and his active mind busily thinking how to create or
+improve them. In 1780, circumstances made trade with New Orleans and San
+Domingo very profitable. He promptly engaged in it, and in two years
+doubled his resources.
+
+Peace being restored, Girard, full of faith in the future of his adopted
+country, leased a block of stores for ten years at a very low rent. The
+following year, while business still lay stunned by the blows it had
+received during the war, he obtained a stipulation from his landlord,
+giving him the right to renew his lease for a second ten years, if he
+chose to demand it, when the first one should expire. This was an act of
+judicious foresight. When, at the expiration of the first lease, he
+visited his landlord, that gentleman, on seeing him enter his
+counting-room, said:
+
+"Well, Mr. Girard, you have made out so well by your bargain that I
+suppose you will hardly hold me to the renewal of the lease for ten
+years more."
+
+"I have come," replied Gerard, with a look of grim satisfaction, "to
+secure the ten years more. I shall not let you off."
+
+Nor did he. And the great profits he derived from that fortunate lease
+greatly broadened the foundation of his subsequently colossal fortune.
+
+As yet, however, his wealth was very moderate, for in 1790, at the
+dissolution of a partnership he had formed with his brother who had come
+to America, his own share of the business amounted to only thirty
+thousand dollars. And yet, forty years later, he died leaving a fortune
+of ten millions.
+
+It is sad; but may be profitable to know, that his happiness did not
+increase with his possessions. While his balance-sheets recorded
+increasing assets, his hearth-stone echoed louder and wilder echoes of
+discordant voices. He was jealous, arbitrary, and passionate; his
+unfortunate wife was resentful, fiery, and finally so furious that, in
+1790, she was admitted as a maniac to an insane hospital, which she
+never left until she was carried to her grave, unwept and unregretted,
+twenty-five years after. Their only child had gone to an early grave.
+Girard's nature must have been strangely perverted if he counted, as he
+seems to have done, the pleasure of making money a compensation for the
+absence of true womanly love from his cheerless fireside. His heart, no
+doubt, was as unsentimental as the gold he loved to hoard.
+
+The terrible retribution which about this time overtook the
+slave-holders of St. Domingo, when their slaves threw off their
+oppressive yoke, added considerably to his rising fortunes. He happened
+to have two vessels in that port when the tocsin of insurrection rang
+out its fearful notes. Frantic with apprehension, many planters rushed
+with their costliest treasure to these ships, left them in care of their
+officers, and went back for more. But the blood-stained hand of massacre
+prevented their return. They and their heirs perished by knife or
+bullet, and the unclaimed treasure was taken to Philadelphia, to swell
+the stream of Girard's wealth. He deemed this a lucky accident, no
+doubt; and smothered his sympathies for the sufferers in the
+satisfaction he felt over the addition of fifty thousand dollars to his
+growing estate. It stimulated, if it did not beget, the dream of his
+life, the passion which possessed his soul, which was to acquire wealth
+by which his _name_ might be kept before the world forever. "My _deeds_
+must be my life. When I am dead my _actions_ must speak for me," he said
+to an acquaintance one day, and thus gave expression to his plan of
+life. There was nothing intrinsically noble in it. If the means he
+finally adopted bore a philanthropic stamp on their face, his motive was
+purely personal, and therefore low and selfish. What he toiled for was a
+name that would never die. He was shrewd enough to perceive that this
+end could be most surely gained by linking it with the philanthropic
+spirit of the Christianity which he detested. And hence arose his idea
+of founding Girard College.
+
+Shortly after plucking the golden fruit which fell into his hands from
+the St. Domingo insurrection Girard enlarged his business by building
+several splendid ships and entering into the China and India trade. His
+operations in this line were managed with a spirit that indicated a true
+mercantile genius, and contributed greatly to the enlargement of his
+fortune.
+
+He made these ships the visible expressions of his thoughts on religion
+and philosophy by naming them, after his favorite authors, the
+_Montesquieu_, the _Helvetius_, the _Voltaire_, and the _Rousseau_. He
+thus defiantly assured the world that he was not only a skeptic, but
+that he also gloried in that by no means creditable fact.
+
+Girard's life was filled with enigmas. He really loved no living soul.
+He had no sympathies. He would not part with his money to save agent,
+servant, neighbor, or relation from death. Nevertheless, when the yellow
+fever spread dismay, desolation, and death throughout Philadelphia, in
+1793, sweeping one-sixth of its population into the grave in about sixty
+days, he devoted himself to nursing the sick in the hospital with a
+self-sacrificing zeal which knew no bounds, and which excited universal
+admiration and praise. His biographer accounts for this conduct,
+repeated on two subsequent visitations of that terrible fever, by
+supposing that he was naturally benevolent, but that his early trials
+had sealed up the fountains of his human feeling. A great public
+catastrophe broke the seal, the suppressed fountain flowed until the day
+of terror passed, and then with resolute will he resealed the fountain,
+and became a cold-hearted, selfish man again.
+
+His selfish disregard for the claims of his dependents was shown, one
+day, when one of his most successful captains, who had risen from the
+humble position of apprentice to the command of a fine ship, asked to be
+transferred to another ship. Girard made him no reply, but, turning to
+his desk, said to his chief clerk:
+
+"Roberjot, make out Captain Galigar's account immediately."
+
+When this order was obeyed and the account settled, he coolly said to
+the faithful officer:
+
+"You are discharged, sir. I do not make the voyage for my captains, but
+for myself."
+
+There was no appeal to be made from this unjust, arbitrary decision, and
+the man who had served him faithfully seventeen years left his
+counting-room to seek another employer.
+
+Discourtesy was also a characteristic of this unlovely and unloving man.
+He never considered men's _feelings_, nor sought to give pleasure to
+others by means of the small courtesies of life. He had a farm in the
+suburbs of the city, and a garden at the back of his town residence. In
+both he cultivated beautiful flowers and rare fruits; but never, either
+to visitors or neighbors, did he offer gifts of either. Rich though he
+was, he sent the surplus to market. He once told a visitor he might
+glean strawberries from a bed which had been pretty thoroughly picked
+over. Returning from the lower part of the garden, he found the
+gentleman picking berries from a full bed. With a look of astonishment,
+and a voice of half-suppressed anger, he pointed to the exhausted, bed
+and said:
+
+"I gave you permission only to eat from that bed."
+
+Singular meanness! Yet, notwithstanding this narrow disposition, which
+ran like veins abnormally distended over nearly all his habits of life,
+he could, and did at times, do liberal things. But even in such things
+he was capricious and eccentric; as when a highly esteemed Quaker, named
+Coates, asked him one day to make a donation to the Pennsylvania
+Hospital. He replied:
+
+"Call on me to-morrow morning, Mr. Coates, and if you find me on a right
+footing, I will do something."
+
+Mr. Coates called as requested, and found Girard at breakfast.
+
+"Draw up and eat," said Girard.
+
+Coates did so quite readily. The repast ended, he said, "Now we will
+proceed to business, Stephen."
+
+"Well, what have you come for, Samuel?"
+
+"Any thing thee pleases, Stephen," rejoined the Quaker.
+
+Girard filled out and signed a check for two hundred dollars. Coates
+took it, and, without noting how much was the amount, put it in his
+pocket-book.
+
+"What, you no look at the check I gave you!" exclaimed the merchant.
+
+"No, beggars must not be choosers."
+
+"Hand me back the check I gave you," demanded Girard.
+
+"No, no, Stephen; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,"
+responded Coates.
+
+"By George," exclaimed Girard, "you have caught me on the _right
+footing_."
+
+He then drew a check for five hundred dollars, which he laid before the
+Quaker, saying: "Will you now look at it, Samuel!"
+
+"Well, to please thee, Stephen, I will."
+
+He did so, and then, at Girard's request, returned the first and went
+away triumphantly with the second check.
+
+Skeptic though he was, Girard sometimes gave money to build churches,
+not because they were _churches_, but because, as buildings, they
+contributed to the improvement of the city. To a brother merchant, who
+solicited aid toward building a Methodist church, he once presented a
+check for five hundred dollars, saying:
+
+"I approve of your motives, and, as the erection of such a building will
+tend to improve that quarter of the city, I am willing to assist in the
+furtherance of your object."
+
+It happened that the church to which he thus contributed was
+subsequently sold to the Episcopalians, who proceeded to convert it into
+a Gothic structure at a very considerable outlay. They also waited on
+Girard soliciting a contribution. He handed them a check for five
+hundred dollars. The gentlemen solicitors looked blank, and intimated
+that he had made the mistake of omitting a cipher. He had given the
+"poor Methodists" that sum they pleaded; he surely must have intended to
+make his present gift five thousand. With this remark they handed back
+the check, requesting him to add the desired cipher.
+
+"Ah, gentlemen, what you say? I have made one mistake? Let me see; I
+believe not; but if you say so I must correct it."
+
+Thus saying, he took up the check, tore it to pieces, and added: "I will
+not contribute one cent. Your society is wealthy. The Methodists are
+poor, but I make no distinction. Yet I can not please you.... I have
+nothing to give for your magnificent church."
+
+But, with all his offensive peculiarities, Girard continued to increase
+his wealth. His ships spread their sails on every sea and earned money
+for him in every great commercial port. In 1812 he founded the old
+Girard Bank, and added the rich profits of banking to the immense gains
+of his vast mercantile transactions. This new enterprise greatly
+enlarged the sphere of his influence, especially as in matters
+pertaining to the financial interests of the country and of the city of
+Philadelphia he manifested a degree of public spirit which contrasted
+marvelously with his narrowness, meanness, and even inhumanity, in
+dealing with individual and private interests. He was certainly a
+patriotic man. Nevertheless, as his biographer demonstrates, he always
+contrived to make his patriotism tributary to the increase of his
+immense wealth. His magnificent purchases of United States securities in
+times of pecuniary disaster, though they contributed immensely to the
+credit of the government, were not wholly patriotic. They were, to his
+far-seeing mind, investments which were sure to pay. And he knew also
+that the very magnitude of his purchases would, by strengthening public
+confidence, insure the profitable returns he sought. Still, there is no
+room for doubting the sincerity of his attachment to the country of his
+adoption.
+
+This fortunate accumulator of millions took very little from his hoards
+for the promotion of his personal ease and physical enjoyments. He lived
+in a plain mansion, simply furnished, and standing in the midst of
+warehouses, where the din of business, the rolling of heavy wheels, and
+the city's noisiest roar, constantly filled his ears. His table was
+plentifully but not luxuriously supplied. As he grew old it was
+extremely simple. He gave no parties, invited none to share his
+hospitality, except now and then an individual from whom he had reason
+for believing he could extract information which would be useful to him.
+He worked incessantly at his business, rising at three or four o'clock
+and toiling until after midnight. His keen eye inspected every
+department of his complicated business, from the discounting of a note
+to the building of a ship or the erection of a building. His only
+recreation was his garden, his farm at Passyunk, or the training of his
+birds. His life was coined into work. Its only real pleasure was derived
+from the accumulation of the money which was to make his name immortal.
+
+In 1830 the sight of his eye grew so dim that it was both difficult and
+dangerous for him to grope his way along the familiar streets where he
+transacted business. But so obstinately self-reliant was he that he
+refused the aid of an attendant. He paid dearly for this obstinacy; for,
+one day as he was going home from his bank, he was knocked down by a
+wagon on a street-crossing. A gentleman, seeing him fall, rushed to his
+assistance. But before he could reach him the plucky old merchant was on
+his feet shouting, "Stop that fellow! stop that fellow!"
+
+He was badly hurt. Nevertheless, he persisted in walking home. When his
+physician came his face was found to be seriously wounded. His right ear
+was almost entirely cut off. His eye was entirely closed. His entire
+system had received a violent shock, from which it never recovered. His
+wound healed, but from that time his body began to waste, his face grew
+thin, and his natural force began to abate. His strength was sadly
+impaired, and when, in December, 1831, he was attacked by a prevailing
+influenza, his worn-out system succumbed. The disease touched his
+powerful brain. He became first insane and then insensible, until, on
+the 26th of December, 1831, this old man of eighty-two rose from his
+bed, walked across his chamber, returned almost immediately to his bed,
+and then, placing his hand upon his burning head, exclaimed:
+
+"How violent is this disorder! How very extraordinary it is!"
+
+After this he lapsed into an unconscious condition, and while in this
+state, his naked soul passed into the presence-chamber of that Infinite
+One whose worship it had neglected, and whose existence it had boldly
+denied.
+
+Thus ended that busy life, which began in poverty, and which had yielded
+its possessor a fortune of _ten millions of dollars_. Surely, if wealth
+and the power it wields be the real crown of life, Stephen Girard must
+be accorded high rank among the mighty men who win magnificent victories
+over the adverse circumstances of an obscure birth. He sought riches,
+not as a miser who gloats with low delight over his glittering gold, but
+as a man ambitious to make his name imperishable. His ambition was
+satisfied. His ten millions, invested as directed in his will, which is
+itself a marvel of worldly wisdom, is accomplishing his life-long
+desire. So far as human foresight can perceive, Girard College will keep
+the name of this wonderful man before the eyes of men through the coming
+ages.
+
+Nevertheless, we count this victor over the mighty obstacles which stand
+between a penniless cabin-boy and the ownership of millions a vanquished
+man. Bringing his life into the "light of the glory of God which shines
+from the face of Jesus Christ," we are compelled to pronounce it a
+miserable failure. We do not find either Christian faith or Christian
+morality in it. As to faith, he had none; for he was an atheist, and
+gloried in his disbelief of all revealed truth. As to morality, his
+biographer informs us that he was an unchaste, profane, passionate,
+arbitrary, ungenerous, unloving man. His apparent philanthropy was so
+veined with selfishness that it was rarely ever exhibited except under
+conditions which secured publicity. And even the college which
+perpetuates his name proclaims, by its prohibition of _religious_
+instruction, his hatred of "the only name given under heaven among men
+whereby we can be saved." It is true that his will enjoins instruction
+in morals; but it is heathen, not Christian, morality that he intended;
+and, if the letter and spirit of his remarkable will were strictly
+carried out, the graduates of Girard College would leave its walls as
+ill instructed in the principles of genuine morality as were the
+disciples of Socrates or the followers of Confucius. The only roots on
+which pure morals can grow are faith in our heavenly Father and his
+divine Son, and love which is born of that precious faith. That faith is
+forbidden to be taught, and its divinely ordained teachers are
+prohibited entrance within the walls his unsanctified ambition built.
+Happily for the orphan boys who congregate there, the _spirit_ of that
+antichristian will can not be executed in this Christian country. Its
+_letter_ is no doubt respected; but the ethics of the institution are
+not those of Voltaire, Rousseau, or Confucius, but of Jesus, whose life
+is the only "light of men." Hence, while his college may perpetuate his
+name, it will never cause mankind to love his character, nor to hope
+that he is one of that exalted host which ascended to heaven through
+much tribulation, and after washing their robes in the blood of the
+Lamb.--DR. WISE, _in "Victors Vanquished_," Cranston & Stowe,
+Cincinnati.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+DISAPPOINTMENTS.
+
+
+PLEASURE AFTER PAIN--PAIN AFTER PLEASURE.
+
+
+Our illusions commence in the cradle, and end only in the grave. We have
+all great expectations. Our ducks are ever to be geese, our geese swans;
+and we can not bear the truth when it comes upon us. Hence our
+disappointments; hence Solomon cried out that all was vanity, that he
+had tried every thing, each pleasure, each beauty, and found it very
+empty. People, he writes, should be taught by my example; they can not
+go beyond me--"What can he do that comes after the king?"
+
+It is very doubtful whether, to an untried or a young man, the warnings
+of Solomon, or the outpourings of that griefful prophet whose name now
+passes for a lamentation, have done much good. Hope balances caution,
+and "springs eternal in the human breast." The old man fails, but the
+young constantly fancies he shall succeed. "Solomon," he cries, "did not
+know every thing;" but in a few years his own disappointments tell him
+how true the king's words are, and he cherishes the experience he has
+bought. But experience does not serve him in every case; it has been
+said that it is simply like the stern-lights of a ship, which lighten
+the path she has passed over, but not that which she is about to
+traverse. To know one's self is the hardest lesson we can learn. Few of
+us ever realize our true position; few see that they are like Bunyan's
+hero in the midst of Vanity Fair, and that all about them are snares,
+illusions, painted shows, real troubles, and true miseries, many trials
+and few enjoyments.
+
+Perhaps the bitterest feelings in our life are those which we
+experience, when boys and girls, at the failures of our friendships and
+our loves. We have heard of false friends; we have read of deceit in
+books; but we know nothing about it, and we hardly believe what we hear.
+Our friend is to be true as steel. He is always to like us, and we him.
+He is a second Damon, we a Pythias. We remember the fond old stories of
+celebrated friendships; how one shared his fortune, another gave his
+life. Our friend is just of that sort; he is noble, true, grand, heroic.
+Of course, he is wonderfully generous. We talk of him; he will praise
+us. The whole people around, who laugh at the sudden warmth, we regard
+as old fogies, who do not understand life half as well as we do. But by
+and by our friend vanishes; the image which we thought was gold we find
+made of mere clay. We grow melancholy; we are fond of reading Byron's
+poetry; the sun is not nearly so bright nor the sky so blue as it used
+to be. We sing, with the noble poet--
+
+    "My days are in the yellow leaf,
+    The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
+    The worm, the canker, and the grief
+    Are mine alone.!"
+
+We cease to believe in friendship; we quote old saws, and fancy
+ourselves cruelly used. We think ourselves philosophic martyrs, when the
+simple truth is, that we are disappointed.
+
+The major part of the misery in marriage arises from the false estimate
+which we make of married happiness. A young man, who is a pure and good
+one, when he starts in life is very apt to fancy all women angels. He
+loves and venerates his mother; he believes her better, purer far, than
+his father, because his school-days have taught him practically what men
+are; but he does not yet know what women are. His sisters are angels
+too, and the wife he is about to marry, the best, the purest woman in
+the world, also an angel, of course. Marriage soon opens his eyes. It
+would be out of the course of nature for every body to secure an angel;
+and the young husband finds that he has married a woman of the ordinary
+pattern--not a whit better on the whole than man; perhaps worse, because
+weaker. The high-flown sentiment is all gone, the romantic ideas fade
+down to the light of common day. "The bloom of young desire, the purple
+light of love," as Milton writes in one of the most beautiful lines ever
+penned, too often pass away as well, and a future of misery is opened up
+on the basis of disappointment. After all, the difficulty to be got over
+is this--how is mankind to be taught to take a just estimate of things?
+Is it possible to put old heads upon young shoulders? Is not youth a
+perpetual state of intoxication? Is not every thing better and brighter
+far then than in middle life? These are the questions to be solved, and
+once solved we shall be happy; we shall have learnt the great lesson,
+that whatever is, is ordained by a great and wise power, and that we are
+therewith to be content.
+
+A kindly consideration for others is the best method in the world to
+adopt, to ease off our own troubles; and this consideration is to be
+cultivated very easily. There is not one of those who will take up this
+book who is perfectly happy, and not one who does not fancy that he or
+she might be very much better off. Perhaps ten out of every dozen have
+been disappointed in life. They are not precisely what they should be.
+The wise poor man, in spite of his wisdom, envies the rich fool; and the
+fool--if he has any appreciation--envies the wisdom of the other. One is
+too tall, the other is too short; ill-health plagues a third, and a bad
+wife a fourth; and so on. Yet there is not one of the sorrows or
+troubles that we have but might be reasoned away. The short man can not
+add a cubit to his stature; but he may think, after all, that many great
+heroes have been short, and that it is the mind, not the form, that
+makes the man. Napoleon the Great, who had high-heeled boots, and was,
+to be sure, hardly a giant in stature, once looked at a picture of
+Alexander, by David. "Ah!" said he, taking snuff, with a pleased air,
+"Alexander was shorter than I." The hero last mentioned is he who cried
+because he had no more worlds to conquer, and who never thought of
+conquering himself. But if Alexander were disappointed about another
+world, his courtiers were much more so because they were not Alexanders.
+But the world would not have cared for a surplus of them; one was
+enough. Conquerers are very pleasant fellows, no doubt, and are
+disappointed and sulky because they can not gain more battles; but we
+poor frogs in the world are quite satisfied with one King Stork.
+
+If we look at a disappointment as a lesson, we soon take the sting out
+of it. A spider will teach us that. He is watching for a fly, and away
+the nimble fellow flies. The spider upon this runs round his net to see
+whether there be any holes, and to mend them. When doing so, he comes
+upon an old body of one of his victims, and he commences again on it,
+with a pious ejaculation of "Better luck next time." So one of the
+greatest and wisest missionaries whom we have ever had, tried, when a
+boy, to climb a tree. He fell down, and broke his leg. Seriously lamed,
+he went on crutches for six months, and at the end of that time quietly
+set about climbing the tree again, and succeeded. He had, in truth, a
+reserve fund of good-humor and sound sense, saw where he failed, and
+conquered it. His disappointment was worth twenty dozen successes to
+him, and to the world too. It is a good rule, also, never to make too
+sure of any thing, and never to put too high a price on it. Every thing
+is worth doing well; every thing, presuming you like it, is worth
+having. The girl you fall in love with may be silly and ill-favored; but
+what of that? she is your love. "'Tis a poor fancy of mine own to like
+that which none other man will have," says the fool Touchstone; but he
+speaks like a wise man. He is wiser than the melancholy Jacques in the
+same play, who calls all people fools, and mopes about preaching wise
+saws. If our young men were as wise, there would not be half the
+ill-assorted marriages in the world, and there would be fewer single
+women. If they only chose by sense or fancy, or because they saw some
+good quality in a girl--if they were not all captivated by the face
+alone, every Jill would have her Jack, and pair off happily, like the
+lovers in a comedy. But it is not so. We can not live without illusions;
+we can not, therefore, subsist without disappointments. They, too,
+follow each other as the night the day, the shade the sunshine; they are
+as inseparable as life and death.
+
+The difference of our conditions alone places a variety in these
+illusions; perhaps the lowest of us have the brightest, just as
+Cinderella, sitting amongst the coals, dreamed of the ball and beautiful
+prince as well as her sisters. "Bare and grim to tears," says Emerson,
+"is the lot of the children I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hung
+it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest
+fortune, and would talk of 'the dear cottage where so many joyful hours
+had flown.' Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the country.
+Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion." Happy is
+it that they are so. These fancies and illusions bring forth the
+inevitable disappointments, but they carry life on with a swing. If
+every hovel-born child had sat down at his doorstep, and taken true
+stock of himself, and had said, "I am a poor miserable child, weak in
+health, without knowledge, with little help, and can not do much," we
+should have wanted many a hero. We should have had no Stephenson, no
+Faraday, no Arkwright, and no Watt. Our railways would have been
+unbuilt, and the Atlantic Ocean would have been unbridged by steam. But
+hope, as phrenologists tells us, lies above caution, and has dangerous
+and active neighbors--wit, imagination, language, ideality--so the poor
+cottage is hung round with fancies, and the man exists to help his
+fellows. He may fail; but others take up his tangled thread, and unravel
+it, and carry on the great business of life.
+
+The constantly cheerful man, who survives his blighted hopes and
+disappointments, who takes them just for what they are--lessons, and
+perhaps blessings in disguise--is the true hero. He is like a strong
+swimmer; the waves dash over him, but he is never submerged. We can not
+help applauding and admiring such a man; and the world, good-natured and
+wise in its verdict, cheers him when he gains the goal. There may be
+brutality in the sport, but there can be no question as to the merit,
+when the smaller prizefighter, who receives again and again his
+adversary's knockdown blow, again gets up and is ready for the fray. Old
+General Blucher was not a lucky general. He was beaten almost every time
+he ventured to battle; but in an incredible space of time he had
+gathered together his routed army, and was as formidable as before. The
+Germans liked the bold old fellow, and called, and still call him,
+Marshal Forwards. He had his disappointments, no doubt, but turned them,
+like the oyster does the speck of sand which annoys it, to a pearl. To
+our minds, the best of all these heroes is Robert Hall, the preacher,
+who, after falling on the ground in paroxysms of pain, would rise with a
+smile, and say, "I suffered much, but I did not cry out, did I? did I
+cry out?" Beautiful is this heroism. Nature, base enough under some
+aspects, rises into grandeur in such an example, and shoots upwards to
+an Alpine height of pure air and cloudless sunshine; the bold, noble,
+and kindly nature of the man, struggling against pain, and asking, in an
+apologetic tone, "Did I cry out?" whilst his lips were white with
+anguish, and his tongue, bitten through in the paroxysm, was red with
+blood!
+
+There is a companion picture of ineffaceable grandeur to this in Plato's
+"Phoedo," where Socrates, who has been unchained simply that he may
+prepare for death, sits upon his bed, and, rubbing his leg gently where
+the iron had galled it, begins, not a complaint against fate, or his
+judges, or the misery of present death, but a grateful little
+reflection. "What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be
+which men call pleasure; and how wonderful it is related to that which
+appears to be its contrary--pain, in that they will not both be present
+to a man at the same time; yet if any one pursues and attains the one,
+he is almost always compelled to receive the other, as if they were both
+united together from one head." Surely true philosophy, if we may call
+so serene a state of mind by that hackneyed word, never reached,
+unaided, a purer height!
+
+There is one thing certain, which contains a poor comfort, but a strong
+one--a poor one, because it reduces us all to the same level--it is
+this: we may be sure that not one of us is without disappointment. The
+footman is as badly off as his master, and the master as the footman.
+The courtier is disappointed of his place, and the minister of his
+ambition. Cardinal Wolsey lectures his secretary Cromwell, and tells him
+of his disappointed ambition; but Cromwell had his troubles as well.
+Henry the Eighth, the king who broke them both, might have put up the
+same prayer; and the pope, who was a thorn in Harry's side, no doubt had
+a peck of disappointments of his own. Nature not only abhors a vacuum,
+but she utterly repudiates an entirely successful man. There probably
+never lived one yet to whom the morning did not bring some disaster, the
+evening some repulse. John Hunter, the greatest, most successful
+surgeon, the genius, the wonder, the admired of all, upon whose words
+they whose lives had been spent in science hung, said, as he went to his
+last lecture, "If I quarrel with any one to-night, it will kill me." An
+obstinate surgeon of the old school denied one of his assertions, and
+called him a liar. It was enough. Hunter was carried into the next room,
+and died. He had for years suffered from a diseased heart, and was quite
+conscious of his fate. That was his disappointment. Happy are they who,
+in this world of trial, meet their disappointments in their youth, not
+in their old age; then let them come and welcome, not too thick to
+render us morose, but like Spring mornings, frosty but kindly, the cold
+of which will kill the vermin, but will let the plant live; and let us
+rely upon it, that the best men (and women, too) are those who have been
+early disappointed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+THE THREE KINGS.
+
+
+AN OLD STORY IN A NEW LIGHT.
+
+
+    Gaspar, a king and shepherd,
+     Alone at the door of his tent,
+    Thus mused, his eyes uplifted
+     And fixed on the firmament:
+
+    "Is it a dream, this vision
+     That haunts me day and night,
+    This beautiful manifestation
+     Of some eternal delight?
+
+    God set me to watching and waiting
+     Long years and years ago,
+    Waiting and watching for something
+     My heart could not forego.
+
+    I caught the hope of the nations,
+     The desire of the common heart,
+    Which grew to an expectation
+     That would not from me depart.
+
+    My soul was filled with hunger
+     Deeper than I can tell,
+    The while I watched for the shining
+     Of the Star in Israel.
+
+    O Star, to arise in Jacob!
+     I cried as my heart grew bold;
+    O Star, to arise in Jacob,
+     By prophecy seen of old!
+
+    For the sight of Thee I am dying,
+     For the joy of Thy Beautiful Face!
+    Of Thy coming give me a token,
+     Grant me this favor and grace!
+
+    At length there came an answer
+     Flaming the desolate year,
+    A revelation of beauty,
+     A more than mortal cheer;
+
+    For afar in the kindly heavens
+     The blessed token I saw!
+    And now my life is transfigured,
+     And lost in a nameless awe.
+
+    In a nameless awe I wander,
+     As one with a joy untold,
+    Too great for his own defining,
+     Too great for him to withhold.
+
+    But deep in my heart is the secret,
+     And in yonder beckoning Star,
+    And I must wait for the telling
+     Until I can hasten afar,--
+
+    Until I can find in travel
+     A heart akin to mine,
+    That day and night is adoring
+     And imploring beauty divine.
+
+    And so I will share the gladness
+     Which God intends for the world;
+    And so will I lift the banner,
+     To remain forever unfurled."
+
+    Hardly had Gaspar ended
+     The musing he loved so well,
+    When he heard the dreamy tinkle
+     Of a distant camel-bell.
+
+    He set his tent in order;
+     He brought forth of his best,
+    After the Arab custom,
+     To welcome the coming guest.
+
+    Who is this eager stranger
+     Dismounted so soon at the door?
+    A king from another kingdom,
+     Who has traveled the desert o'er,
+
+    In search of the same communion
+     That Gaspar was longing for.
+    And before of food he tasted,
+     Thus spake King Melchior:
+
+    "O Gaspar, God hath sent me
+     In the light of a peaceful Star,
+    To tell thee, my royal brother,
+     What my sweet communings are.
+
+    My life has been hid with Nature
+     For many a quiet year,
+    And in the hearts of my people,
+     Whose love hath cast out fear.
+
+    And I have been a dweller
+     With God, who is everywhere,
+    On earth, in the stars, the Spirit
+     Sublimest, calmest, most fair.
+
+    Among his mediators
+     And messengers of rest,
+    Which fill the earth and the heavens,
+     The stars I reckoned the best.
+
+    To the stars I gave my study,
+     I watched them rise and set,
+    And heard the music of silence
+     My soul can not forget;--
+
+    The music that seemed prophetic
+     Of the reign of peace to come,
+    When men shall live as lovers
+     In the quiet of one dear home.
+
+    But contemplation only
+     My heart could not satisfy:
+    I longed for the very presence
+     The stars did prophesy,
+
+    And eagerly looked for a token
+     Of heaven descended to earth,
+    A manifestation to tell me
+     The Prince had come to his birth--
+
+    The Prince to rule the nations,
+     The blessed Prince of Peace,
+    Through the scepter of whose kingdom
+     Confusion and war shall cease.
+
+    And God to me has been gracious,
+     Though one of his children the least,
+    For I have seen his token
+     All glorious in the east.
+
+    Yea, God to me has been gracious,
+     And shown me the way of love,
+    A revelation of goodness
+     As fair as heaven above."
+
+    The kings sat down together,
+     Communed in the breaking of bread,
+    And each the heart of the other
+     As an open volume read.
+
+    They felt the new force within them
+     Through fellowship increase:
+    The one he called it beauty,
+     The other named it peace.
+
+    All through the silent night-tide
+     Their thoughts one burden bore:
+    There was a joy eternal
+     Their longing souls before.
+
+    But still they waited, waited,
+     They hardly knew what for.
+    "What lack we yet, O Gaspar!"
+     At length asked Melchior.
+
+    "Three lights in yonder heaven
+     Wait on the polar star.
+    Hast eyes to read the poem?
+     Dost see how calm they are?
+
+    _Three_ lights in yonder heaven
+     Wait on the polar star;
+    But we are _two_," said Gaspar.
+    "Not _two_, but _three_ we are,"
+
+    Belthazzar said, dismounting,
+     Another king from far;
+    "And we whom God hath chosen
+     Follow a greater Star.
+
+    O, what are peace and beauty,
+     Except they stir the soul
+    And make the man a hero,
+     To gain some happier goal?
+
+    O, what are peace and beauty
+     That stop this side of God,
+    Though infinite the distance
+     Remaining to be trod?"
+
+    In haste, in haste they mounted,
+     The kings in God's employ,
+    And quickly peace and beauty
+     Began to change to joy.
+
+    They left behind their kingdoms
+     Whose lure was far too small,
+    To keep them apart from the kingdom
+     Of Him who is all in all.
+
+    They left behind their people,
+     Of loving and loved a host,
+    The first of the thronging Gentiles,
+     To love the Redeemer most.
+
+    They left behind possessions,
+     Their flocks in all their prime,
+    In haste to greet the Shepherd
+     Whose charge is the most sublime.
+
+    They passed through hostile regions;
+     For fear they halted not;
+    And weariness and hunger
+     Were less than things forgot.
+
+    So on and on they hastened
+     Where they never before had trod,
+    And the flaming Guide that led them,
+     Was ever the Glory of God.
+
+    By night in yonder heavens,
+     Within their hearts by day,
+    As of old the blessed Shekinah
+     Along the Red Sea way.
+
+    And they have troubled Herod
+     And left Jerusalem,
+    The joy-giving Star before them,
+     The Star of Bethlehem.
+
+    And they have seen and worshiped
+     The Everlasting Child,
+    In whom sweet Truth and Mercy
+     Were never unreconciled.
+
+    They have kissed the Beauty of Heaven,
+     Incarnate on the earth,
+    The Babe in the lap of Mary,
+     Of whom He came to his birth.
+
+    Their gifts of love they have rendered
+     Unto the new-born King,
+    Their gold and myrrh and frankincense,
+     The best that they could bring.
+
+    And vanished the Star forever,
+     When they turned from the Child away?
+    Shone it not then in their bosoms,
+     The light of Eternal Day?
+
+    They could not return to Herod--
+     Too precious for any swine,
+    The pearls which they had gathered
+     Out of the Sea Divine!
+
+    O Vision of the Redeemer,
+     In which faith has struggled to sight!
+    They carried it back to their country,
+     And published it day and night.
+
+    They carried it back to their country,
+     The vision since Eden's fall,
+    Which seen afar off has sweetened
+     The wormwood and the gall.
+
+    And it has become the story
+     Of every triumphant soul,
+    That in seeking the Eternal
+     Reaches a blessed goal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
+
+
+THE HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA.
+
+
+"The care of the poor," said Hannah More, herself one of the most
+illustrious women of her time, "is essentially the profession of women."
+In her own person, Florence Nightingale has proved this; and not in one
+or two cases, but by a whole life passed in devotion to the needs of the
+poor and humble, the sick and the distressed. Comparatively little was
+known of Miss Nightingale before the year 1854, when the needs of the
+English army in the Crimea called forth the heroism of thousands. Then
+it was that Florence Nightingale and other heroic women went out to the
+East, and personally succored the wounded, comforted the weak-hearted,
+and smoothed the pillows of the dying.
+
+Miss Nightingale is every way a remarkable woman. The daughter of an
+Englishman, W. Shore Nightingale, of Embly Park, Hampshire, she was born
+in Florence, in the year 1823, and from this fair city she received her
+patronymic. From her earliest youth she was accustomed to visit the
+poor, and, as she advanced in years, she studied in the schools,
+hospitals, and reformatory institutions of London, Edinburgh, and other
+principal cities of England, besides making herself familiar with
+similar places on the Continent. In 1851, "when all Europe," says a
+recent writer, "seemed to be keeping holiday in honor of the Great
+Exhibition, she took up her abode in an institution at Kaiserwerth, on
+the Rhine, where Protestant sisters of mercy are trained for the
+business of nursing the sick, and other offices of charity. For three
+months she remained in daily and nightly attendance, accumulating the
+most valuable practical experience, and then returned home to patiently
+wait until an occasion should arise for its exercise. This occasion soon
+arose; for, after attending various hospitals in London, the cry of
+distress which, in 1854, arose from the distressed soldiery in Russia,
+enlisted her warmest sympathies. Lady Mary Forester, Mrs. Sidney
+Herbert, and other ladies, proposed to send nurses to the seat of war.
+The government acceded to their request, and Miss Florence Nightingale,
+Mrs. Bracebridge, and thirty-seven others, all experienced nurses, went
+out to their assistance, and arrived at Constantinople on the 5th of
+November. The whole party were soon established in the hospital at
+Scutari, and there pursued their labor of love and benevolence. The good
+they did, and the wonders they accomplished, are too well known to need
+particular detail. "Every day," says one, writing from the military
+hospital, "brought some new combination of misery to be somehow
+unraveled by the power ruling in the sisters' town. Each day had its
+peculiar trial to one who has taken such a load of responsibility in an
+untried field, and with a staff of her own sex, all new to it. She has
+frequently been known to stand twenty hours, on the arrival of fresh
+detachments of sick, apportioning quarters, distributing stores,
+directing the labors of her corps, assisting at the most painful
+operations, where her presence might soothe or support, and spending
+hours over men dying of cholera or fever. Indeed, the more awful to
+every sense any particular case might be, the more certainly might her
+slight form be seen bending over him, administering to his case by every
+means in her power, and seldom quitting his side until death had
+released him. And yet, probably, Miss Nightingale's personal devotion in
+the cause was, in her own estimation, the least onerous of her duties.
+The difficulties thrown in her way by the formalities of _system_ and
+_routine_, and the prejudices of individuals, will scarcely be
+forgotten, or the daily contests by which she was compelled to wring
+from the authorities a scant allowance of the appliances needed in the
+daily offices of her hand, until the co-operation of Mr. Macdonald, the
+distributor of the _Times_ fund, enabled her to lay in stores, to
+institute separate culinary and washing establishments, and, in short,
+to introduce comfort and order into the department over which she
+presided." And so, during the greater part of the momentous campaign,
+she did the work that she had set out to do, bravely and faithfully, and
+earnestly and well; and we may be sure that on her return to England she
+was welcomed gladly. The queen presented her with a costly diamond
+ornament, to be worn as a decoration, and accompanied it with an
+autograph letter, in which her great merits were fully, gracefully, and
+gratefully acknowledged. It was proposed to give Miss Nightingale a
+public reception; but, with true modesty, she shrunk from appearing in
+any other than her own character of nurse and soother, and at once
+passed into retirement. But that retirement was not allowed to be
+unproductive. So soon as her health, which was at all times delicate,
+and had suffered considerably in the Crimea, had been somewhat restored,
+she set to work to render the fruits of her experience useful to the
+world. In 1859 she produced her "Hints on Nursing," one of the most
+useful and practical little books ever published. In it she showed how
+much might be done, even with small means, and in the midst of manifold
+difficulties and discouragements; and it is no small triumph to the
+advocates of female labor, in proper spheres, that Florence Nightingale
+and her friends have shown that, as a nurse and comforter on the field
+of battle, woman may work out her mission quietly and unostentatiously,
+without, at the same time, interfering with the occupations of the other
+sex. In Florence Nightingale we have an example of a lady bred in the
+lap of luxury, and educated in the school of wealth and exclusiveness,
+breaking down the barriers of custom, and proving to the world that true
+usefulness belongs to no particular rank, age, or station, but is the
+privilege of all Eve's daughters, and that any employment sanctified by
+devotion and fervor and earnest desire to do good is essentially womanly
+and graceful, and fitting alike to the inheritors of wealth or poverty.
+
+That the absence of feminine influence must tend to materialize, to
+sensualize, and to harden, must, we think, be admitted by all the
+thoughtful. Woman is instituted by God the guardian of the heart as man
+is of the mind. How many husbands, sons, and brothers, driven and
+driving, through life in the absorbing excitement of a professional or
+mercantile career, can testify to the arresting, reposeful, humanizing
+atmosphere of a home where the wife, mother, or sister exerts her kindly
+sway; and it is as necessary to the immaterial interests of a nation, to
+the prevention of the legislative mind and executive hands being
+completely swallowed up in the actual, the present, the mechanical, the
+sensible, that some counteracting influence should be allowed and
+encouraged similar to that of woman in her home.
+
+To show the influence for good of associations of women for charitable
+ends, Mrs. Jameson, in "Sisters of Charity at Home and Abroad," has
+collected accounts from history and biography of many Romanist orders of
+sisters, besides vindicating and putting forward Miss Nightingale and
+her companions as examples. She would not for the world that the woman
+should aspire to be the man, and aim at a masculine independence for
+which she was never meant; and we thank the noble champion of Protestant
+sisterhoods for disclaiming connection with any who want her to take
+part in the public and prominent life of society, so to speak. It is
+co-operation that is insisted upon--the ministering influence of the
+woman with the business tact of the man. In prisons, hospitals,
+work-houses, and lunatic asylums the influence of well-trained women, to
+soften rigor, charm routine, beguile poverty, and tranquilize
+distraction is often wanted; not so much to talk as to think, feel, and
+do.
+
+It may be said that there can not be the same need in a Protestant
+country as in Roman Catholic countries of communities of single women,
+where they are doubtless called for, if only in opposition to the
+immense bodies of the higher and lower clergy; but, besides the fact of
+there always being a greater number of women in a country in proportion
+to the number of men, our commerce requires many sailors, not to mention
+our army and navy, which in years past have swallowed up so many.
+Surely, ministering women would be a blessing to the widows and orphans
+of our gallant soldiers and sailors. There are numbers of daughters in
+large families kept in conventual bondage by a father or brother or
+their own timidity. Daughters, sisters, widows, we appeal to you! Are
+there not some few among you with courage to lead where multitudes would
+follow--some to whom a kind Providence has given liberty of action? It
+is far from our intention to excite rebellion in families, or tempt away
+from the manifest calls of duty; but can not some one begin what others
+will continue? And we must not be indefinite: begin what? continue what?
+A system which, in this Protestant land, would give to the poor outcast,
+the little criminal, the child of the State, a mother as well as a
+father; that would give to the wretched of all ages a sister as well as
+a brother.
+
+Alluding to Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Jameson says: "No doubt but it
+will be through the patience, faith, and wisdom of men and women working
+together. In an undertaking so wholly new to our English customs, so
+much at variance with the usual education given to women in this
+country, we shall meet with perplexities, difficulties--even failures.
+All the ladies who have gone to Scutari may not turn out heroines. There
+may be vain babblings and scribblings and indiscretions, such as may put
+weapons into adverse hands. The inferior and paid nurses may, some of
+them, have carried to Scutari bad habits, arising from imperfect
+training. Still, let us trust that a principle will be recognized in the
+country which will not be again lost sight of. It will be the true, the
+lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants
+that they have broken through what Goethe calls a Chinese wall of
+prejudices--prejudices religious, social, professional--and established
+a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to all time. No doubt
+there are hundreds of women who would now gladly seize the privileges
+held out to them by such an example, and crowd to offer their services;
+but would they pay the price of such dear and high privileges? Would
+they fit themselves duly for the performance of such services, and earn
+by distasteful, and even painful studies, the necessary certificates for
+skill and capacity? Would they, like Miss Nightingale, go through a
+seven years' probation, to try at once the steadiness of their motives
+and the steadiness of their nerves? Such a trial is absolutely
+necessary; for hundreds of women will fall into the common error of
+mistaking an impulse for a vocation. But I do believe that there are
+also hundreds who are fitted, or would gladly, at any self-sacrifice,
+fit themselves for the work, if the means of doing so were allowed to
+them. At present, an English lady has no facilities whatever for
+obtaining the information or experience required; no such institutions
+are open to her, and yet she is ridiculed for presenting herself without
+the competent knowledge! This seems hardly just."
+
+Anticipating objection, Mrs. Jameson says:
+
+"To make or require vows of obedience is objectionable; yet we know that
+the voluntary nurses who went to the East were called upon to do what
+comes to the same thing--to sign an engagement to obey implicitly a
+controlling and administrative power--or the whole undertaking must have
+fallen to the ground. Then again, questions about costume have been
+mooted, which appear to me wonderfully absurd. It has been suggested
+that there should be something of uniformity and fitness in the dress
+when on duty, and this seems but reasonable. I recollect once seeing a
+lady in a gay, light, muslin dress, with three or four flounces, and
+roses under bonnet, going forth to visit her sick poor. The incongruity
+struck the mind painfully--not merely as an incongruity, but as an
+impropriety--like a soldier going to the trenches in an opera hat and
+laced ruffles. Such follies, arising from individual obtuseness, must be
+met by regulation dictated by good sense, and submitted to as a matter
+of necessity and obligation."
+
+Again, says our authoress, who passed from her sphere of usefulness in
+1860:
+
+"It is a subject of reproach, that in this Christendom of ours, the
+theory of good we preach should be so far in advance of our practice;
+but that which provokes the sneer of the skeptic, and almost kills faith
+in the sufferer, lifts up the contemplative mind with hope. Man's
+_theory_ of good is God's _reality_; man's experience is the degree to
+which he has already worked out, in his human capacity, that divine
+reality. Therefore, whatever our practice may be, let us hold fast to
+our theories of possible good; let us, at least, however they may outrun
+our present powers, keep them in sight, and then our formal, lagging
+practice, may in time overtake them. In social morals, as well as in
+physical truth, 'the goal of yesterday will be the starting-point of
+to-morrow,' and the things before which all England now stands in
+admiring wonder will become the simple produce of the common day. This
+we hope and believe."
+
+The example of Florence Nightingale, so full of hope and prophecy to
+Mrs. Jameson five-and-twenty years ago, has proved indeed an earnest of
+better things, which all these years have been passing into realities.
+Who shall say how much inspiration the noble band of ministering women
+in our civil war derived from the heroine of the Crimea? When the great
+occasion arrives, the heavenly impulse is seldom wanting. But God works
+through means; and that one example of Christian devotion, so fresh in
+the hearts of mothers, wives, and sisters, was an immense help in
+developing the self-sacrifice which is latent in every true life. To say
+nothing of the new impulse given to the organization of woman's work in
+England, it is a matter for thankfulness to be able to note that the
+signs of new life in this country are full of promise. In several of our
+large cities, notably New York and Philadelphia, institutions have
+recently been founded for the training of nurses, and sisterhoods
+organized for the better accomplishment of Christian work in hospitals,
+asylums, and among the poor and unfortunate--a work, indeed, which has
+been done, in one way or another, in all the Christian ages, by every
+true follower of the Master.
+
+And here, in conclusion, the thought suggests itself that differences of
+organization, whether ecclesiastical or otherwise, should not conceal
+from our eyes the true notes of "the communion of the saints," or shut
+from our hearts the conditions of inheriting the kingdom prepared from
+the foundation of the world: "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I
+was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in;
+naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in
+prison, and ye came unto me."
+
+    O English Nightingale,
+    Who hadst the grace to hear
+    The dying soldier's far-off wail,
+    And pause not for a tear--
+
+    Who, as on angel wings,
+    Didst seek the wintry sea,
+    To put thy hand to menial things,
+    Which were not such to thee;
+
+    And didst, with heaven-born art,
+    Where pain implored release,
+    To mangled form and broken heart
+    Bring healing and sweet peace--
+
+    Thy work was music, song,
+    As brave as ever stirred
+    A nation's heart; as calm and strong
+    As angels ever heard!
+
+Gazing on the modest, unassuming countenance shown in the illustration
+which accompanies this sketch, one can imagine the surprised question to
+which the King answers in the last day: "Inasmuch as ye have done it
+unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+SHY PEOPLE
+
+
+HAWTHORNE-WASHINGTON, IRVING, AND OTHERS--MADAME RECAMIER.
+
+
+Sympathy is the most delicate tendril of the mind, and the most
+fascinating gift which nature can give us. The most precious
+associations of the human heart cluster around the word, and we love to
+remember those who have sorrowed with us in sorrow, and rejoiced with us
+when we were glad. But for the awkward and the shy the sympathetic are
+the very worst company. They do not wish to be sympathized with--they
+wish to be with people who are cold and indifferent; they like shy
+people like themselves. Put two shy people in a room together, and they
+begin to talk with unaccustomed glibness. A shy woman always attracts a
+shy man. But women who are gifted with that rapid, gay impressionability
+which puts them _en rapport_ with their surroundings, who have fancy and
+an excitable disposition, a quick susceptibility to the influences
+around them, are very charming in general society, but they are terrible
+to the awkward and the shy. They sympathize too much, they are too aware
+of that burning shame which the sufferer desires to conceal.
+
+The moment a shy person sees before him a perfectly unsympathetic
+person, one who is neither thinking nor caring for him, his shyness
+begins to flee; the moment that he recognizes a fellow-sufferer he
+begins to feel a re-enforcement of energy. If he be a lover, especially,
+the almost certain embarrassment of the lady inspires him with hope and
+renewed courage. A woman who has a bashful lover, even if she is
+afflicted with shyness, has been known to find a way to help the poor
+fellow out of his dilemma more than once.
+
+
+HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+Who has left us the most complete and most tragic history of shyness
+which belongs to "that long rosary on which the blushes of a life are
+strung," found a woman (the most perfect character, apparently, who ever
+married and made happy a great genius) who, fortunately for him, was shy
+naturally, although without that morbid shyness which accompanied him
+through life. Those who knew Mrs. Hawthorne found her possessed of great
+fascination of manner, even in general society, where Hawthorne was
+quite impenetrable. The story of his running down to the Concord River
+and taking boat to escape his visitors has been long familiar to us all.
+Mrs. Hawthorne, no doubt, with a woman's tact and a woman's generosity,
+overcame her own shyness in order to receive those guests whom Hawthorne
+ran away from, and through his life remained his better angel. It was
+through this absence of expressed sympathy that English people became
+very agreeable to Hawthorne. He describes, in his "Note-Book," a speech
+made by him at a dinner in England: "When I was called upon," he says,
+"I rapped my head, and it returned a hollow sound." He had, however,
+been sitting next to a shy English lawyer, a man who won upon him by his
+quiet, unobtrusive simplicity, and who, in some well-chosen words,
+rather made light of dinner-speaking and its terrors. When Hawthorne
+finally got up and made his speech, his "voice, meantime, having a
+far-off and remote echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of
+applause greeted a few well-chosen words drawn from that full well of
+thought, that pellucid rill of "English undefiled," the unobtrusive
+gentleman by his side applauded and said to him, "It was handsomely
+done." The compliment pleased the shy man. It is the only compliment to
+himself which Hawthorne ever recorded.
+
+Now, had Hawthorne been congratulated by a sympathetic, effusive
+American, who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "O, never
+fear--you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite
+in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful
+truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed--a
+fear that he would _not_ do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman
+neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; and,
+although pleased that he did speak well, invested no particular sympathy
+in the matter, either for or against, and so spared Hawthorne's shyness
+the last bitter drop in the cup, which would have been a recognition of
+his own moral dread. Hawthorne bitterly records his own sufferings. He
+says, in one of his books, "At this time I acquired this accursed habit
+of solitude." It has been said that the Hawthorne family were, in the
+earlier generation, afflicted with shyness almost as a
+disease--certainly a curious freak of nature in a family descended from
+robust sea-captains. It only goes to prove how far away are the
+influences which control our natures and our actions.
+
+Whether, if Hawthorne had not been a shy man, afflicted with a sort of
+horror of his species at times, always averse to letting himself go,
+miserable and morbid, we should have been the inheritors of the great
+fortune which he has left us, is not for us to decide. Whether we should
+have owned "The Gentle Boy," the immortal "Scarlet Letter," "The House
+with Seven Gables," "The Marble Faun," and all the other wonderful
+things which grew out of that secluded and gifted nature, had he been
+born a cheerful, popular, and sympathetic boy, with a dancing-school
+manner, instead of an awkward and shy youth (although an exceedingly
+handsome one), we can not tell. That is the great secret behind the
+veil. The answer is not yet made, the oracle has not spoken, and we must
+not invade the penumbra of genius.
+
+
+WASHINGTON AND IRVING.
+
+
+It has always been a comfort to the awkward and the shy that Washington
+could not make an after-dinner speech; and the well-known anecdote--"Sit
+down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is even greater than your
+valor"--must have consoled many a voiceless hero. Washington Irving
+tried to welcome Dickens, but failed in the attempt, while Dickens was
+as voluble as he was gifted. Probably the very surroundings of
+sympathetic admirers unnerved both Washington and Irving, although there
+are some men who can never "speak on their legs," as the saying goes, in
+any society.
+
+Other shy men--men who fear general society, and show embarrassment in
+the every-day surroundings--are eloquent when they get on their feet.
+Many a shy boy at college has astonished his friends by his ability in
+an after-dinner speech. Many a voluble, glib boy, who has been appointed
+the orator of the occasion, fails utterly, disappoints public
+expectation, and sits down with an uncomfortable mantle of failure upon
+his shoulders. Therefore, the ways of shyness are inscrutable. Many a
+woman who has never known what it is to be bashful or shy has, when
+called upon to read a copy of verses, even to a circle of intimate
+friends, lost her voice, and has utterly broken down, to her own and her
+friends' great astonishment.
+
+The voice is a treacherous servant; it deserts us, trembles, makes a
+failure of it, is "not present or accounted for" often when we need its
+help. It is not alone in the shriek of the hysterical that we learn of
+its lawlessness; it is in its complete retirement. A bride often, even
+when she felt no other embarrassment, has found that she had no voice
+with which to make her responses. It simply was not there.
+
+A lady who was presented at court, and who felt--as she described
+herself wonderfully at her ease, began talking, and, without wishing to
+speak loud, discovered that she was shouting like a trumpeter. The
+somewhat unusual strain which she had put upon herself during the ordeal
+of being presented at the English court revenged itself by an outpouring
+of voice which she could not control.
+
+Many shy people have recognized in themselves this curious and
+unconscious elevation of voice. It is not so common as a loss of voice,
+but it is quite as uncontrollable.
+
+The bronchial tubes play us another trick when we are frightened; the
+voice is the voice of somebody else; it has no resemblance to our own.
+Ventriloquism might well study the phenomena of shyness, for the voice
+becomes base that was treble, and soprano that which was contralto.
+
+"I dislike to have Wilthorpe come to see me," said a very shy woman, "I
+know my voice will squeak so." With her Wilthorpe, who for some reason
+drove her into an agony of shyness, had the effect of making her talk in
+a high, unnatural strain, excessively fatiguing.
+
+The presence of one's own family, who are naturally painfully
+sympathetic, has always had upon the bashful and the shy a most evil
+effect.
+
+"I can never plead a case before my father," "Nor I before my son," said
+two distinguished lawyers. "If mamma is in the room, I shall never be
+able to get through my part," said a young amateur actor.
+
+But here we must pause to note another exception in the laws of shyness.
+
+In the false perspective of the stage, shyness often disappears. The shy
+man, speaking the words and assuming the character of another, often
+loses his shyness. It is himself of whom he is afraid, not of Tony
+Lumpkin or of Charles Surface, of Hamlet or of Claude Melnotte. Behind
+their masks he can speak well; but if he at his own dinner-table essays
+to speak, and mamma watches him with sympathetic eyes, and his brothers
+and sisters are all listening, he fails.
+
+    "Lord Percy sees me fall."
+
+Yet it is with our own people that we must stand or fall, live or die;
+it is in our own circle that we must conquer our shyness.
+
+Now, these reflections are not intended as an argument against sympathy
+properly expressed. A reasonable and judiciously expressed sympathy with
+our fellow-beings is the very highest attribute of our nature. "It
+unravels secrets more surely than the highest critical faculty. Analysis
+of motives that sway men and women is like the knife of the anatomist;
+it works on the dead. Unite sympathy to observation, and the dead spring
+to life." It is thus to the shy, in their moments of tremor, that we
+should endeavor to be calmly sympathetic; not cruel, but indifferent,
+unobservant.
+
+Now, women of genius, who obtain a reflected comprehension of certain
+aspects of life through sympathy, often arrive at the admirable result
+of apprehending the sufferings of the shy without seeming to observe
+them. Such a woman, in talking to a shy man, will not seem to see him;
+she will prattle on about herself, or tell some funny anecdote of how
+she was tumbled out into the snow, or how she spilled her glass of
+claret at dinner, or how she got just too late to the lecture; and while
+she is thus absorbed in her little improvised autobiography, the shy man
+gets hold of himself, and ceases to be afraid of her. This is the secret
+of tact.
+
+
+MADAME RECAMIER.
+
+
+Madame Recamier, the famous beauty, was always somewhat shy. She was not
+a wit, but she possessed the gift of drawing out what was best in
+others. Her biographers have blamed her that she had not a more
+impressionable temper, that she was not more sympathetic. Perhaps (in
+spite of her courage when she took up contributions in the churches
+dressed as a Neo-Greek) she was always hampered by shyness. She
+certainly attracted all the best and most gifted of her time, and had a
+noble fearlessness in friendship, and a constancy which she showed by
+following Madame de Stael into exile, and in her devotion to Ballenche
+and Chateaubriand. She had the genius of friendship, a native sincerity,
+a certain reality of nature--those fine qualities which so often
+accompany the shy that we almost, as we read biography and history,
+begin to think that shyness is but a veil for all the virtues.
+
+Perhaps to this shyness, or to this hidden sympathy, did Madame Recamier
+owe that power over all men which survived her wonderful beauty. The
+blind and poor old woman of the Abbaye had not lost her charm; the most
+eminent men and women of her day followed her there, and enjoyed her
+quiet (not very eloquent) conversation. She had a wholesome heart; it
+kept her from folly when she was young, from a too over-facile
+sensitiveness to which an impressionable, sympathetic temperament would
+have betrayed her. Her firm, sweet nature was not flurried by
+excitement; she had a steadfastness in her social relations which has
+left behind an everlasting renown to her name.
+
+And what are, after all, these social relations which call for so much
+courage, and which can create so much suffering to most of us as we
+conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a
+moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics,
+which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and
+contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good,
+the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing
+most necessary to us all. We are apt to like it and its excitements
+almost too well, or to hate it, with its excesses and its mistakes, too
+bitterly. We are rarely just to society.
+
+The rounded, and harmonious, and temperate understanding and use of
+society is, however, the very aim and end of education. We are born to
+live with each other and not for ourselves. If we are cheerful, our
+cheerfulness was given to us to make bright the lives of those about us;
+if we have genius, that is a sacred trust; if we have beauty, wit,
+joyousness, it was given us for the delectation of others, not for
+ourselves; if we are awkward and shy, we are bound to break the crust,
+and to show that within us is beauty, cheerfulness, and wit. "It is but
+the fool who loves excess." The best human being should moderately like
+society.--MRS. JOHN SHERWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL
+
+(BORN 1755--DIED 1835.)
+
+
+IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY--HIS MARRIAGE--LAW LECTURES--AT THE BAR--HIS
+INTELLECTUAL POWERS--ON THE BENCH.
+
+
+The family stock of Marshall, like that of Jefferson, was Welsh, as is
+generally the case in names with a double letter, as a double f or a
+double l. This Welsh type was made steady by English infusions. The
+first Marshall came from Wales in 1730, and settled in the same county
+where Washington, Monroe, and the Lees were born. He was a poor man, and
+lived in a tract called "The Forest." His eldest son, Thomas, went out
+to Fauquier County, at the foot of the Blue Ridge, and settled on Goose
+Creek, under Manassas Gap. This Thomas Marshall had been a playmate of
+George Washington, and, like him, was a mountain surveyor, and they
+loved each other, and when the Revolutionary War broke out both went
+into the service, Thomas Marshall being colonel of one of the Virginia
+regiments. His son, John Marshall, who was not twenty years old when the
+conflict began, became a lieutenant under his father. The mother of John
+Marshall was named Mary Kieth, and his grandmother Elizabeth Markham,
+and the latter was born in England.
+
+Marshall's father had a good mind, not much education; but he was a
+great reader, and especially loved poetry, and he taught his son to
+commit poetry to memory, and to model his mind on the clear diction and
+heroic strain of poets like Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Pope. In
+these books of poetry the great chief-justice found the springs to
+freshen his own good character. To the last day of his life he loved
+literature, and was especially fond of novels, and of books written by
+females. He held the view that the United States must be a literary
+nation in the sense of having great and noble authors to leaven its
+people and teach them high thoughts. His schools were chiefly down in
+the Chesapeake Bay, in the county of his birth, and his teachers were
+poor Presbyterian clergymen from Scotland, who at that period were the
+teachers of nearly all the Middle States, from New York southward. He
+knew some Latin, but not very much. One of his teachers was his own
+father, who, with a large family, took delight in training this boy.
+
+
+OUR JUDGE ON DRILL.
+
+
+In 1775 the country hunters and boors on the Blue Ridge Mountain went to
+their mustering place, and, the senior officer being absent, this young
+Marshall, with a gun on his shoulder, began to show them how to use it.
+Like them, he wore a blue hunting shirt and trousers of some stuff
+fringed with white, and in his round hat was a buck-tail for a cockade.
+He was about six feet high, lean and straight, with a dark skin, black
+hair, a pretty low forehead, and rich, dark small eyes, the whole making
+a face dutiful, pleasing, and modest. After the drill was over he stood
+up and told those strange, wild mountaineers, who had no newspapers and
+knew little of the world, what the war was about. He described to them
+the battle of Lexington. They listened to him for an hour, as if he had
+been some young preacher.
+
+Thus was our great chief-justice introduced to public life. He had come
+to serve, and found that he must instruct. When he marched with the
+regiment of these mountaineers, who carried tomahawks and
+scalping-knives, the people of Williamsburg trembled for their lives. At
+that time, the country near Harper's Ferry was the Far West. In a very
+little while, these mountaineers, by mingled stratagem and system,
+defeated Lord Dunmore, very much as Andrew Jackson defeated the British
+at New Orleans thirty-five years later. Marshall then went with the army
+to the vicinity of Philadelphia; was in the battles of Brandywine and
+Germantown, and in the long Winter of Valley Forge. Almost naked at that
+place, he showed an abounding good-nature, that kept the whole camp
+content. If he had to eat meat without bread, he did it with a jest.
+Among his men he had the influence of a father, though a boy. He was so
+much better read than others that he frequently became a judge advocate,
+and in this way he got to know Alexander Hamilton, who was on
+Washington's staff. Marshall was always willing to see the greatness of
+another person, and Judge Story says that he said of Hamilton that he
+was not only of consummate ability as both soldier and statesman, but
+that, in great, comprehensive mind, sound principle, and purity of
+patriotism, no nation ever had his superior.
+
+It became Marshall's duty, in the course of twenty-five years, to try
+for high treason the man who killed his friend Hamilton, but he
+conducted that trial with such an absence of personal feeling that it
+was among the greatest marvels of our legal history. He could neither be
+influenced by his private grief for Hamilton, nor by Jefferson's
+attempts as President to injure Burr, nor by Burr himself, whom he
+charged the jury to acquit, but whom he held under bond on another
+charge, to Burr's rage. Marshall was in the battle of Monmouth, and at
+the storming of Stony Point, and at the surprise of Jersey City. In the
+army camps, he became acquainted with the Northern men, and so far from
+comparing invidiously with them, he recognized them all as
+fellow-countrymen and brave men, and never in his life was there a
+single trace of sectionalism.
+
+
+HIS MARRIAGE.
+
+
+Near the close of the Revolution, Marshall went to Yorktown, somewhat
+before Cornwallis occupied it, to pay a visit, and there he saw Mary
+Ambler at the age of fourteen. She became his wife in 1783. Her father
+was Jacqueline Ambler, the treasurer of the State of Virginia. She lived
+with him forty-eight years, and died in December, 1831. He often
+remarked in subsequent life that the race of lovers had changed. Said
+he: "When I married my wife, all I had left after paying the minister
+his fee was a guinea, and I thought I was rich." General Burgoyne, whom
+Marshall's fellow-soldiers so humiliated, wrote some verses, and among
+these were the following, which Marshall said over to himself often when
+thinking of his wife:
+
+    "Encompassed in an angel's frame,
+      An angel's virtues lay;
+    Too soon did heaven assert its claim
+      And take its own away.
+    My Mary's worth, my Mary's charms,
+      Can never more return.
+    What now shall fill these widowed arms?
+      Ah, me! my Mary's urn."
+
+
+LAW LECTURES.
+
+
+The only law lectures Marshall ever attended were those of Chancellor
+Wythe, at William and Mary College, Williamsburg, while the Revolution
+was still going on. Before the close of the war he was admitted to the
+bar, but the courts were all suspended until after Cornwallis's
+surrender. Before the war closed Marshall walked from near Manassas Gap,
+or rather from Oak Hill, his father's residence, to Philadelphia on foot
+to be vaccinated. The distance was nearly two hundred miles; but he
+walked about thirty-five miles a day, and when he got to Philadelphia
+looked so shabby that they repelled him at the hotel; but this only made
+him laugh and find another hotel. He never paid much attention to his
+dress, and observed through life the simple habits he found agreeable as
+a boy. For two years he practiced in one rough, native county; but it
+soon being evident that he was a man of extraordinary grasp of a law
+case, he removed to Richmond, which had not long been the capital, and
+there he lived until his death, which happened in 1835 in the city of
+Philadelphia, whither he had repaired to submit to a second operation.
+The first of these operations was cutting to the bladder for the stone,
+and he survived it. Subsequently, his liver became enlarged and had
+abcesses on it, and his stomach would not retain much nutriment.
+Marshall was a social man, and at times convivial; and I should think it
+probable that, though he lived to a good old age, these complaints were,
+to some extent, engendered by the fried food they insist upon in
+Virginia, and addiction to Madeira wine instead of lighter French or
+German wines. He was one of the last of the old Madeira drinkers of this
+country, like Washington, and his only point of pride was that he had
+perhaps the best Madeira at Richmond. Above all other men who ever lived
+at Richmond, Virginia, Marshall gives sanctity and character to the
+place. His house still stands there, and ought to become the property of
+the bar of this country. It is now a pretty old house, made of brick and
+moderately roomy.
+
+
+AT THE BAR.
+
+
+The basis of Marshall's ability at the bar was his understanding. Not
+highly read, he had one of those clear understandings which was equal to
+a mill-pond of book-learning. His first practice was among his old
+companions in arms, who felt that he was a soldier by nature, and one of
+those who loved the fellowship of the camp better than military or
+political ambition. Ragged and dissipated, they used to come to him for
+protection, and at a time when imprisonment for debt and cruel
+executions were in vogue. He not only defended them, but loaned them
+money. He lost some good clients by not paying more attention to his
+clothing, but these outward circumstances could not long keep back
+recognition of the fact that he was the finest arguer of a case at the
+Richmond bar, which then contained such men as Edmund Randolph, Patrick
+Henry, and later, William Wirt. He was not an orator, did not cultivate
+his voice, did not labor hard; but he had the power to penetrate to the
+very center of the subject, discover the chief point, and rally all his
+forces there. If he was defending a case, he would turn his attention to
+some other than the main point, in order to let the prosecution assemble
+its powers at the wrong place. With a military eye he saw the strong and
+weak positions, and, like Rembrandt painting, he threw all his light on
+the right spot. The character of his argument was a perspicuous, easy,
+onward, accumulative, reasoning statement. He had but one gesture--to
+lift up his hand and bring it down on the place before him constantly.
+He discarded fancy or poetry in his arguments. William Wirt said of him,
+in a sentence worth committing to memory as a specimen of good style in
+the early quarter of this century: "All his eloquence consists in the
+apparent deep self-conviction and emphatic earnestness of his manner;
+the corresponding simplicity and energy of his style; the close and
+logical connection of his thoughts, and the easy graduations by which he
+opens his lights on the attentive minds of his hearers. The audience are
+never permitted to pause for a moment. There is no stopping to weave
+garlands of flowers to hang in festoons around a favorite argument. On
+the contrary, every sentence is progressive; every idea sheds new light
+on the subject; the listener is kept perpetually in that sweetly
+pleasurable vibration with which the mind of man always receives new
+truths; the dawn advances with easy but unremitting pace; the subject
+opens gradually on the view, until, rising in high relief in all its
+native colors and proportions, the argument is consummated by the
+conviction of the delighted hearer."
+
+Immediately after the Revolutionary War the State courts were crowded
+with business, because of the numerous bankruptcies, arising from war
+habits, the changes in the condition of families, repudiation of debts,
+false currency, etc. Marshall was one of the first lawyers who rose to
+the magnanimity to admit the propriety of a federal judiciary, different
+from that of the States. The other lawyers thought it would not do to
+take the business away from these courts. They preferred to see the
+people hanging around Richmond, with their cases undecided and unheard
+on account of the pressure of business, rather than to concede a
+national judiciary. All sorts of novel questions were arising at that
+time, cases which had no precedents, which the English law-books did not
+reach, and where the man of native powers, pushing out like Columbus on
+the unknown, soon developed a sturdy strength and self-reliance the mere
+popinjay and student of the law could never get. Among the cases he
+argued was the British debt case, tried in 1793. The United States now
+had its Circuit Court, and Chief-justice Jay presided at Richmond. The
+treaty of peace of England provided that the creditors on either side
+should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value
+of all _bona fide_ debts theretofore contracted. The question was
+whether debts sequestrated by the Virginia Legislature during the war
+came under this treaty. It is said that the Countess of Huntingdon heard
+the speeches on this case, and said that every one of the lawyers, if in
+England, would have been given a peerage. Patrick Henry broke his voice
+down in this case, and never again could speak with his old force.
+Marshall surpassed them all in the cogency of his reasoning. At that
+time he was thought to be rather lazy. He went into the State
+Legislature in 1782, just before he married. His personal influence was
+such in Richmond that, although he was constantly in the minority, he
+was always elected. His principal amusement was pitching the quoit,
+which he did to the end of his days, and could ring the meg, it is said,
+at a distance of sixty feet frequently. He arose early in the morning
+and went to market without a servant, and brought back his chickens in
+one hand and his market basket on the other arm. He never took offense,
+and once when a dude stopped him on the street and asked him where there
+was a fellow to take home his marketing, Marshall inquired where he
+lived, and said, "I will take it for you." After he got home with the
+other man's marketing, the dude was much distressed to find that Mr.
+Marshall had been his supposed servant.
+
+
+INTELLECTUAL POWER.
+
+
+Nevertheless, the intellectual existence of the man was decided. From
+the beginning of his life he took the view that while Virginia was the
+State of his birth, his country was America; that all he and his
+neighbors could accomplish on this planet would be under the great
+government which comprehends all, and, true to this one idea, he never
+wavered in his life. Mr. Jefferson, who was much his senior, he
+distrusted profoundly, regarding him as a man of cunning, lacking in
+large faith, and constitutionally biased in mind. In the sketch Marshall
+made of General Washington, he said, and it is believed that he referred
+to Jefferson: "He made no pretension to that vivacity which fascinates
+or to that wit which dazzles, and frequently imposes on the
+understanding. More solid than brilliant; judgment, rather than genius,
+constituted the most prominent feature of his character. No man has ever
+appeared upon the theater of public action whose integrity was more
+incorruptible, or whose principles were more perfectly free from the
+contamination of those selfish and unworthy passions which find their
+nourishment in the conflicts of party. Having no views which required
+concealment, his real and avowed motives were the same, and his whole
+correspondence does not furnish a single case from which even an enemy
+would infer that he was capable, under any circumstances, of stooping to
+the employment of duplicity. No truth can be uttered with more
+confidence than that his ends were always upright and his means always
+pure. He exhibited the rare example of a politician to whom wiles were
+totally unknown, and whose professions to foreign governments, and to
+his own countrymen, were always sincere. In him was fully exemplified
+the real distinction which found existence between wisdom and cunning,
+and the importance, as well as the truth of the maxim, that honesty is
+the best policy." It is to be noticed that Marshall's "Life of
+Washington," though written by the chief-justice of the United States,
+was not a success, and passed through only one edition. It gave him more
+annoyance than any thing in his life. He wrote it with labor and
+sincerity, but he was incapable of writing mere smart, vivacious things,
+and, in the attempt to give Washington his due proportions, he
+insensibly failed of making a popular book.
+
+Jefferson, who had been urging Tobias Lear, Washington's secretary, to
+get out of Washington's papers remarks injurious to himself, was greatly
+exercised at the publication of Marshall's book about as much as the
+better element dudes are at Blaine's book.
+
+Mr. Marshall, in 1788, assisted to make the new constitution of
+Virginia. By the desire of Washington he ran for Congress as a
+Federalist. President Washington offered him the place of
+attorney-general, which he declined. He also declined the minister to
+France, but subsequently accepted the position from President Adams, and
+in France was insulted with his fellow-members by Talleyrand. John
+Adams, on his return, wished to make him a member of the Supreme Court,
+but this he declined, preferring the practice of the law.
+
+It was at Mount Vernon that Washington prevailed upon him to run for
+Congress. The story being raised that Patrick Henry was opposed to him,
+old Henry came forward and said: "I should rather give my vote to John
+Marshall than to any citizen of this State at this juncture, one only
+excepted," meaning Washington.
+
+The father of Robert E. Lee was one of the old Federal minority rallying
+under Marshall. Marshall had scarcely taken his seat in Congress, in
+1799, when Washington died, and he officially announced the death at
+Philadelphia, and followed his remarks by introducing the resolutions
+drafted by General Lee, which contained the words, "First in war, first
+in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
+
+
+ON THE BENCH.
+
+
+John Marshall was next Secretary of State of John Adams, succeeding
+Timothy Pickering. Adams was defeated for re-election, but before he
+went out of office he appointed Marshall chief-justice, at the age of
+forty-five.
+
+At the head of that great bench sat Marshall more than one-third of a
+century. Before him pleaded all the great lawyers of the country, like
+William Pinckney, Hugh Legare, Daniel Webster, Horace Binney, Luther
+Martin, and Walter Jones.
+
+John Marshall left as his great legacy to the United States his
+interpretation of the Constitution. While chief-justice he became a
+member of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia in company with
+Madison and Monroe, both of whom had been President. He gave the Federal
+Constitution its liberal interpretation, that it was not merely a bone
+thrown to the general government, which must be watched with suspicion
+while it ate, but that it was a document with something of the
+elasticity of our population and climate, and that it was designed to
+convey to the general state powers noble enough to give us respect.
+
+Without a spot on his reputation, without an upright enemy, the old man
+attended to his duty absolutely, loved argument, encouraged all young
+lawyers at the bar, and he lived down to the time of nullification, and
+when General Jackson issued his proclamation against the nullifiers John
+Marshall and Judge Story went up to the White House and took a glass of
+wine with him.
+
+And thus those two old men silently appreciated each other near the end
+of their days when the suspicions of Jefferson had resulted in incipient
+rebellion that was to break out in less than thirty years, and which
+Marshall predicted unless there was a more general assent to the fact
+that we were one country, and not a parcel of political
+chicken-coops.--GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+A NOBLE MOTHER.
+
+
+HOW SHE TRAINED HERSELF, AND EDUCATED HER BOYS
+
+
+Harrietta Rea, in _The Christian Union_, some time ago, drew a picture
+of home life in the West, which ought to be framed and hung up in every
+household of the land.
+
+In one of the prairie towns of Northern Iowa, where the Illinois Central
+Railroad now passes from Dubuque to Sioux City, lived a woman whose
+experience repeats the truth that inherent forces, ready to be
+developed, are waiting for the emergencies that life may bring.
+
+She was born and "brought up" in New England. With the advantages of a
+country school, and a few terms in a neighboring city, she became a fair
+scholar--not at all remarkable; she was married at twenty-one to a young
+farmer, poor, but intelligent and ambitious. In ten years, after the
+death of their parents they emigrated to Iowa, and invested their money
+in land that bade fair to increase in value, but far away from
+neighbors. Here they lived, a happy family, for five years, when he
+died, leaving her, at the age of thirty-five, with four boys, the eldest
+nearly fourteen, the youngest nine. The blow came suddenly, and at first
+was overwhelming. Alone, in what seemed almost a wilderness, she had no
+thought of giving up the farm. It was home. There they must stay and do
+the best they could. The prospect of a railroad passing near them, in
+time, was good; then some of the land might be sold. A little money bad
+been laid by--nothing that she ought to touch for the present. Daniel,
+the hired man, who had come out with them, and who was a devoted friend
+and servant, she determined to keep--his judgment was excellent in farm
+matters. Hitherto the boys had gone regularly to school, a mile or two
+away; for a settlement in Iowa was never without its school-house. They
+were bright and quick to learn. Their father had been eager to help and
+encourage them. Newspapers, magazines, and now and then a good book, had
+found their way into this household. Though very fond of reading
+herself, with the care of her house she had drifted along, as so many
+women do, until the discipline of study, or any special application, had
+been almost forgotten. It was the ambition of both parents that their
+sons should be well educated. Now Jerry and Thede, the two oldest, must
+be kept at home during the summer to work. Nate and Johnnie could help
+at night and in the morning. The boys had all been trained to habits of
+obedience. They were affectionate, and she knew that she could depend
+upon their love.
+
+One evening, alone in her bedroom, she overheard some part of a
+conversation as the children were sitting together around the open
+fire-place:
+
+"I don't mind the work," said Theodore, "if I could only be learning,
+too. Father used to say he wanted me to be a civil engineer."
+
+"If father was here," said eleven-year-old Nate, "you could study
+evenings and recite to him. I wish mother could help; but, then I guess
+mother's--"
+
+"Help how?" she heard Jerry ask sharply, before Nate could finish his
+sentence; and she knew the boy was jealous at once for her. "Isn't she
+the best mother in the world?"
+
+"Yes, she is; and she likes stories, too; but I was just thinking, now
+that you can't go to school, if she only knew a lot about every thing,
+why, she could tell you."
+
+"Well," replied Jerry, with all the gravity of a man, "we must just take
+hold and help all we can; it's going to be hard enough for mother. I
+just hate to give up school and pitch into work. Thede, you shall go
+next Winter, any way."
+
+"Shan't we be lonesome next winter?" said little Johnnie, who had taken
+no part in the talk; until now; "won't mother be afraid? I want my
+father back," and, without a word of warning, he burst into tears.
+
+Dead silence for a few minutes. The outburst was so sudden, she knew
+they were all weeping. It was Jerry again who spoke first: "Don't let
+mother see us crying. Come, Johnnie, let's take Bone, and all go down to
+the trap;" then she heard them pass out of the house.
+
+Desolation fell upon that poor mother for the next hour. Like a knife,
+Nate's remark had passed through her heart, "Father could have helped!"
+Couldn't she help her boys, for whom she was ready to die? Was she only
+"mother," who prepared their meals and took care of their clothes? She
+wanted a part in the very best of their lives. She thought it all over,
+sitting up far into the night. If she could only create an interest in
+some study that should bind them all together, and in which she could
+lead! Was she too old to begin? Never had the desire to become the very
+center of interest to them taken such a hold upon her.
+
+A few weeks after, she said one morning, at the breakfast table, "Boys,
+I've been thinking that we might begin geology this summer, and study
+it, all of us together. Your father and I meant to do it sometime. I've
+found a text-book; by and by, perhaps, Thede can draw us a chart. Jerry
+will take hold, I know, and Nate and Johnnie can hunt for specimens.
+We'll have an hour or two every night."
+
+The children's interest awoke in a flash, and that very evening the
+question discussed was one brought in by Nate: "What is the difference
+between limestone and granite?" A simple one, but it opened the way for
+her, and their first meeting proved a success. She had to study each day
+to be ready and wide awake for her class. They lived in a limestone
+region. Different forms of coral abounded, and other fossils were
+plenty. An old cupboard in the shed was turned into a cabinet. One day
+Nate, who had wandered off two or three miles, brought home a piece of
+rock, where curious, long, finger-shaped creatures were imbedded. Great
+was the delight of all to find them described as _orthoceratites,_ and
+an expedition to the spot was planned for some half-holiday. Question
+after question led back to the origin of the earth. She found the
+nebular hypothesis, and hardly slept one night trying to comprehend it
+clearly enough to put it before others in a simple fashion. Her book was
+always at hand. By and by they classified each specimen, and the best of
+their kind were taken to shelves in the sitting-room. Her own enthusiasm
+in study was aroused, and, far from a hardship, it now became a delight.
+Her spirit was contagious. The boys, always fond of "mother," wondered
+what new life possessed her; but they accepted the change all the same.
+She found that she could teach, and also could inspire her pupils. They
+heard of a gully, five or six miles away, where crystals had been found.
+Making a holiday, for which the boys worked like Trojans, they took
+their lunch in the farm wagon, and rode to the spot; and if their search
+was not altogether successful, it left them the memory of a happy time.
+
+In the meantime the farm prospered. She did all the work in the house
+and all the sewing, going out, too, in the garden, where she raised a
+few flowers, and helping to gather vegetables. Daniel and the boys were
+bitterly opposed to her helping them. "Mother," said Jerry, "if you
+won't ever think you must go out, I'll do any thing to make up. I don't
+want you to look like those women we see sometimes in the fields."
+Generally she yielded; her work was enough for one pair of hands.
+Through it all now ran the thought that her children were growing up;
+they would become educated men; she would not let them get ahead, not so
+as to pass her entirely.
+
+Winter came. Now Daniel could see to the work; but these habits of study
+were not to be broken. "Boys, let us form a history club," was the
+proposition; "it shan't interfere with your lessons at school." They
+took the history of the United States, which the two younger children
+were studying. Beginning with the New England settlements, and being six
+in number, they called each other, for the time, after the six States,
+persuading old Daniel to take his native Rhode Island. "That woman beats
+all creation," he was heard to exclaim, "the way she works all day and
+goes on at night over her books." The mother used to say she hardy knew
+if she were any older than her boys when they were trying to trip each
+other with questions. The teacher of the district school came over one
+Saturday afternoon. "I never had such pupils," said he, "as your sons,
+in history; and indeed they want to look into every thing." Afterward he
+heard with delight the story of their evening's work. The deep snows
+often shut them in, but the red light shone clearly and bright from that
+sitting-room window, and a merry group were gathered around the table.
+Every two weeks an evening was given to some journey. It was laid out in
+advance, and faithfully studied. Once, Theodore remembers, a shout of
+laughter was raised when nine o'clock came by Jerry's exclamation, "O,
+mother, don't go home now; we are all having such a good time!" Five
+years they lived in this way, and almost entirely by themselves. They
+studied botany. She knew the name of every tree and shrub for miles
+around. The little boys made a collection of birds' eggs, and then began
+to watch closely the habits of the birds. It was a pure, simple life. It
+would have been too wild and lonely but for the charm of this devoted
+mother. Her hours of loneliness were hidden from them; but she learned
+in an unusual degree to throw every energy into the day's work of study,
+and create, as it were, a fresh enthusiasm for the present hour. Her
+loving sacrifice was rewarded. Each child made her his peculiar
+confidante. She became the inspiration of his life.
+
+English history opened a wide field to this family. One afternoon she
+brought in Shakespeare to prove some historical question. It was a rainy
+day, and the boys were all at home. Jerry began to read "Hamlet" aloud;
+it proved a treasure that brought them into a new world of delight.
+Sometimes they took different characters for representation, and the
+evening ended in a frolic; for good-natured mirth was never repressed.
+
+First of all, a preparation had been made for the Sabbath. There was a
+church in this town, but at a distance of several miles, and during many
+days the roads were impassable. She had leaned upon infinite Strength,
+gathering wisdom through all these experiences. The secret of many a
+promise had been revealed to her understanding; and, above every thing,
+she desired that the Scriptures should become precious to her children.
+She took up Bible characters, bringing to bear the same vivid interest,
+the same power of making them realities.
+
+These lessons were varied by little sketches or reports of one Sunday to
+be read aloud the next. Of this, Nate took hold with a special zest.
+None of this family could sing. She thought of a substitute. They
+learned the Psalms, much of Isaiah, and many hymns, repeating them in
+concert, learning to count upon this hour around the fire as others do
+upon their music. How many of these times came to her in after life--the
+vision of the bright faces of her boys as they clustered affectionately
+around her!
+
+Time rolled by. The railroad passed through. A village sprang up, and
+the land was ready to sell. She could keep enough for her own use, and
+the boys could prepare for college. Thede and Nate went away to school.
+The old home was kept bright and pleasant; friends, new settlers, came
+in, and now there was visiting and social life.
+
+Jerry stayed on the farm; Theodore became a civil engineer; Nate a
+minister; Johnnie went into business. Theodore used to say: "Mother, as
+I travel about, all the stones and the flowers make me think of you. I
+catch sight of some rock, and stop to laugh over those blessed times."
+Nate said: "Mother, when I am reading a psalm in the pulpit, there
+always comes to me a picture of those old evenings, with you in the
+rocking-chair by the firelight, and I hear all your voices again."
+Johnnie wrote: "Mother, I think that every thing I have has come to me
+through you." When Jerry, who remained faithful always, had listened to
+his brothers, he put his arm about her, saying tenderly: "There will
+never be any body like mother to me."
+
+She died at sixty-five, very suddenly. Only a few hours before, she had
+exclaimed, as her children all came home together: "There never were
+such good boys as mine. You have repaid me a thousand-fold. God grant
+you all happy homes." They bore her coffin to the grave themselves. They
+would not let any other person touch it. In the evening they gathered
+around the old hearth-stone in the sitting-room, and drew their chairs
+together. No one spoke until Nate said, "Boys, let us pray;" and then,
+all kneeling around her vacant chair, he prayed that the mantle of their
+mother might fall upon them. They could ask nothing beyond that.
+
+
+    No Longer My Own.
+
+    In serving the Master I love,
+      In doing his bidding each day,
+    The sweetness of bondage I prove,
+      And sing, as I go on my way--
+    I never such freedom have known
+    As now I'm no longer my own.
+
+    His burden is easy to bear,
+      My own was a mountain of lead;
+    His yoke it is gladness to wear,
+      My own with my life-blood was red--
+    I never such gladness have known
+    As now I'm no longer my own.
+
+    Discharging the duties I owe
+      To household and neighbor of mine,
+    The beauty of bondage I know,
+      And count it as beauty divine--
+    I never such beauty have known
+    As now I'm no longer my own.
+
+    And everywhere, Master so dear,
+      A dutiful bondman of thine,
+    All things my possession appear,
+      Their glory so verily mine--
+    I never such glory have known
+    As now I'm no longer my own.
+
+    My heart overflows with brave cheer;
+      For where is the bondage to dread,
+    As long as the Master is dear,
+      And love that is selfish is dead!--
+    I never such safety have known
+    As now I'm no longer my own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+THE CARE OF THE BODY.
+
+
+WHAT DR. SARGENT, OF THE HARVARD GYMNASIUM, SAYS ABOUT IT--POINTS FOR
+PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND PUPILS.
+
+
+The time is coming--indeed has come--when every writer will divide the
+subject of education into physical, moral, and intellectual. We
+recognize theoretically that physical education is the basis of all
+education. From the time of Plato down to the time of Horace Mann and
+Herbert Spencer that has been the theory. It has also been the theory of
+German educators. The idea that the mind is a distinct entity, apart
+from the body, was a theological idea that grew out of the reaction
+against pagan animalism. The development of the body among the Greeks
+and Romans was followed by those brutal exhibitions of physical prowess
+in the gladiatorial contests where the physical only was cultivated and
+honored. With the dawn of Christianity a reaction set in against this
+whole idea of developing the body. They thought no good could come from
+its supreme development, because they had seen so much evil. The priests
+represented the great danger which accompanied this physical training
+without moral culture, and there is no doubt that they were right to a
+certain degree. Give a man only supreme physical education, without any
+attention to the moral and intellectual, and he will go to pieces like
+our prize-fighters and athletes. But the Christians went to the other
+extreme. They practiced the most absurd system of asceticism, depriving
+themselves of natural food and rest, and, of course, the results which
+followed on a grand scale were just what would follow in the individual.
+Let a person follow the course they did, denying himself necessary
+raiment and food, taking no exercise, and living in retirement, and
+nervous prostration will follow, and hysterical disturbances and
+troubles. This result in the individual was found on a large scale
+throughout Christendom. The idea that the Christians brought down from
+the very earliest dawn of Christianity, that the body and soul are
+distinct, and that whatever is done to mortify the flesh increases the
+spiritual, life, has a grain of truth in it. There were men in our army
+who, half-starved, marched through the Southern swamps in a state of
+exaltation. They imagined they were walking through floral gardens, with
+birds flitting about and singing overhead. But it was an unnatural,
+morbid state. So priests deprived themselves of food, and reduced
+themselves to the lowest extent physically, and then saw visions; and
+were in an exalted mental state. But it was morbid. If a man sit up till
+twelve o'clock to write on a certain theme, he may not have a single
+idea until that hour; but then his mind begins to work, and perhaps he
+can work better than under any other circumstances. But his condition is
+abnormal. It does not represent the man's true state of health. He is
+gaining that momentary advancement of power at terrible cost.
+
+This disregard of physical conditions is giving rise to national
+disturbance. It has thoroughly worked itself into our educational
+system. Though our schools profess to be purely secular, they still
+adhere to this old theological idea. You can not get teachers to enter
+with zest into exercises for physical development, because they think
+that a man who trains the body must be inferior to the man who trains
+the mind. They do not see that the two are closely allied. They will
+tell you that the time is all apportioned, so many hours for each study,
+and that if you take half an hour out for exercise the boy must lose so
+much Latin or Greek, or something else. The idea of the high-school is
+to get the boy into college. They care nothing about the condition of
+the individual. The individual must be sacrificed to the reputation of
+the school, or of the master; the standard must be kept up. If the
+master can not get just such a percentage of scholars into college, his
+own reputation and the reputation of the school are injured. If he can
+get this percentage into college, he does not care what becomes of the
+individual. Our schools treat a boy as professional trainers treat a man
+on the field; the only idea is to make the boy win a certain prize. They
+do not care any thing about his health; that is nothing to them. Their
+reputation is made upon the success of the boy in his entrance to
+college. Here I have to step in and say to the father: "This boy must
+not go any farther. His future prospects ought not to be sacrificed in
+this way. Your son's success in life does not depend upon his going
+through the Latin school. Let him step out and take another year. Do not
+attempt to crowd him." The result of this lack of attention to physical
+training, even looking at it from the intellectual stand-point, is
+fatal. The boy gets a disgust for study, as one does for any special
+kind of food when kept exclusively upon it. Many a fellow who stood high
+in school breaks away from books as soon as he enters college, and goes
+to the other extreme. That is nature's method of seeking relief. He has
+mental dyspepsia, and every opportunity that offers for physical play he
+accepts. He can not help it, and he ought not to be blamed for it,
+because it is the natural law.
+
+The laws of assimilation govern the brain as well as the body. You can
+only store up just about so much matter--call it educational material if
+you will--in a given time. If you undertake to force the physical
+activity of the brain, you must supply it with more nourishment. If a
+boy takes no exercise to increase his appetite, if he does not
+invigorate and nourish his blood, which supplies brain substance, of
+course there is deterioration. If he has a good stock of reserve
+physical power he will get on very well for a while, but all at once he
+will come to a stop. How many hundreds of those who stood well when they
+entered college get to a certain point and can get no farther, because
+they have not the physical basis. They are like athletes who can run a
+certain speed, but can never get beyond that. On the other hand, men who
+have had a more liberal physical training will go right by them, though
+not such good scholars, because they have more of a basis back in the
+physical.
+
+When these things are fully appreciated, the whole system of education
+will be revolutionized. To build the brain we must build the body. We
+must not sacrifice nerve tissue and nerve power in physical training, as
+there is danger of doing if gymnastics are not guided by professional
+men. But the proper training of the body should produce the highest
+intellectual results.
+
+Certain parts of the body bear certain relations to one another. The
+office of the stomach is to supply the body with nourishment. The office
+of the heart is to pump this nourishment over the body. The office of
+the lungs is to feed the heart and stomach with pure blood. All support
+one another, and all are dependent on each other. If a boy sits in a
+cramped position in school, that interferes with the circulation of the
+blood, and that with the nourishment of the brain. You could in this way
+trace the cause of many a schoolboy's headache. Speaking roughly, we
+might say that one-half of the school children have a hollow at the
+bottom of the breast-bone from sitting in such positions, and this
+depression interferes with digestion. And the moment the stomach gives
+out, that affects the whole physical and mental condition. When
+nutrition is imperfect, the action of the heart and the distribution of
+the blood are interfered with.
+
+The only way to remedy these evils is by popular education. It is of no
+use to attempt to bring about at once; any regular or prescribed system
+of exercise, requiring such exercises to be carried out in school,
+because our schools, like our theaters, are what the public make them.
+There is many a master who knows he is pursuing the wrong course, but he
+is kept to it by the anxious solicitations of parents who wish their
+children kept up to a certain rank. They are forced to follow the
+present system by the inordinate demands of parents. The parents must be
+educated. The father and mother must be converted to the necessity, the
+absolute necessity for success in life, of physical culture. There are
+plenty of men who stand as political and financial leaders who are not
+highly educated men. A man who has the rudiments of education--reading,
+writing, arithmetic--with a good physique, good health, a well-balanced
+and organized frame, brought into contact with the world, stands a
+better chance of success than the one who goes through school and takes
+a high rank at the expense of his physique.
+
+Let a gifted but weakly lawyer go into a court-room and meet some
+bull-headed opponent with not half the keen insight or knowledge of the
+law, but one who has tenacity, ability to hold on, and nine times out
+ten the abler man of the two--mentally--goes home wearied and defeated,
+and the other man wins the case. Who are the men prominent in the
+pulpit? Are they weak, puny men, or men of physique? Who are the leaders
+in the Churches? They are not leaders on account of their intellectual
+brilliancy, but by their wholeness as men. They find sympathy with the
+people because they are good specimens of manhood. There might be many
+more such had they been better trained.
+
+The best training-school for the body is the gymnasium. That is the
+purpose of all its appliances and apparatus. But it may be dispensed
+with if one has an adequate desire for physical training. Give a boy to
+understand that his body is not impure and vile, but that it is as much
+worth consideration as his mind, and that if he does not take carte of
+his body he can not do any thing with his mind, and ways of physical
+training will not be wanting.
+
+All children should be examined at intervals by a physician, and a
+record kept of their development. I measure my little boy every year. I
+know how he is growing. If he has been subject to too much excitement,
+there will be larger relative growth of the head, and we adjust his
+manner of life accordingly. The object of education is to _develop the
+boy_, not to put him through so much of arithmetic or so much language.
+The object is to get out of the boy all there is in him. The first
+thing, then, is to have the boy examined. If, instead of calling a
+physician when the children are sick, he is called while they are well,
+it would be much better. Is he getting round-shouldered? Has he a crook
+in the back? Is he beginning to stoop? There are many things which can
+be stopped in a child which can never be changed after the habits are
+hardened. Too late the parent may find that his child is incapacitated
+for the highest education, because there is no room for the heart and
+lungs to play their parts. The boy is limited in his possibilities as a
+tree planted in unfavorable soil is limited. He is stunted. He will
+reach a certain limit, and no efforts on his part will carry him
+further. But if he has been taken in hand in time, and these suggestions
+acted upon, different results might have been produced. These efforts to
+develop the boy's body will awaken the interest of the boy himself. It
+does not awaken animalism. Let a man have pride in his body, and his
+morals will look out for themselves. If a a boy is thus examined, and a
+record kept, he will take a pride in keeping up his record. It is not
+necessary, then, to have appliances. He can make trees and
+clothes-horses and gates and fences take their place. Teach him the
+value of such opportunities. Teach him to increase the capacity of his
+lungs and heart, and what relation they bear to the brain, and thus
+awaken his interest. He will soon learn to exercise in the best way.
+When the parent has to watch a boy to see that he exercises, exercise is
+of little or no avail. But let the father and mother realize the full
+value and importance of the body, and the results will follow naturally.
+Every thing depends primarily upon the parent. If he simply commands
+exercise without sharing in it, he is like a father who lectures his
+sons about smoking and drinking while he smokes and drinks himself.
+
+This is a great field. It is opening up broader every day. I do not know
+any field where a man can go more enthusiastically to work. It affects
+not only the physical, but the moral condition. We have brought about a
+higher moral tone at Harvard through physical training. There is less
+smoking and drinking by far than before the gymnasium was so universally
+used. Every thing that develops the whole man affects morals. Our Maker
+did not put us here merely to be trained for somewhere else. No one can
+walk through the streets of Boston without feeling that there is need
+enough of work to do right here, in bringing about a better condition of
+affairs; something which shall be nearer an ideal heaven on earth.--_The
+Christian Union_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+SAINT CECILIA
+
+
+THE PATRONESS OF MUSIC-MYTHS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC-ITS RELATION
+TO WORK AND BLESSEDNESS
+
+
+Her legend relates that about the year 230, which would be in the time
+of the Emperor Alexander. Severus, Cecilia, a Roman lady, born of a
+noble and rich family, who in early youth had been converted to
+Christianity, and had made a vow of perpetual virginity, was constrained
+by her parents to marry a certain Valerian, a pagan, whom she succeeded
+in converting to Christianity without infringing the vow she had made.
+She also converted her brother-in-law, Tiburtius, and a friend called
+Maximius, all of whom were martyred in consequence of their faith.
+
+It is further related, among other circumstances purely legendary, that
+Cecilia often united instrumental music to that of her voice, in singing
+the praises of the Lord. On this all her fame has been founded, and she
+has become the special patroness of music and musicians all the world
+over. Half the musical societies of Europe have been named after her,
+and her supposed musical acquirements have led the votaries of a sister
+art to find subjects for their work in episodes of her life. The grand
+painting by Domenichino, at Bologna, in which the saint is represented
+as rapt in an ecstasy of devotion, with a small "organ," as it is
+called--an instrument resembling a large kind of Pandean pipes--in her
+hand, is well known, as is also Dryden's beautiful ode. The illustration
+which accompanies this chapter, after a painting by one of the brothers
+Caracci, of the seventeenth century, represents Cecilia at the organ.
+Borne heavenward on the tide of music, she sees a vision of the holy
+family, the child Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, with an angel near at hand in
+quiet gladness.
+
+    God's harmony is written
+    All through, in shining bars,
+    The soul His love has smitten
+    As heaven is writ with stars.
+
+
+MYTHS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC.
+
+
+Music is so delightfully innocent and charming an art, that we can not
+wonder at finding it almost universally regarded as of divine origin.
+Pagan nations generally ascribe the invention of their musical
+instruments to their gods, or to certain superhuman beings of a godlike
+nature. The Hebrews attributed it to man, but as Jubal is mentioned as
+"the father of all such as handle the harp and organ" only, and as
+instruments of percussion were almost invariably in use long before
+people were led to construct stringed and wind instruments, we may
+suppose that, in the Biblical records, Jubal is not intended to be
+represented as the original inventor of all the Hebrew instruments, but
+rather as a great promoter of the art of music.
+
+"However, be this as it may, this much is certain: there are among
+Christians at the present day not a few sincere upholders of the literal
+meaning of these records, who maintain that instrumental music was
+already practiced in heaven before the creation of the world. Elaborate
+treatises have been written on the nature and effect of that heavenly
+music, and passages from the Bible have been cited by the learned
+authors which are supposed to confirm indisputably the opinions advanced
+in their treatises.
+
+"It may, at a first glance, appear singular that nations have not,
+generally, such traditional records respecting the originator of their
+vocal music as they have respecting the invention of their musical
+instruments. The cause is, however, explicable; to sing is-as natural to
+man as to speak, and uncivilized nations are not likely to speculate
+whether singing has ever been invented.
+
+"There is no need to recount here the well-known mythological traditions
+of the ancient Greeks and Romans referring to the origin of their
+favorite musical instruments. Suffice it to remind the reader that
+Mercury and Apollo were believed to be the inventors of the lyre and
+cithara (guitar); that the invention of the flute was attributed to
+Minerva, and that Pan is said to have invented the syrinx. More worthy
+of our attention are some similar records of the Hindoos, because they
+have hitherto scarcely been noticed in any work on music.
+
+"In the mythology of the Hindoos, the god Nareda is the inventor of the
+_vina_, the principal musical instrument of Hindoostan. Saraswati, the
+consort of Brahma, may be said to be considered as the Minerva of the
+Hindoos. She is the goddess of music as well as of speech. To her is
+attributed the invention of the systematic arrangement of the sounds
+into a musical scale. She is represented seated on a peacock and playing
+a stringed instrument of the guitar kind. Brahma, himself, we find
+depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his
+hands upon a small drum. Arid Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is
+represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindoos still
+possess a peculiar kind of flute which they consider as the favorite
+instrument of Krishna. Furthermore, they have the divinity of Genesa,
+the god of wisdom, who is represented as a man with the head of an
+elephant holding in his hands a _tamboura_, a kind of lute with a long
+neck.
+
+"Among the Chinese, we meet with a tradition according to which they
+obtained their musical scale from a miraculous bird called Foung-hoang,
+which appears to have been a sort of phoenix. As regards the invention
+of musical instruments, the Chinese have various traditions. In one of
+these we are told that the origin of some of their most popular
+instruments dates from the period when China was under the 'dominion of
+the heavenly spirits called Ki. Another assigns the invention of several
+of their stringed instruments to the great Fohi, called the "Son of
+Heaven," who was, it is said, the founder of the Chinese Empire, and who
+is stated to have lived about B.C. 3000, which was long after the
+dominion of the Ki, or spirits. Again, another tradition holds that the
+most important Chinese musical instruments, and the systematic
+arrangement of the tones, are an invention of Niuva, a supernatural
+female, who lived at the time of Fohi, and who was a virgin-mother. When
+Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, happened to hear, on a certain
+occasion, some divine music, he became so greatly enraptured that he
+could not take any food for three months. The music which produced the
+miraculous effect was that of Kouei, the Orpheus of the Chinese, whose
+performance on the _king_, a kind of harmonicon constructed of slabs of
+sonorous stone, would draw wild animals around him and make them
+subservient to his will.
+
+"The Japanese have a beautiful tradition, according to which the
+Sun-goddess, in resentment of the violence of an evil-disposed brother,
+retired into a cave, leaving the universe in darkness and anarchy; when
+the beneficent gods, in their concern for the welfare of mankind,
+devised music to lure her forth from her retreat, and their efforts soon
+proved successful.
+
+"The Kalmucks, in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, adore a beneficient
+divinity called Maidari, who is represented as a rather jovial-looking
+man, with a mustache and imperial, playing upon an instrument with three
+strings, somewhat resembling the Russian _balalaika_.
+
+"Almost all these ancient conceptions we meet with, also, among European
+nations, though more or less modified.
+
+"Odin, the principal deity of the ancient Scandinavians, was the
+inventor of magic songs and Runic writings.
+
+"In the Finnish mythology the divine Vainamoinen is said to have
+constructed the five-stringed harp, called _kantele_, the old national
+instrument of the Finns. The frame he made out of the bones of a pike,
+and the teeth of the pike he used for the tuning-pegs. The strings he
+made of hair from the tail of a spirited horse. When the harp fell into
+the sea and was lost, he made another, the frame of which was birchwood,
+with pegs made out of the branch of an oak-tree. As strings for this
+harp he used the silky hair of a young girl. Vainamoinen took his harp,
+and sat down on a hill, near a silvery brook. There he played with so
+irresistible an effect that he entranced whatever came within hearing of
+his music. Men and animals listened, enraptured; the wildest beasts of
+the forests lost their ferocity; the birds of the air were drawn toward
+him; the fishes rose to the surface of the water and remained immovable;
+the trees ceased to wave their branches; the brook retarded its course
+and the wind its haste; even the mocking echo approached stealthily, and
+listened with the utmost attention to the heavenly sounds. Soon the
+women began to cry; then the old men and the children also began to cry,
+and the girls and the young men--all cried for delight. At last
+Vainamoinen himself wept, and his big tears ran over his beard and
+rolled into the water and became beautiful pearls at the bottom of the
+sea.
+
+"Several other musical gods, or godlike musicians, could be cited; and,
+moreover, innumerable minor spirits, all bearing evidence that music is
+of divine origin.
+
+"True, people who think themselves more enlightened than their
+forefathers, smile at these old traditions, and say that the original
+home of music is the human heart. Be it so. But do not the purest and
+most beautiful conceptions of man partake of a divine character? Is not
+the art of music generally acknowledged to be one of these? And is it
+not, therefore, even independently of myths and mysteries, entitled to
+be called the divine art?"
+
+
+THE RELATION OF MUSIC TO WORK AND BLESSEDNESS.
+
+
+"Give us," says Carlyle, "O, give us the man who sings at his work! Be
+his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the
+same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time--he
+will do it better--he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of
+fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make
+harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of
+cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance.
+Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous--a spirit
+all sunshine--graceful from very gladness--beautiful because bright."
+
+Again, this author says, who had so much music in his heart, though not
+of the softest kind--rather of the epic sort:
+
+"The meaning of song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can
+express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable
+speech, which leads to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments
+gaze into that!"
+
+The late Canon Kingsley certainly conceived much of the height and
+depth, and length and breath of song, when he wrote:
+
+"There is music in heaven, because in music there is no self-will. Music
+goes on certain rules and laws. Man did not make these laws of music; he
+has only found them out; and, if he be self-willed and break them, there
+is an end of his music instantly: all he brings out is discord and ugly
+sounds: The greatest musician in the world is as much bound by those
+laws as the learner in the school; and the greatest musician is one who,
+instead of fancying that because he is clever he may throw aside the
+laws of music, knows the laws of music best, and observes them most
+reverently. And therefore it was that the old Greeks, the wisest of the
+heathens, made a point of teaching their children _music_; because, they
+said, it taught them not to be self-willed and fanciful, but to see the
+beauty, the usefulness of rule, the divineness of laws. And, therefore,
+music is fit for heaven; therefore music is a pattern and type of
+heaven, and of the everlasting life of God which perfect spirits live in
+heaven; a life of melody and order in themselves; a life of harmony with
+each other and with God.
+
+"If thou fulfillest the law which God has given thee, the law of love
+and liberty, then thou makest music before God, and thy life is a hymn
+of praise to God.
+
+"If thou act in love and charity with thy neighbors, thou art making
+sweeter harmony in the ears of our Lord Jesus Christ than psaltery,
+dulcimer, and all other kinds of music.
+
+"If thou art living a righteous and a useful life, doing thy duty
+orderly and cheerfully where God has put thee, then thou art making
+sweeter melody in the ears of the Lord Jesus Christ than if thou hast
+the throat of the nightingale; for then thou, in thy humble place, art
+humbly copying the everlasting harmony and melody by which God made the
+worlds and all that therein is, and, behold, it was very good, in the
+day when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+shouted for joy over the new-created earth, which God made to be a
+pattern of his own perfection."
+
+    The minstrel's heart in sadness
+      Was wrestling with his fate;
+    "Am I the sport of madness,"
+      He sighed, "and born too late?"
+
+    "No gifts are ever given,"
+      A friendly voice replied,
+    "On which the smile of Heaven
+      Does not indeed abide.
+
+    God's harmony is written
+      All through, in shining bars,
+    The soul his love has smitten,
+      As heaven is writ with stars.
+
+    The major notes and minor
+      Are waiting for their wings;
+    Pray thou the great Diviner
+      To touch the secret springs.
+
+    He may not give expression
+      In any ocean-tide,
+    But music, like confession,
+      Will waft thee to his side;
+
+    Where thou, as on a river,
+      The current deep and strong,
+    Shalt sail with him forever
+      Into the land of song."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+(BORN 1786--DIED 1859.)
+
+
+A LIFE OF WONDER AND WARNING.
+
+
+The "English Opium-eater" himself told publicly, throughout a period of
+between thirty and forty years, whatever is known about him to any body;
+and in sketching the events of his life, the recorder has little more to
+do than to indicate facts which may be found fully expanded in Mr. De
+Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium-eater" and "Autobiographic Sketches."
+The business which he, in fact, left for others to do is that which, in
+spite of obvious impossibility, he was incessantly endeavoring to do
+himself--that of analyzing and forming a representation and judgment of
+his mind, and of his life as molded by his mind. The most intense
+metaphysician of a time remarkable for the predominance of metaphysical
+modes of thought, he was as completely unaware, as smaller men of his
+mental habits, that in his perpetual self-study and analysis he was
+never approaching the truth, for the simple reason that he was not even
+within ken of the necessary point of view. "I," he says, "whose disease
+it was to meditate too much and to observe too little." And the
+description was a true one, as far as it went. And the completion of the
+description was one which he could never have himself arrived at. It
+must, we think, be concluded of De Quincey that he was the most
+remarkable instance in his time of a more than abnormal, of an
+artificial, condition of body and mind--a characterization which he must
+necessarily be the last man to conceive of. To understand this, it is
+necessary to glance at the events of his life. The briefest notice will
+suffice, as they are within the reach of all, as related in his own
+books.
+
+Thomas De Quincey was the son of a merchant engaged in foreign commerce,
+and was born at Manchester in 1786. He was one of eight children, of
+whom no more than six were ever living at once, and several of whom died
+in infancy. The survivors were reared in a country home, the incidents
+of which, when of a kind to excite emotion, impressed themselves on this
+singular child's memory from a very early age. We have known only two
+instances, in a rather wide experience of life, of persons distinctly
+remembering so far back as a year and a half old. This was De Quincey's
+age when three deaths happened in the family, which he remembered, not
+by tradition, but by his own contemporary emotions. A sister of three
+and a half died, and he was perplexed by her disappearance, and
+terrified by the household whisper that she had been ill-used just
+before her death by a servant. A grandmother died about the same time,
+leaving little impression, because she had been little seen. The other
+death was of a beloved kingfisher, by a doleful accident. When the boy
+was five, he lost his playfellow and, as he says, intellectual guide,
+his sister Elizabeth, eight years old, dying of hydrocephalus, after
+manifesting an intellectual power which the forlorn brother recalled
+with admiration and wonder for life. The impression was undoubtedly
+genuine; but it is impossible to read the "Autobiographical Sketch" in
+which the death and funeral of the child are described without
+perceiving that the writer referred back to the period he was describing
+with emotions and reflex sensations which arose in him and fell from the
+pen at the moment. His father, meantime, was residing abroad, year after
+year, as a condition of his living at all; and he died of pulmonary
+consumption before Thomas was seven years old. The elder brother, then
+twelve, was obviously too eccentric for home management, if not for all
+control; and, looking no further than these constitutional cases, we are
+warranted in concluding that the Opium-eater entered life under peculiar
+and unfavorable conditions.
+
+He passed through a succession of schools, and was distinguished by his
+eminent knowledge of Greek. At fifteen he was pointed out by his master
+(himself a ripe scholar) to a stranger in the remarkable words, "That
+boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an
+English one." And it was not only the Greek, we imagine, but the
+eloquence, too, was included in this praise. In this, as in the subtlety
+of the analytical power (so strangely mistaken for entire intellectual
+supremacy in our day), De Quincey must have strongly resembled
+Coleridge. Both were fine Grecians, charming discoursers, eminent
+opium-takers, magnificent dreamers and seers; large in their promises,
+and helpless in their failure of performance. De Quincey set his heart
+upon going to college earlier than his guardians thought proper; and, on
+his being disappointed in this matter, he ran away from his tutor's
+house, and was lost for several months, first in Wales and afterward in
+London. He was then sixteen. His whole life presents no more remarkable
+evidence of his constant absorption in introspection than the fact that,
+while tortured with hunger in the streets of London, for many weeks, and
+sleeping (or rather lying awake with cold and hunger) on the floor of an
+empty house, it never once occurred to him to earn money. As a classical
+corrector of the press, and in other ways, he might no doubt have
+obtained employment; but it was not till afterward asked why he did not,
+that the idea ever entered his mind. How he starved, how he would have
+died but for a glass of spiced wine in the middle of the night on some
+steps in Soho Square, the Opium-eater told all the world above thirty
+years since; and also of his entering college; of the love of wine
+generated by the comfort it had yielded in his days of starvation; and
+again, of the disorder of the functions of the stomach which naturally
+followed, and the resort to opium as a refuge from the pain. It is to be
+feared that the description given in those extraordinary "Confessions"
+has acted more strongly in tempting young people to seek the eight
+years' pleasures he derived from laudanum than, that of his subsequent
+torments in deterring them. There was no one to present to them the
+consideration that the peculiar organization of De Quincey, and his
+bitter sufferings, might well make a recourse to opium a different thing
+to him than to any body else. The quality of his mind and the exhausted
+state of his body enhanced to him the enjoyments which he called
+"divine," whereas there is no doubt of the miserable pain by which men
+of all constitutions have to expiate an habitual indulgence in opium.
+Others than De Quincey may or may not procure the pleasures he
+experienced; but it is certain that every one must expiate his offense
+against the laws of the human frame. And let it be remembered that De
+Quincey's excuse is as singular as his excess. Of the many who have
+emulated his enjoyment, there can hardly have been one whose stomach had
+been well-nigh destroyed by months of incessant, cruel hunger.
+
+This event of his life, his resort to opium, absorbed all the rest.
+There is little more to tell in the way of incident. His existence was
+thenceforth a series of dreams, undergone in different places, now at
+college, and now in a Westmoreland cottage, with a gentle, suffering
+wife, by his side, striving to minister to a need which was beyond the
+reach of nursing. He could amuse his predominant faculties by reading
+metaphysical philosophy and analytical reasoning on any subject, and by
+elaborating endless analyses and reasonings of his own, which he had not
+energy to embody. Occasionally the torpor encroached even on his
+predominant faculties, and then he roused himself to overcome the habit;
+underwent fearful suffering in the weaning; began to enjoy the vital
+happiness of temperance and health, and then fell back again. The
+influence upon the moral energies of his nature was, as might be
+supposed, fatal. Such energy he once had, as his earlier efforts at
+endurance amply testify. But as years passed on, he had not only become
+a more helpless victim to his prominent vice, but manifested an
+increasing insensibility to the most ordinary requisitions of honor and
+courtesy, to say nothing of gratitude and sincerity. In his hungry days,
+in London, he would not beg nor borrow. Five years later he wrote to
+Wordsworth, in admiration and sympathy; received an invitation to his
+Westmoreland Valley; went, more than once, within a few miles, and
+withdrew and returned to Oxford, unable to conquer his painful shyness;
+returned at last to live there, in the very cottage which had been
+Wordsworth's; received for himself, his wife, and a growing family of
+children, an unintermitting series of friendly and neighborly offices;
+was necessarily admitted to much household confidence, and favored with
+substantial aid, which was certainly not given through any strong liking
+for his manners, conversation, or character. How did he recompense all
+this exertion and endurance oh his behalf? In after years, when living
+(we believe) at Edinburgh, and pressed by debt, he did for once exert
+himself to write, and what he wrote was an exposure of every thing about
+the Wordsworths which he knew merely by their kindness. He wrote papers,
+which were eagerly read, and, of course, duly paid for, in which
+Wordsworth's personal foibles were malignantly exhibited with ingenious
+aggravations. The infirmities of one member of the family, the personal
+blemish of another, and the human weaknesses of all, were displayed, and
+all for the purpose of deepening the dislike against Wordsworth himself,
+which the receiver of his money, the eater of his dinners, and the
+dreary provoker of his patience strove to excite. Moreover, he
+perpetrated an act of treachery scarcely paralleled, we hope, in the
+history of literature. In the confidence of their most familiar days,
+Wordsworth had communicated portions of his posthumous poem to his
+guest, who was perfectly well aware that the work was to rest in
+darkness and silence till after the poet's death. In these magazine
+articles DeQuincey, using for this atrocious purpose his fine gift of
+memory, published a passage, which he informed us was of far higher
+merit than any thing else we had to expect. And what was Wordsworth's
+conduct under this unequaled experience of bad faith and bad feeling?
+While so many anecdotes were going of the poet's fireside, the following
+ought to be added: An old friend was talking with him by that fireside,
+and mentioned DeQuincey's magazine articles. Wordsworth begged to be
+spared any account of them, saying that the man had long passed away
+from the family life and mind, and that he did not wish to ruffle
+himself in a useless way about a misbehavior which could not be
+remedied. The friend acquiesced, saying: "Well, I will tell you only one
+thing that he says, and then we will talk of other things. He says your
+wife is too good for you." The old poet's dim eyes lighted up instantly,
+and he started from his seat and flung himself against the mantel-piece,
+with his back to the fire, as he cried with loud enthusiasm: "And that's
+_true! There_ he is right!" And his disgust and contempt for the traitor
+were visibly moderated.
+
+During a long course of years DeQuincey went on dreaming always,
+sometimes scheming works of high value and great efficacy, which were
+never to exist; promising largely to booksellers and others, and failing
+through a weakness so deep-seated that it should have prevented his
+making any promises. When his three daughters were grown up, and his
+wife was dead, he lived in a pleasant cottage at Lasswade, near
+Edinburgh, well-known by name to those who have never seen its beauties
+as the scene of Scott's early married life and first great achievements
+in literature. There, while the family fortunes were expressly made
+contingent on his abstinence from his drug, DeQuincey did abstain, or
+observe moderation. His flow of conversation was then the delight of old
+acquaintance and admiring strangers, who came to hear the charmer and to
+receive the impression, which could never be lost, of the singular
+figure and countenance and the finely modulated voice, which were like
+nothing else in the world. It was a strange thing to look upon the
+fragile form and features, which might be those of a dying man, and to
+hear such utterances as his--now the strangest comments and
+insignificant incidents; now pregnant remarks on great subjects, and
+then malignant gossip, virulent and base, but delivered with an air and
+a voice of philosophical calmness and intellectual commentary such as
+caused the disgust of the listener to be largely qualified with
+amusement and surprise. One good thing was, that nobody's name and fame
+could be really injured by any thing DeQuincey could say. There was such
+a grotesque air about the mode of his evil speaking, and it was so
+gratuitous and excessive, that the hearer could not help regarding it as
+a singular sort of intellectual exercise, or an effort in the speaker to
+observe, for once, something outside of himself, rather than as any
+token of actual feeling towards the ostensible object.
+
+Let this strange commentator on individual character meet with more
+mercy and a wiser interpretation than he was himself capable of. He was
+not made like other men; and he did not live, think, or feel like them.
+A singular organization was singularly and fatally deranged in its
+action before it could show its best quality. Marvelous analytical
+faculty he had; but it all oozed out in barren words. Charming eloquence
+he had; but it degenerated into egotistical garrulity, rendered tempting
+by the gilding of his genius. It is questionable whether, if he had
+never touched opium or wine, his real achievements would have been
+substantial, for he had no conception of a veritable stand-point of
+philosophical investigation; but the actual effect of his intemperance
+was to aggravate to excess his introspective tendencies, and to remove
+him incessantly further from the needful discipline of true science. His
+conditions of body and mind were abnormal, and his study of the one
+thing he knew any thing about--the human mind--was radically imperfect.
+His powers, noble and charming as they might have been, were at once
+wasted and weakened through their own partial excess. His moral nature
+relaxed and sank, as must always be the case where sensibility is
+stimulated and action paralyzed; and the man of genius who, forty years
+before his death, administered a moral warning to all England, and
+commanded the sympathy and admiration of a nation, lived on, to achieve
+nothing but the delivery of some confidences of questionable value and
+beauty, and to command from us nothing more than a compassionate sorrow
+that an intellect so subtle and an eloquence so charming in its pathos,
+its humor, its insight, and its music, should have left the world in no
+way the better for such gifts, unless by the warning afforded in
+"Confessions" first, and then, by example, against the curse which
+neutralized their influence and corrupted its source.--HARRIET
+MARTINEAU.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+A VISION OF TIME.
+
+
+NEW-YEAR'S EVE.
+
+
+    O did you not see him that over the snow
+    Came on with a pace so cautious and slow?--
+
+    That measured his step to a pendulum-tick,
+    Arriving in town when the darkness was thick?
+
+    In the midst of a vision of mind and heart,
+    A drama above all human art,
+
+    I saw him last night, with locks so gray,
+    A long way off, as the light died away.
+
+    And I knew him at once, so often before
+    Had he silently, mournfully passed at my door.
+
+    He must be cold and weary, I said,
+    Coming so far, with that measured tread.
+
+    I will urge him to linger awhile with me
+    Till his withering chill and weariness flee.
+
+    A story--who knows?--he may deign to rehearse,
+    And when he is gone I will put it in verse.
+
+    I turned to prepare for the coming guest,
+    With curious, troublous thoughts oppressed.
+
+    The window I cheered with the taper's glow
+    Which glimmered afar o'er the spectral snow.
+
+    My anxious care the hearth-stone knew,
+    And the red flames leaped and beckoned anew.
+
+    But chiefly myself, with singular care,
+    Did I for the hoary presence prepare.
+
+    Yet with little success, as I paced the room,
+    Did I labor to banish a sense of gloom.
+
+    My thoughts were going and coming like bees,
+    With store from the year's wide-stretching leas;
+
+    Some laden with honey, some laden with gall,
+    And into my heart they dropped it all!
+
+    O miserable heart! at once overrun
+    With the honey and gall thou can'st not shun.
+
+    O wretched heart! in sadness I cried,
+    Where is thy trust in the Crucified?
+
+    And in wrestling prayer did I labor long
+    That the Mighty One would make me strong.
+
+    That prayer was more than a useless breath:
+    It brought to my soul God's saving health.
+
+    The hours went by on their drowsy flight,
+    And came the middle watch of the night;
+
+    In part unmanned in spite of my care,
+    I beheld my guest in the taper's glare,
+
+    A wall of darkness around him thick,
+    As onward he came to a pendulum-tick.
+
+    Then quickly I opened wide the door,
+    And bade him pass my threshold o'er,
+
+    And linger awhile away from the cold,
+    And repeat some story or ballad old,--
+
+    His weary limbs to strengthen with rest,
+    For his course to the ever-receding West.
+
+    Through the vacant door in wonder I glanced,
+    And stood--was it long?--as one entranced.
+
+    Silence so awful did fill the room,
+    That the tick of the clock was a cannon's boom.
+
+    And my heart it sank to its lowest retreat,
+    And in whelming awe did muffle its beat.
+
+    For now I beheld, as never before;
+    And heard to forget--ah, nevermore!
+
+    For with outstretched hand, with scythe and glass,
+    With naught of a pause did the traveler pass.
+
+    And with upturned face he the silence broke,
+    And thus, as he went, he measuredly spoke:
+
+    My journey is long, but my limbs are strong;
+    And I stay not for rest, for story, or song.
+
+    It is only a dirge, that ever I sing;
+    It is only of death, the tale that I bring;
+
+    Of death that is life, as it cometh to pass;
+    Of death that is death, alas! alas!
+
+    And these I chant, as I go on my way,
+    As I go on my way forever and aye.
+
+    Call not thyself wretched, though bitter and sweet
+    In thy cup at this hour intermingle and meet.
+
+    Some cloud with the sunshine must ever appear,
+    And darkness prevails till morning is near.
+
+    But who doth remember the gloom and the night,
+    When the sky is aglow with the beautiful light?
+
+    O alas! if thou drinkest the bitter alone,
+    Nor heaven nor earth may stifle thy moan!
+
+    Thy moan!--and the echo died away--
+    Thy moan! thy moan forever and aye!
+
+    His measured voice I heard no more;
+    But not till I stand on eternity's shore,
+
+    And the things of time be forgotten all,
+    Shall I cease that traveler's words to recall.
+
+    As onward he moved to a pendulum-tick,
+    The gloom and the darkness around him thick,
+
+    I fell on my knees and breathed a prayer;
+    And it rose, I ween, through the midnight air,
+
+    To a God who knoweth the wants and all
+    The evil and good of this earthly thrall;
+
+    To One who suffered as on this day,
+    And began our sins to purge away:
+
+    To Him who hath promised to heed our cry,
+    And a troubled heart to purify.
+
+    And I feel that the gall will ever grow less,
+    Till I see His face in righteousness.
+
+    And now my soul is filled with cheer
+    For the march of a bright and happy New Year.
+
+    As years roll on, whether sun doth shine
+    Or clouds overcast, I will never repine;
+
+    For I know, when the race of time is run,
+    I shall enter a realm of Eternal Sun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+JOHN BUNYAN
+
+(BORN 1628--DIED 1688.)
+
+
+FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT.
+
+
+John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in the English language,
+was born at Elstow, about a mile from Bedford, in the year 1628. He may
+be said to have been born a tinker. The tinkers then formed a hereditary
+caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were generally
+vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded with the gypsies,
+whom, in truth, they nearly resembled. Bunyan's father was more
+respectable than most of the tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was
+able to send his son to a village school, where reading and writing were
+taught.
+
+The years of John's boyhood were those during which the Puritan spirit
+was in the highest vigor all over England; and nowhere had that spirit
+more influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore,
+that a lad to whom nature had given a powerful imagination, and
+sensibility which amounted to a disease, should have been early haunted
+by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports were interrupted by
+fits of remorse and despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of
+fiends trying to fly away with him. As he grew older, his mental
+conflicts became still more violent. The strong language in which he
+described them has strangely misled all his biographers except Mr.
+Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice with pious writers to
+cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of divine grace to
+rescue the human soul from the lowest depths of wickedness. He is called
+in one book the most notorious of profligates; in another, the brand
+plucked from the burning. He is designated in Mr. Ivimey's "History of
+the Baptists" as the depraved Bunyan, the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr.
+Ryland, a man once of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into
+the following rhapsody: "No man of common sense and common integrity can
+deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, a worthless, contemptible
+infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a common profligate, a
+soul-despising, a soul-murdering, a soul-damning, thoughtless wretch as
+could exist on the face of the earth. Now, be astonished, O heavens, to
+eternity! and wonder, O earth and hell, while time endures! Behold this
+very man become a miracle of mercy, a mirror of wisdom, goodness,
+holiness, truth, and love." But whoever takes the trouble to examine the
+evidence, will find that the good men who wrote this had been deceived
+by a phraseology which, as they had been hearing it and using it all
+their lives, they ought to have understood better. There can not be a
+greater mistake than to infer, from the strong expressions in which a
+devout man bemoans his exceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse
+life than his neighbors. Many excellent persons, whose moral character
+from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to
+their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries,
+applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe
+as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. It is quite
+certain that Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most
+austerely Puritan circles, would have been considered as a young man of
+singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like
+many other penitents who, in general terms, acknowledged themselves to
+have been the worst of mankind, fired up and stood vigorously on his
+defense whenever any particular charge was brought against him by
+others. He declares, it is true, that he had let loose the reins on the
+neck of his lusts, that he had delighted in all transgressions against
+the divine law, and that he had been the ringleader of the youth of
+Elstow in all manner of vice. But, when those who wished him ill accused
+him of licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to attest his
+purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, earth, or hell could charge him
+with having ever made any improper advances to her. Not only had he been
+strictly faithful to his wife, but he had, even before marriage, been
+perfectly spotless. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from
+the railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad
+habit he contracted, that of using profane language; but he tells us
+that a single reproof cured him so effectually that he never offended
+again. The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom
+it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of
+reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great liking for
+some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the
+rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a
+great respect. The four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing,
+ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tip-cat, and reading
+the "History of Sir Bevis of Southampton." A rector of the school of
+Laud would have held such a young man up to the whole parish as a model.
+But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in a very
+different school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his
+tastes and his scruples.
+
+When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his life was
+interrupted by an event which gave a lasting color to his thoughts. He
+enlisted in the Parliamentary army, and served during the decisive
+campaign of 1645. All that we know of his military career is that, at
+the siege of Leicester, one of his comrades, who had taken his post, was
+killed by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered himself as
+having been saved from death by the special interference of Providence.
+It may be observed that his imagination was strongly impressed by the
+glimpse which he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to
+draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and fortresses, from
+guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under
+its own banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain
+Credence are evidently portraits, of which the originals were among
+those martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army.
+
+In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. His wife had some
+pious relations, and brought him as her only portion some pious books.
+And now his mind, excitable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by
+education, and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious
+virulence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in England, began to
+be fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon became a strict
+Pharisee. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His
+favorite amusements were, one after another, relinquished, though not
+without many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tip-cat he
+paused, and stood staring wildly upward with his stick in his hand. He
+had heard a voice asking him whether he would leave his sins and go to
+heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and he had seen an awful
+countenance frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of
+bell-ringing he renounced; but he still for a time ventured to go to the
+church-tower and look on while others pulled the ropes. But soon the
+thought struck him that, if he persisted in such wickedness, the steeple
+would fall on his head; and he fled in terror from the accursed place.
+To give up dancing on the village green was still harder; and some
+months elapsed before he had the fortitude to part with this darling
+sin. When this last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when tried by
+the maxims of that austere time, faultless. All Elstow talked of him as
+an eminently pious youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever.
+Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reformation, yet finding
+in religion no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenile amusements
+which he had relinquished, he began to apprehend that he lay under some
+special malediction; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies
+which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam.
+
+At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood
+would be saved, and tried to make out that he partook of that blood; but
+his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had
+no ambition to be regarded as a Jew.
+
+At another time, Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma: "If I have
+not faith, I am lost; if I have faith, I can work miracles." He was
+tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, "Be ye dry,"
+and to stake his eternal hopes on the event.
+
+Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and the
+neighboring villages was passed; that all who were to be saved in that
+part of England were already converted; and that he had begun to pray
+and strive some months too late.
+
+Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the right,
+and the Christians in the wrong. Then he was troubled by a maniacal
+impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the
+parish bull. As yet, however, he was only entering the Valley of the
+Shadow of Death. Soon the darkness grew thicker. Hideous forms floated
+before him. Sounds of cursing and wailing were in his ears. His way ran
+through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He
+began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin,
+and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the
+forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and
+especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the redemption.
+Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined,
+were repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him! sell him!" He
+struck at the hobgoblins; he pushed them from him; but still they were
+ever at his side. He cried out in answer to them, hour after hour,
+"Never, never! not for thousands of worlds--not for thousands!" At
+length, worn out by this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to
+escape him, "Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more
+fearful than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. He had
+forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he had sold his
+birthright, and there was no longer any place for repentance. "None," he
+afterward wrote, "knows the terrors of those days but myself." He has
+described his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos.
+He envied the brutes; he envied the very stones in the street, and the
+tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to withhold its light and warmth
+from him. His body, though cast in a sturdy mould, and though still in
+the highest vigor of youth, trembled whole days together with the fear
+of death and judgment. He fancied that this trembling was the sign set
+on the worst reprobates, the sign which God had put on Cain. The unhappy
+man's emotion destroyed his power of digestion. He had such pains that
+he expected to burst asunder like Judas, whom he regarded as his
+prototype.
+
+Neither the books which Bunyan read nor the advisers whom he consulted
+were likely to do much good in a case like his. His small library had
+received a most unseasonable addition--the account of the lamentable end
+of Francis Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piety, whom the
+sufferer consulted gave an opinion which might well have produced fatal
+consequences. "I am afraid," said Bunyan, "that I have committed the sin
+against the Holy Ghost." "Indeed," said the old fanatic, "I am afraid
+that you have."
+
+At length the clouds broke; the light became clearer and clearer, and
+the enthusiast, who had imagined that he was branded with the mark of
+the first murderer, and destined to the end of the arch-traitor, enjoyed
+peace and a cheerful confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed,
+however, before his nerves, which had been so perilously overstrained,
+recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society at Bedford,
+and was for the first time admitted to partake of the Eucharist, it was
+with difficulty that he could refrain from imprecating destruction on
+his brethren while the cup was passing from hand to hand. After he had
+been some time a member of the congregation he began to preach; and his
+sermons produced a powerful effect. He was, indeed, illiterate; but he
+spoke to illiterate men. The severe training through which he had passed
+had given him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of
+religious melancholy as he could never have gathered from books; and his
+vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him
+not only to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to
+extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars. Yet it was long
+before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter
+words of horrible impiety in the pulpit.
+
+Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in physical diseases.
+It should seem that Bunyan was finally relieved from the internal
+sufferings which had embittered his life by sharp persecution from
+without. He had been five years a preacher when the Restoration put it
+in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over the
+country to oppress the Dissenters; and, of all the Dissenters whose
+history is known to us, he was, perhaps, the most hardly treated. In
+November, 1660, he was flung into Bedford jail; and there he remained,
+with some intervals of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve
+years. His persecutors tried to extort from him a promise that he would
+abstain from preaching; but he was convinced that he was divinely set
+apart and commissioned to be a teacher of righteousness, and he was
+fully determined to obey God rather than man. He was brought before
+several tribunals, laughed at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in vain.
+He was facetiously told that he was quite right in thinking that he
+ought not to hide his gift; but that his real gift was skill in
+repairing old kettles. He was compared to Alexander the coppersmith. He
+was told that, if he would give up preaching, he should be instantly
+liberated. He was warned that, if he persisted in disobeying the law, he
+would be liable to banishment; and that if he were found in England
+after a certain time, his neck would be stretched. His answer was, "If
+you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow." Year after year
+he lay patiently in a dungeon, compared with which the worst prison now
+to be found in the island is a palace. His fortitude is the more
+extraordinary because his domestic feelings were unusually strong.
+Indeed, he was considered by his stern brethren as somewhat too fond and
+indulgent a parent. He had several small children, and among them a
+daughter who was blind, and whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. He
+could not, he said, bear even to let the wind blow on her; and now she
+must suffer cold and hunger, she must beg, she must be beaten. "Yet," he
+added, "I must, I must do it." While he lay in prison, he could do
+nothing in the way of his old trade for the support of his family. He
+determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned to make long
+tagged thread-laces; and many thousands of these articles were furnished
+by him to the hawkers. While his hands were thus busied, he had other
+employment for his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to
+his fellow-captives, and formed from among them a little flock, of which
+he was himself the pastor. He studied indefatigably the few books which
+he possessed. His two chief companions were the Bible and Fox's "Book of
+Martyrs." His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might have been
+called a living concordance; and on the margin of his copy of the "Book
+of Martyrs" are still legible the ill-spelled lines of doggerel in which
+he expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable
+enmity to the mystical Babylon.
+
+At length he began to write, and though it was some time before he
+discovered where his strength lay, his writings were not unsuccessful.
+They were coarse, indeed, but they showed a keen mother-wit, a great
+command of the homely mother-tongue, an intimate knowledge of the
+English Bible, and a vast and dearly bought spiritual experience. They,
+therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the syntax and
+the spelling, were well received by the humbler class of Dissenters.
+
+Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. He wrote sharply against
+the Quakers, whom he seems always to have held in utter abhorrence. It
+is, however, a remarkable fact that he adopted one of their peculiar
+fashions; his practice was to write, not November or December, but
+eleventh month and twelfth month.
+
+He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things,
+according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the
+spirit of prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have most of the
+spirit of prayer are all to be found in jail; and those who have most
+zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-house. The
+doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised, and defended
+against some Arminian clergymen who had signed them. The most
+acrimonious of all his works is his answer to Edward Fowler, afterward
+bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the taint of
+Pelagianism.
+
+Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the sect to which
+he belonged. He doubtless held with perfect sincerity the distinguishing
+tenet of that sect, but he did not consider that tenet as one of high
+importance, and willingly joined in communion with pious Presbyterians
+and Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pronounced him
+a false brother. A controversy arose which long survived the original
+combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with
+rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert
+Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical writer has
+ever surpassed.
+
+During the years which immediately followed the Restoration Bunyan's
+confinement seems to have been strict; but as the passions of 1660
+cooled, as the hatred with which the Puritans had been regarded while
+their reign was recent gave place to pity, he was less and less harshly
+treated. The distress of his family, and his own patience, courage, and
+piety, softened the hearts of his persecutors. Like his own Christian in
+the cage, he found protectors even among the crowd of Vanity Fair. The
+bishop of the diocese, Dr. Barlow, is said to have interceded for him.
+At length the prisoner was suffered to pass most of his time beyond the
+walls of the jail, on condition, as it should seem, that he remained
+within the town of Bedford.
+
+He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst acts of one of the
+worst governments that England has ever seen. In 1671 the Cabal was in
+power. Charles II had concluded the treaty by which he bound himself to
+set up the Roman Catholic religion in England. The first step which he
+took toward that end was to annul, by an unconstitutional exercise of
+his prerogative, all the penal statutes against the Roman Catholics; and
+in order to disguise his real design, he annulled at the same time the
+penal statutes against Protestant Non-conformists. Bunyan was
+consequently set at large. In the first warmth of his gratitude, he
+published a tract in which he compared Charles to that humane and
+generous Persian king who, though not himself blessed with the light of
+the true religion, favored the chosen people, and permitted them, after
+years of captivity, to rebuild their beloved temple. To candid men, who
+consider how much Bunyan had suffered, and how little he could guess the
+secret designs of the court, the unsuspicious thankfulness with which he
+accepted the precious boon of freedom will not appear to require any
+apology.
+
+Before he left his prison he had begun the book which has made his name
+immortal. The history of that book is remarkable. The author was, as he
+tells us, writing a treatise, in which he had occasion to speak of the
+stages of the Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many
+others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick wit discovered
+innumerable points of similarity which had escaped his predecessors.
+Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into
+words: quagmires and pits, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft
+vales, sunny pastures; a gloomy castle, of which the courtyard was
+strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered prisoners; a town all
+bustle and splendor, like London on the Lord Mayor's Day; and the narrow
+path, straight as a rule could make it, running on uphill and down hill,
+through city and through wilderness, to the Black River and the Shining
+Gate. He had found out--as most people would have said, by accident; as
+he would doubtless have said, by the guidance of Providence--where his
+powers lay. He had no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a
+masterpiece. He could not guess what place his allegory would occupy in
+English literature, for of English literature he knew nothing. Those who
+suppose him to have studied the "Fairy Queen," might easily be confuted,
+if this were the proper place for a detailed examination of the passages
+in which the two allegories have been thought to resemble each other.
+The only work of fiction, in all probability, with which he could
+compare his pilgrim, was his old favorite, the legend of Sir Bevis of
+Southampton. He would have thought it a sin to borrow any time from the
+serious business of his life, from his expositions, his controversies,
+and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with what he
+considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, at spare
+moments that he returned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable
+Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground. He had no assistance. Nobody but
+himself saw a line till the whole was complete. He then consulted his
+pious friends. Some were pleased. Others were much scandalized. It was a
+vain story, a mere romance about giants, and lions, and goblins, and
+warriors, sometimes fighting with monsters, and sometimes regaled by
+fair ladies in stately palaces. The loose, atheistical wits at Will's
+might write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the court; but
+did it become a minister of the Gospel to copy the evil fashions of the
+world? There had been a time when the cant of such fools would have made
+Bunyan miserable. But that time was passed, and his mind was now in a
+firm and healthy state. He saw that in employing fiction to make truth
+clear and goodness attractive, he was only following the example which
+every Christian ought to propose to himself; and he determined to print.
+
+The "Pilgrim's Progress" stole silently into the world. Not a single
+copy of the first edition is known to be in existence. The year of
+publication has not been ascertained. It is probable that during some
+months, the little volume circulated only among poor and obscure
+sectaries. But soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified the
+imagination of the reader with all the action and scenery of a fairy
+tale, which exercised his ingenuity by setting him to discover a
+multitude of curious analogies, which interested his feelings for human
+beings, frail like himself, and struggling with temptations from within
+and from without, which every moment drew a smile from him by some
+stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his
+mind a sentiment of reverence for God and of sympathy for man, began to
+produce its effect. In Puritanical circles, from which plays and novels
+were strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of genius,
+though it were superior to the "Iliad," to "Don Quixote," or to
+"Othello," can ever produce on a mind accustomed to indulge in literary
+luxury. In 1668 came forth a second edition, with additions; and then
+the demand became immense. In the four following years the book was
+reprinted six times. The eighth edition, which contains the last
+improvements made by the author, was published in 1682, the ninth in
+1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the engraver had early been called
+in, and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delight on
+execrable copperplates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword
+into Apollyon or writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland and
+in some of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his
+native country. Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, that in
+New England his Dream was the daily subject of the conversation of
+thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding.
+He had numerous admirers in Holland and among the Huguenots of France.
+With the pleasure, however, he experienced some of the pains of
+eminence. Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of trash under his name,
+and envious scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor
+ignorant tinker should really be the author of the book which was called
+his.
+
+He took the best way to confound both those who counterfeited him and
+those slandered him. He continued to work the gold-field which he had
+discovered, and to draw from it new treasures; not, indeed, with quite
+such ease and in quite such abundance as when the precious soil was
+still virgin, but yet with success which left all competition far
+behind. In 1684 appeared the second part of the "Pilgrim's Progress." It
+was soon followed by the "Holy War," which, if the "Pilgrim's Progress"
+did not exist, would be the best allegory that ever was written.
+
+Bunyan's place in society was now very different from what it had been.
+There had been a time when many Dissenting ministers, who could talk
+Latin and read Greek, had affected to treat him with scorn. But his fame
+and influence now far exceeded theirs. He had so great an authority
+among the Baptists that he was popularly called Bishop Bunyan. His
+episcopal visitations were annual. From Bedford he rode every year to
+London, and preached there to large and attentive congregations. From
+London he went his circuit through the country, animating the zeal of
+his brethren, collecting and distributing alms, and making up quarrels.
+The magistrates seem in general to have given him little trouble. But
+there is reason to believe that, in the year 1685, he was in some danger
+of again occupying his old quarters in Bedford jail. In that year, the
+rash and wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the government a pretext for
+prosecuting the Non-conformists; and scarcely one eminent divine of the
+Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested.
+Baxter was in prison; Howe was driven into exile; Henry was arrested.
+Two eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan had been engaged in controversy,
+were in great peril and distress. Danvers was in danger of being hanged,
+and Kiffin's grandsons were actually hanged. The tradition is, that
+during those evil days, Bunyan was forced to disguise himself as a
+wagoner, and that he preached to his congregation at Bedford in a
+smock-frock, with a cart-whip in his hand. But soon a great change took
+place. James the Second was at open war with the Church, and found it
+necessary to court the Dissenters. Some of the creatures of the
+government tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. They probably knew that he
+had written in praise of the indulgence of 1672, and therefore hoped
+that he might be equally pleased with the indulgence of 1687. But
+fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had
+made him wiser. Nor were the cases exactly parallel. Charles was a
+professed Protestant; James was a professed papist. The object of
+Charles's indulgence was disguised; the object of James's indulgence was
+patent. Bunyan was not deceived. He exhorted his hearers to prepare
+themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger which menaced their
+civil and religious liberties, and refused even to speak to the courtier
+who came down to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and who, as was
+supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipal dignity to the bishop
+of the Baptists.
+
+Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the Summer of 1688 he
+undertook to plead the cause of a son with an angry father, and at
+length prevailed on the old man not to disinherit the young one. This
+good work cost the benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride
+through heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on Snow Hill, was
+seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. He was buried in
+Bunhill Fields; and the spot where he lies is still regarded by the
+Non-conformists with a feeling which seems scarcely in harmony with the
+stern spirit of their theology. Many Puritans, to whom the respect paid
+by Roman Catholics to the relics and tombs of saints seemed childish or
+sinful, are said to have begged with their dying breath that their
+coffins might be placed as near as possible to the coffin of the author
+of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
+
+The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the century which
+followed his death, was indeed great, but was almost entirely confined
+to religious families of the middle and lower classes. Very seldom was
+he, during that time, mentioned with respect by any writer of great
+literary eminence. Young coupled his prose with the poetry of the
+wretched D'Urfey. In the "Spiritual Quixote," the adventures of
+Christian are ranked with those of Jack the Giant-killer and John
+Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise the great allegorist, but did not
+venture to name him. It is a significant circumstance that, till a
+recent period, all the numerous editions of the "Pilgrim's Progress"
+were evidently meant for the cottage and the servants' hall. The paper,
+the printing, the plates were all of the meanest description. In
+general, when the educated minority and the common people differ about
+the merit of a book, the opinion of the educated minority finally
+prevails. The "Pilgrim's Progress" is perhaps the only book about which,
+after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority has come over
+to the opinion of the common people.--MACAULAY.
+
+    O king without a crown,
+    O priest above the line
+    Whose course is through the ages down,
+    What wondrous eyes were thine!
+
+    As in the sea of glass,
+    So pictured in those eyes
+    Were all the things that come to pass
+    Beneath, above the skies;
+
+    Between two worlds the way,
+    The sun, the cloud, the snares,
+    The pilgrim's progress day by day,
+    The gladness God prepares.
+
+    Enough, enough this vision,
+    By thee built into story,
+    To crown thy life by Heaven's decision,
+    With monumental glory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+MADAME ROLAND
+
+(BORN 1754--DIED 1793.)
+
+
+THE MOST REMARKABLE WOMAN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--THE IPHIGENIA OF
+FRANCE.
+
+
+Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, for this was her maiden name, was born in Paris in
+the year 1754. Her father was an engraver. The daughter does not
+delineate him in her memoirs with such completeness as she has sketched
+her mother, but we can infer from the fleeting glimpses which she gives
+of him that he was a man of very considerable intellectual and physical
+force, but also of most irregular tendencies, which in his later years
+debased him to serious immoralities. He was a superior workman,
+discontented with his lot. He sought to better it by speculative
+operations outside his vocation. As his daughter expresses it, "he went
+in pursuit of riches, and met with ruin on his way." She also remarks of
+him, "that he could not be said to be a good man, but he had a great
+deal of what is called honor."
+
+Her mother was evidently an angelic woman. Many passages in the memoirs
+indicate that she possessed uncommon intellectual endowments; but so
+exceeding were her virtues that, when her face rose to the daughter's
+view in the night of after years, and gazed compassionately on her
+through prison bars, the daughter, writing in the shadow of death,
+presents her in the light only of purest, noblest womanhood.
+
+Marie was so precocious that she could not remember when she was unable
+to read. The first book she remembered reading was the Old and New
+Testament. Her early religious teaching was most sufficient, and was
+submitted to by a mind which, although practical and realistic, was
+always devout and somewhat affected by mystical, vague, and enthusiastic
+tendencies. She was a prodigy in the catechism, and was an agent of
+terror to the excellent priest who taught her and the other children,
+for she frequently confounded him in open class by questions which have
+vexed persons of maturest years. She was taught the harp, the piano, the
+guitar, and the violin. She was proficient in dancing. Such was her
+astonishing aptitude in all studies that she says, "I had not a single
+master who did not appear as much flattered by teaching me as I was
+grateful for being taught; nor one who, after attending me for a year or
+two, was not the first to say that his instructions were no longer
+necessary." It was her habit in childhood, after she had read any book,
+to lay it aside and reconstruct its contents by the processes of a most
+powerful memory, and while doing so, to meditate upon, analyze, and
+debate with it in the severest spirit of criticism and controversy.
+
+When nine years of age she was reading Appian, the romances of Scarron,
+which disgusted and did not taint her; the memoirs of De Paites and of
+Madame de Montpensier. She mastered a treatise on heraldry so thoroughly
+that she corrected her father one day when she saw him engraving a seal
+inconformably to some minor rule of that art. She essayed a book on
+contracts, but it did not entice her to a complete perusal.
+
+She took great delight in Plutarch, which she often carried to church
+instead of her missal. She read the "Candide" of Voltaire, Fenelon on
+the education of girls, and Locke on that of children. During all this
+time her mind was troubled by those unanswerable and saddening
+reflections upon those recondite theological subjects which often
+torture such children, and which grown up people are too often so
+forgetful of their own childhood that they fail to sympathize with them.
+She regarded with disapproval the transformation of the Devil into a
+serpent, and thought it cruel in God to permit it. Referring to the time
+when her first communion drew near, she writes: "I felt a sacred terror
+take possession of my soul."
+
+She became profoundly humble and inexpressibly timid. As she grew older
+she learned that she was to live in a world of errors, sorrows, and
+sins, and the mere knowledge of their existence, by some peculiar
+process of her wonderful mind, seemed to be the signal for their
+combined attack upon her soul. She watched her thoughts until forbidden
+topics were generated in her mind by the very act of watchfulness. She
+then regarded herself as an accomplice with every profane image which
+invaded her innocent imagination. She subjected herself to physical
+mortifications and austerities of a whimsical yet severe character. She
+aspired to the fate of holy women of old, who had suffered martyrdom,
+and she finally resolved to enter a convent. She was then eleven years
+old. She was placed in such an institution ostensibly for further
+education, but with the intention on her part there to always remain. It
+was like entering the vestibule of heaven. She records of her first
+night there: "I lifted up my eyes to the heavens; they were unclouded
+and serene; I imagined that I felt the presence of the Deity smiling on
+my sacrifice, and already offering me a reward in the consolatory peace
+of a celestial abode."
+
+She was always an acute observer and a caustic commentator, and she soon
+discovered that the cloister is not necessarily a celestial abode, and
+that its inmates do not inevitably enjoy consolatory peace. She found
+feminine spite there of the same texture with that wreaked by worldly
+women upon each other, and she notes the cruel taunts which good, old,
+ugly, and learned sister Sophia received from some stupid nuns, who, she
+says, "were fond of exposing her defects because they did not possess
+her talents." But her devotional fervor did not abate. She fainted under
+the feeling of awe in the act of her first communion, for she literally
+believed that her lips touched the very substance of her God, and
+thereafter she was long brooded over by that perfect peace which passeth
+understanding.
+
+She remained there a year, when her destiny was changed by some domestic
+events which made her services necessary to her parents, and she
+returned home. Her resolution was unchanged, and she read and meditated
+deeply upon the Philotee of Saint Francis de Sales, upon the manual of
+Saint Augustine, and upon the polemical writings of Bossuet. But by this
+time the leaven of dissent began to work in that powerful intellect, for
+she remarks upon these works, that "favorable as they are to the cause
+which they defended, they sometimes let me into the secret of objections
+which might be made to it, and set me to scrutinizing the articles of my
+faith;" and she states that "this was the first step toward a skepticism
+at which I was destined to arrive after having been successively
+Jansenist, Cartesian, Stoic, and Deist." By this skepticism she
+doubtless meant merely skepticism as to creeds, for in her memoirs,
+written in daily expectation of death, and in most intense
+self-communion, she writes upon the great subjects of immortality,
+Deity, and providence in language of astonishing eloquence. "Can," she
+writes, "can the sublime idea of a Divine Creator, whose providence
+watches over the world, the immateriality of the soul and its
+immortality, that consolatory hope of persecuted virtue, be nothing more
+than amiable and splendid chimeras? But in how much obscurity are these
+difficult problems involved? What accumulated objections arise when we
+wish to examine them with mathematical rigor? No! it is not given to the
+human mind to behold these truths in the full day of perfect evidence;
+but why should the man of sensibility repine at not being able to
+demonstrate what he feels to be true? In the silence of the closet and
+the dryness of discussion, I can agree with the atheist or the
+materialist as to the insolubility of certain questions; but in the
+contemplation of nature my soul soars aloft to the, vivifying principle
+which animates it, to the intellect which pervades it, and to the
+goodness which makes it so glorious. Now, when immense walls separate me
+from all I love, when all the evils of society have fallen upon us
+together, as if to punish us for having desired its greatest blessings,
+I see beyond the limits of life the reward of our sacrifices. How, in
+what manner, I can not say. I only feel that so it ought to be." She
+read incongruously. Condillac, Voltaire, the Lives of the Fathers,
+Descartes, Saint Jerome, Don Quixote, Pascal, Montesquieu, Burlamaqui,
+and the French dramatists, were read, annotated, and commented on. She
+gives an appalling list of obsolete devotional books, which she borrowed
+of a pious abbe, and returned with marginal notes which shocked him. She
+read the Dictionnaire Philosophique, Diderot, D'Alembert, Raynal,
+Holbach, and took delight in the Epistles of Saint Paul. She was, while
+studying Malebranche and Descartes, so convinced, that she considered
+her kitten, when it mewed, merely a piece of mechanism in the exercise
+of its functions. The chilling negations and arid skepticism of
+Helvetius shocked her, and she writes: "I felt myself possessed of a
+generosity of soul of which he denied the existence." She concluded at
+this time that a republic is the true form of government, and that every
+other form is in derogation of man's natural rights.
+
+She mastered Clairaut's geometry by copying the book, plates, and all,
+from beginning to end. She read Pufendorf's folio on the law of nature.
+She learned English, and read the life of Cromwell. She read the great
+French preachers, Bossuet, Flechier, Bourdaloue, and Massillon. She was
+vexed by the terrorism of their arguments. She thought that they
+overrated the importance of the devil. She did not believe him to be as
+powerful as they feared. She thought that they might teach oftener what
+seemed to her the potent element of Christian faith--love--and leave the
+devil out sometimes, and so she herself wrote a sermon on brotherly
+love, with which that personage had nothing to do, and in which his name
+was not even mentioned. She also read the Protestant preachers--Blair
+especially. She entangled herself in the acute skepticism of Bayle.
+
+She seemed possessed of one of those assimilative intellects which
+extract by glances the substance from a book as the flash of lightning
+demagnetizes the lodestone. Her acquisitions were consequently immense.
+Though very yielding in the grasp of the mighty thinkers whom she
+encountered, yet she read them in the spirit of criticism, controversy,
+and dissent.
+
+She was, nevertheless, the farthest in the world from becoming a
+literary dragon. All this did not impair the freshness of girlhood. She
+was meek and pure. Passages in her autobiography, which I can not
+repeat, yet which ought to be read, establish this. She was throughout
+entirely domestic. She did the marketing, cooked the food; nursed her
+mother; kept a sharp eye on the apprentices; nearly fell in love, for
+when the young painter, Taborel, who was twenty, and blushed like a
+girl, visited her father's workshop, she always had a crayon or
+something else to seek there, but at the sight of him ran away
+trembling, without saying a word.
+
+It was not difficult for her to be both scholar and housewife. Writing
+in after years, of domestic cares, she says: "I never could comprehend
+how the attention of a woman who possesses method and activity can be
+engrossed by them.... Nothing is wanting but a proper distribution of
+employments, and a small share of vigilance.... People who know how to
+employ themselves always find leisure moments, while those who do
+nothing are in want of time for any thing.... I think that a wife should
+keep the linen and clothes in order, or cause them to be so kept; nurse
+her children; give directions concerning the cookery, or superintend it
+herself, but without saying a word about it, and with such command of
+her temper, and such management of her time, as may leave her the means
+of talking of other matters, and of pleasing no less by her good humor
+than by the graces natural to her sex.... It is nearly the same in the
+government of states as of families. Those famous housewives who are
+always expatiating on their labors are sure either to leave much in
+arrears, or to render themselves tiresome to every one around them; and,
+in like manner, those men in power so talkative and so full of business,
+only make a mighty bustle about the difficulties they are in because too
+awkward or ignorant to remove them."
+
+An acquaintance which one of her uncles, who was an ecclesiastic, had
+with an upper servant of the royal household, enabled her to spend some
+days at the palace of Versailles. She was lodged with the servants, and
+enjoyed the servant's privilege of seeing every thing and sparing
+nothing. Royalty was never put in the focus of eyes so critical. Her
+comments upon this visit are very brief. She expresses her detestation
+of what she saw, saying, "It gives me the feeling of injustice, and
+obliges me every moment to contemplate absurdity."
+
+The studies and experiences which have been described bring us to her
+fifteenth year. She was then a beautiful woman. In her memoirs she
+declines to state how she looked when a child, saying that she knows a
+better time for such a sketch. In describing herself at fifteen, she
+says: "I was five feet four inches tall; my leg was shapely; my hips
+high and prominent; my chest broad and nobly decorated; my shoulders
+flat; ... my face had nothing striking in it except a great deal of
+color, and much softness and expression; my mouth is a little too
+wide--you may see prettier every day--but you will see none with a smile
+more tender and engaging; my eyes are not very large; the color of the
+iris is hazel; my hair is dark brown; my nose gave me some uneasiness; I
+thought it a little too flat at the end.... It is only since my beauty
+has faded that I have known what it has been in its bloom. I was then
+unconscious of its value, which was probably augmented by my ignorance."
+
+That she understated her personal charms, the concurrent admiration of
+contemporary men and women fully attests. Her physical beauty was
+marvelous, and when great men were subjected to its influence, to the
+imperial functions of her intellect, and to the persuasions of an
+organization exceedingly spiritual and magnetic, it is no wonder that
+her influence, domestic woman, housewife, as she always was, became so
+effectual over them.
+
+Let me here warn my hearers not to forestall this woman in their
+judgments. She was not a manlike female. No better wife ever guided her
+husband anonymously by her intuitions, or assisted him by her learning.
+In the farm house and in the palace she was as wifely and retiring as
+any of the excellent women who have been the wives of American
+statesmen. Every one knew her abilities and her stupendous acquirements,
+and she felt them herself, but, notwithstanding, she never would consent
+to write a line for publication and avow it as her own, and never did,
+until that time when her husband was an outlaw, when her child was torn
+from her, when she herself stood in the shadow of the guillotine, and
+writhed under the foulest written and spoken calumnies that can torture
+outraged womanhood into eloquence. She then wrote, in twenty-six days,
+her immortal Appeal to Posterity, and those stirring letters and papers
+incident to her defense, from which some extracts have been here
+presented. She was mistress of a faultless style. Her command over the
+resources of her language was despotic. She could give to French prose
+an Italian rhythmus. She had wit and imagination--a reasoning
+imagination. She was erudite. Probably no woman ever lived better
+entitled to a high position in literature. But she never claimed it. She
+holds it now only as a collateral result of her defense in the struggle
+in which her life was the stake, and in which she lost. She says:
+"Never, however, did I feel the smallest temptation to become an author.
+I perceived at a very early period that a woman who acquires this title
+loses far more than she gains. She forfeits the affections of the male
+sex, and provokes the criticisms of her own. If her works be bad, she is
+ridiculed, and not without reason; if good, her right to them is
+disputed; or if envy be forced to acknowledge the best part to be her
+own, her character, her morals, her conduct, and her talents are
+scrutinized in such a manner that the reputation of her genius is fully
+counterbalanced by the publicity given to her defects. Besides, my
+happiness was my chief concern, and I never saw the public intermeddle
+with that of any one without marring it.... During twelve years of my
+life I shared in my husband's labors as I participated in his repasts,
+because one was as natural to me as the other. If any part of his works
+happened to be quoted in which particular graces of style were
+discovered, or if a flattering reception was given to any of the
+academic trifles, which he took a pleasure in transmitting to the
+learned societies, of which he was a member, I partook of his
+satisfaction without reminding him that it was my own composition.... If
+during his administration an occasion occurred for the expression of
+great and striking truths, I poured forth my whole soul upon the paper,
+and it was but natural that its effusions should be preferable to the
+laborious teemings of a secretary's brain. I loved my country. I was an
+enthusiast in the cause of liberty. I was unacquainted with any interest
+or any passions that could enter into competition with that enthusiasm;
+my language, consequently, could not but be pure and pathetic, as it was
+that of the heart and of truth.... Why should not a woman act as
+secretary to her husband without depriving him of any portion of his
+merit? It is well known that ministers can not do every thing
+themselves; and, surely, if the wives of those of the old governments,
+or even of the new, had been capable of making draughts of letters, of
+official dispatches, or of proclamations, their time would have been
+better employed than in intriguing first for one paramour and then for
+another." "An old coxcomb, enamored of himself, and vain of displaying
+the slender stock of science he has been so long in acquiring, might be
+in the habit of seeing me ten years together without suspecting that I
+could do more than cast up a bill or cut out a shirt."
+
+Suitors, she writes, came numerously from her fifteenth year. She
+marches them off _en masse_ in her memoirs. As is the custom in France,
+the first overture was made to her father, and usually by letter. Her
+music teacher was her first devotee. He was followed by her dancing
+master, who, as a propitiatory preparation had a wen cut out of his
+cheek; then came a wealthy butcher; then a man of rank; then a dissolute
+physician, from marrying whom she narrowly escaped; then a jeweler, and
+many others. The merits of these gentlemen--particularly those of the
+energetic butcher---were warmly commended by their female friends, who,
+in France, are brokers in this business on a very extensive scale. It is
+a unique proof of her ascendancy over every person near her that the
+letters which her father received, requesting his permission to address
+her, were submitted by him to her to draft the answer he was to send. So
+she placed herself _loco parentis_, and wrote the most paternal letters
+of refusal; all of which her father dutifully copied and sent, with many
+a pang when she let riches and rank pass by her. The suitors were
+dismissed, one and all, and she resumed her books and studies.
+
+Her mother died in 1775. She became the mistress of the house. Her
+father formed disreputable connections. Late in that year her future
+husband, Roland de la Platiere, presented himself, with a letter from a
+friend of her girlhood. He was forty years old; he was a student; his
+form was awkward and his manners were stiff; his morals were
+irreproachable, his disposition was exacting, but his ability was great.
+He was capable of instructing even her on many subjects, and they became
+well acquainted by the elective sympathy of scholarship. She became the
+critic and depositary of his manuscripts. Finally, one day, after asking
+leave, in her father's presence the worthy man actually kissed her, on
+his departure for Italy. Her father, sinking lower and lower, squandered
+her little fortune of about three thousand dollars, wasted his own
+business, and then treated her with brutality. Her only amusement at
+this time was playing the violin, accompanied by an old priest who
+tortured a bass viol, while her uncle made a flute complain.
+
+Finally, after an acquaintance of five years, Roland, by letter to her
+father, proposed marriage. The purity of Roland's life was esteemed by
+Phlipon such a reproach to his own dissoluteness that he revenged
+himself by an insulting refusal. He then made his daughter's life at
+home so insupportable that she took lodgings in a convent. She was
+visited there by Roland, and they were finally married, without again
+consulting her father. During the year next succeeding their marriage
+they remained at Paris. From Paris they went to Amiens, and lived there
+four years, where her daughter was born. She assisted her husband in the
+preparation of several statistical and scientific articles for the
+Encyclopedic. She made a _hortus siccus_ of the plants of Picardy.
+
+In 1784 they removed to the family estate of Roland at Villefranche,
+near Lyons. She had, in the course of her studies, acquired considerable
+knowledge of medicine. There was no physician in that little community,
+and she became the village doctor. Some of her experiences were quite
+whimsical. A country-woman came several leagues, and offered her a horse
+if she would save the life of her husband, whom a physician had given up
+to die. She visited the sick man, and he recovered, but she had great
+difficulty in resisting the importunities of his wife that she should
+take the horse.
+
+In 1784 they went to England, and in 1787 they made the tour of
+Switzerland. Roland was elected member of the constitutional assembly
+from Lyons, and they went to Paris.
+
+I am compelled now to pass from the uneventful first ten years of her
+married life with the single remark that, through them all, she was the
+devoted wife and mother, the kind neighbor, and the most assiduous
+student. But her mind bore, as on a mirror, prophetic, shadowy, and
+pictured glimpses of those awful events which were marching out of
+futurity toward France. Her letters written during this period show that
+she gazed upon them with a prescient eye, and heard with keenest ear the
+alarum of the legions which were gathering for attack. The young men of
+Lyons, where she and her husband spent the Winters, gathered in her
+parlors, and heard from the lips of this impassioned seeress of liberty
+words which, in such formative periods of a nation's life, hasten events
+with a power that seems like absolute physical force.
+
+Her husband was chosen a member of the national assembly, and she went
+with him again to Paris in 1791.
+
+Here ends the peaceful period of her life. Here close upon her forever
+the doors of home; and here open to her the doors of history, which too
+often admits its guests only to immolate them in splendid chambers, as
+it immolated her. From this time we miss the pure womanliness of her
+character, in which she is so lovely, and see her imperial beauty and
+her regal intellect in all their autocratic power, until that time when
+her husband, home, child, power, and hope were all forever gone, and her
+womanhood again shone out, like a mellow and beauteous sunset, when
+life's day drew near its close.
+
+Nothing had become more certain than that the monarchy would undergo
+radical constitutional changes. Of this every one was conscious except
+the king and the nobility. They were struck with that blindness which
+foreruns ruin. They constituted one party, and this party was the common
+object of attack by two political and revolutionary divisions, the
+Girondists and the Jacobins. The Gironde wished reform, a constitution,
+a monarchy, but one limited and constitutional, equality in taxes. They
+did not wish to destroy utterly, but they were willing to dislocate and
+then readjust, the machinery of state. The Jacobins at first said much,
+but proposed little. They aspired to the abolition of the throne and the
+establishment of a republic; they wished to overthrow the altar; they
+promised, vaguely, to wreak upon the rich and titled full revenge for
+the wrongs of the poor and lowly. Every political and social dream which
+had found expression for twenty years, every skeptical attack upon
+things ancient and holy, found in this body of men a party and an
+exponent. Up to a certain point both of these parties necessarily made
+common war upon the old order of things. But, beyond that point, it was
+equally certain that they would attack each other. The Girondists would
+wish to stop, and the Jacobins would wish to go on.
+
+During the session of this assembly the influence of Madame Roland on
+men of all modes of thought became most marked. Her parlors were the
+rendezvous of eminent men, and men destined to become eminent. It is
+impossible to discover, from the carping records of that time, that she
+asserted her powers by an unwomanly effort. Men felt in her presence
+that they were before a great intellectual being--a creative and
+inspiring mind--and it shone upon them without effort, like the sun.
+Among these visitors was Maximilien Robespierre, who afterwards took her
+life. He was then obscure, despised, and had been coughed down when he
+rose to speak. She discerned his talents, and encouraged him. He said
+little, but was always near her, listening to all she said; and in his
+after days of power, he reproduced, in many a speech, what he had heard
+this wondrous woman say. In this time of his unpopularity she
+unquestionably saved him from the guillotine by her own personal and
+persistent intercession with men in power.
+
+By the time that the session of this assembly drew near its close the
+ground-swell began to be felt of that tempest of popular wrath which
+eventually swept over France, and which the Jacobins rode and directed
+until it dashed even them upon the rocks. Squalor came forth and
+consorted with cleanliness; vice crept from its dens and sat down by the
+side of purity in high places; atheism took its stand at the altar, and
+ministered with the priest.
+
+This assembly adjourned, and the Rolands returned, for a short time, to
+Platiere. By this time it was evident that the monarchy could not stand
+against the attacks of both its enemies; the king was compelled to
+yield; he threw himself into the arms of the Girondists, as his least
+obnoxious foes. He formed a new cabinet, and to Roland was given the
+ministry of the interior. It was a very great office. Its incumbent had
+administrative charge of all the internal affairs of France. The
+engraver's daughter was now the mistress of a palace. From the lowly
+room where she had read Plutarch until her mind was made grand with
+ideas of patriotic glory, until she loved her country as once she loved
+her God, she had gone by no base degrees to an eminence where her
+beloved France, with all its hopes and woes and needs and resources, lay
+like a map beneath her--a map for her and hers to change.
+
+By this time the titled refugees had brought the Prussian armies to the
+frontier; a majority of the clergy had identified themselves with the
+reaction, were breaking down the revolution among the people, and were
+producing a reversionary tendency to absolutism. The king was
+vacillating and timid, but the queen had all the spirit and courage of
+her mother, Maria Theresa. It is very evident from Madame Roland's
+memoirs and letters, that these two women felt that they were in actual
+collision. It is a strange contrast; the sceptered wife, looking from
+her high places with longing and regret over centuries of hereditary
+succession, divine right and unquestioned prerogative, calling on her
+house of Hapsburg for aid, appealing to the kings of the earth for
+assistance in moving back the irreversible march of destiny:--from
+another palace the daughter of the people looking not back, but forward,
+speaking of kings and monarchies as gone, or soon to go, into tables of
+chronology, listening to what the ancient centuries speak from Grecian
+and Roman tombs, summoning old philosophies to attest the inalienable
+rights of man, looking beyond the mobs of kings and lords to the great
+nation-forming people, upon which these float and pass away like the
+shadows of purple Summer clouds; and stranger still, the ending of the
+contrast in the identification of these typical women in their death,
+both going to the same scaffold, discrowned of all their hopes. Of all
+the lessons which life has taught to ambition, none are more touching
+than when it points to the figures of these women as they are hurried by
+the procession in which they moved to a common fate.
+
+The ministry insisted that the king should proclaim war against those
+who were threatening invasion, and that he should proceed stringently
+against the unpatriotic clergy. He refused to take either course against
+his ancient friends. It was at this time that Madame Roland wrote to the
+king in advocacy of those measures that celebrated letter which her
+husband signed, and to which all of the ministers assented. It is a most
+statesmanlike appeal for the nation. It is predictive of all the woes
+which followed. No Hebrew prophet ever spoke bolder to his king. She
+writes: "I know that the words of truth are seldom welcome at the foot
+of thrones; I know that it is the withholding truth from the councils of
+kings that renders revolution necessary."
+
+The king, instead of adopting the policy recommended, dismissed his
+ministers. The letter was then made public through the newspapers. Few
+state papers have ever produced such an effect. It became a popular
+argument, and the people demanded the restoration of the ministry for
+the reasons which it contained, and for expressing which the ministry
+had been dismissed.
+
+While the Girondists were supporting the ministry of their choice, they,
+with the king, were the object of furious attacks by the Jacobins. When
+the ministry was dismissed the Gironde renewed its attacks upon the
+monarchy, emulated the Jacobins in the severity of its assaults, and
+began to conspire for a federative republic, similar to the United
+States, which to Madame Roland was the ideal of a free government.
+
+Madame Roland went from the palace to hired lodgings, and in the
+temporary fusion which followed of the revolutionists of all parties,
+the most eminent leaders gathered around her again. Robespierre came,
+but said little, for he was waiting his hour. Danton laid his lion mane
+in her lap, all his savagery for the moment tamed. Vergniaud, Buzot, and
+all the chiefs of the Gironde, gathered around this oracle of liberty.
+Anarchy supervened. Paris and all France were filled with riotings and
+murder. The king finally declared war, but battles went against France.
+Riot and murder increased. A mob of twenty thousand invaded the
+Tuileries then occupied by the royal family. It was divided into three
+divisions. The first was composed of armed and disciplined men, led by
+Santerre. The male ruffians of Paris, blood-thirsty and atrocious beyond
+any thing that civilization has ever produced, formed the second
+division. The third, most terrible of all, was composed of the lost
+women of Paris, led by Theroigne de Mericourt, clad in a blood-red
+riding dress, and armed with sword and pistol. This notorious woman had
+acted a prominent part in former scenes. She led the attack upon the
+Bastille. She led the mob which brought the king from Versailles to
+Paris. In the subsequent riots life and death hung upon her nod, and in
+one of them she met her betrayer. He begged piteously for her pardon and
+his life, and this was her answer, if we believe Lamartine: "My pardon!"
+said she, "at what price can you buy it? My innocence gone, my family
+lost to me, my brothers and sisters pursued in their own country by the
+jeers of their kindred; the maledictions of my father; my exile from my
+native land; my enrollment among courtesans; the blood by which my days
+have been and will be stained; that imperishable curse of vice linked to
+my name instead of that immortality of virtue which you once taught me
+to doubt--it is for this that you would buy my forgiveness--do you know
+of any price on earth sufficient to purchase it?" And he was massacred.
+She died forty years afterwards in a mad-house, for in the fate of the
+revolution, she was stripped and whipped in the streets to madness by
+the very women she had led.
+
+These loathsome cohorts forced their way into the palace. They invaded
+the rooms of the king and queen. They struck at him with pikes, and
+forced upon his head the red bonnet of the Jacobins, while the most
+wretched of her sex encircled the queen with a living wall of vice, and
+loaded her with obscene execrations, charges, and epithets.
+
+Although this outbreak has been charged to both the great political
+parties, it is probably nearer to truth to say that it originated
+spontaneously with that demoniac mob soon to rule France, and which from
+this time carried all political organizations with it. The Girondists,
+however, still retained enough of their constitutional conservatism to
+be the only hope which royalty could have for its preservation. The king
+again threw himself into their arms. Roland was reinstated in his
+ministry, and the palace again received his wife.
+
+Then every revolutionary element began at once to combine against the
+king and the party which was thus supporting him. It was soon apparent
+that the king and the Girondists could neither govern the country nor
+save themselves if they acted together. The Gironde, from about this
+time, pusillanimously conceded point by point to the anarchic demands
+made by their enemies and the king's. Madame Roland did not join them in
+this, but when she saw that her husband was but a minister in name, that
+he and his associates were powerless to punish murder and prevent
+anarchy, doubtless the vision which she had seen of a people regenerated
+and free began to fade away. The Gironde consented to the imprisonment
+of the royal family in the Temple. This was not concession enough. The
+Jacobins, with the mob at their back, accused them not only of lack of
+works, but of lack of faith, and when such an accusation against a party
+becomes the expression of a popular conviction, that party has nothing
+to do except to die. To prove this charge untrue, the Gironde united
+with their enemies in abolishing the monarchy and establishing a
+republic. Madame Roland drew up a plan for a republic, but it was too
+late for such a one as she desired. Her scheme was federative, like our
+own, in which the provinces of France should have the status of states.
+This plan was a blow at the mob of Paris, which, through the Jacobin
+clubs, with which France was thickly sown, controlled the nation. The
+republic which followed was such only in name. The mob of Paris now
+stepped from behind the transparent screen, whence it had moved all
+parties like wire-hung puppets, and stood disclosed before the world in
+all its colossal horror, stained with blood, breathing flames, and
+grasped directly the springs of power. The national assembly was like a
+keeper of lunatics captured by his patients. Its members were crowded in
+their seats by blood-thirsty men, depraved women, and by merciless
+visionaries, who clamored for extirpation and destruction, absolute and
+universal.
+
+The power of Roland as a minister became as feeble as a shadow's hand.
+The blade of the guillotine rose and fell automatically. Thousands fled
+from the city, upon which heaven itself seemed to rain fire and plagues.
+The armies of foreign kings were upon the soil of France, and were fast
+advancing, and the wild rumors of their coming roused the people to
+panic, and frenzied resolutions of resistance and retribution.
+Thousands, whose only crime was a suspected want of sympathy, were
+crowded into the prisons of Paris. Hoary age, the bounding boy, the
+tender virgin, the loving wife, the holy priest, the sainted nun, the
+titled lady, filed along with the depraved of both sexes in endless
+procession through those massive gates, never more to see the sky and
+the green earth again. For the mob had resolved to extirpate its enemies
+in the city before marching against foreign invaders. It went from
+prison to prison, bursting in the doors, and slaughtering without
+distinction of age, sex, or condition. Madame Roland was nearly frantic
+over these scenes. Her divinity had turned to Moloch in her very
+presence. Her husband called for troops to stop the horrible massacre,
+but none were furnished, and it went on until men were too tired to
+slay. These acts were doubtless incited by the Jacobin leaders, though
+they cloaked with secrecy their complicity in these great crimes. The
+Jacobins became all-powerful. The Girondists became the party of the
+past, and from this time their history is a record of a party in name,
+but in such act of dissolution as to make its efforts spasmodic,
+clique-like, and personal; sometimes grand, sometimes cruel, and often
+cowardly. They were under the coercion of public opinion, but were
+dragged instead of driven by it. They frequently held back, but this was
+merely a halt, which accelerated the rapidity of the march which left
+them at the scaffold, where they regained their heroism in the presence
+of death, while the bloody mob went on to a similar ending a little
+distance beyond.
+
+When the lull came, after the massacre, the two parties stood looking at
+each other across the river of blood. The Jacobins accused the
+Girondists of being enemies of the country. It is characteristic of
+revolutionary times to accuse vaguely and to punish severely. Socrates
+died as an alleged corrupter of youth. Pilate, after acquitting Jesus of
+the crime of high treason, suffered him to be executed for "teaching
+throughout all Jewry." "Roundhead" and "Cavalier" were once expressive
+terms of condemnation. In our own times the words "slave-holder,"
+"abolitionist," "loyal," "disloyal," and "rebel" have formed the
+compendious summing up of years of history. An indictment is compressed
+into an epithet in such times. In the time of Madame Roland, to be "a
+suspect" was to be punishable with death. So the Jacobins suspected the
+Girondists, and accused them of being enemies of France. They introduced
+measures which pandered to the bloodthirst of the mob, and for which the
+Girondists were compelled either to vote or to draw upon themselves its
+vengeance. Madame Roland urged and entreated the Girondists to make one
+last struggle for law, liberty, and order, by moving to bring to justice
+the ringleaders in the massacre, including the Jacobin chiefs, who
+instigated it. This issue was made in the assembly, but it was voted
+down before the tiger-roar of the mob which raged in the hall. The
+Jacobins resolved to destroy Madame Roland, whose courage had prompted
+this attack upon them, and for which she had become the object of their
+intensest hate. They suborned an adventurer named Viard to accuse her of
+being privy to a correspondence with the English Government for the
+purpose of saving the life of the king. She was summoned before the
+assembly to confront her accuser. She appeared in the midst of her
+enemies, armed with innocence, resplendent with beauty, defended by her
+own genius. Her very presence extorted applause from reluctant lips. She
+looked upon her accuser, and he faltered. By a few womanly words she
+tore his calumny into shreds, and left amid plaudits. Justice thus
+returned once more to illumine that place by a fleeting gleam, and then
+with this woman left it forever.
+
+The Jacobins pressed the trial of the king. The mob demanded him as a
+victim. The Girondists voted with the Jacobins that he was guilty; but
+they voted to leave the sentence to the determination of the French
+people, and when they were defeated in this they voted for his death. I
+am unable to find any thing in the memorials of Madame Roland which
+shows that she had any sympathy with this. What is written tends rather
+to show that she was in the very apathy and lassitude of horror. From
+the time when her courageous effort to work justice upon the abettors
+and perpetrators of the massacre failed, her history ceases to be
+political and becomes personal.
+
+The revolutionary tribunal was reorganized, consisting of twenty judges,
+a jury, and a public accuser. Merlin of Douai, a consummate jurist,
+proposed a statute, in every line of which suspicion, treachery, and
+hate found an arsenal of revenge. It provided that: "Immediately after
+the publication of this present decree, all suspected persons who are
+found in the territory of the republic, and who are still at liberty,
+shall be arrested.
+
+"Are deemed suspected all persona who, by their conduct, writings, or
+language, have proved themselves partisans of tyranny, federalism, and
+enemies of liberty;
+
+"Those who can not prove they possess the means of existence, and that
+they have fully performed all of their duties as citizens;
+
+"Those to whom certificates of citizenship have been refused;
+
+"Those of noble families--fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, sisters,
+husbands, wives, and agents--who have not constantly manifested their
+attachment to the Revolution."
+
+The traveler, standing upon the stone seats of the Flavian amphitheater,
+looks down into the arena, and peoples the Coliseum with the criminals
+and the innocent martyrs, shut out from hope by its merciless walls and
+by a populace more merciless, and slain by thousands by wild beasts and
+swordsmen and spearsmen, to make a Roman holiday. How complacently he
+felicitates himself upon the assumption that modern times present
+nothing like this. But less than one hundred years ago, the pen of a
+lawyer erected in France a statute which inclosed a kingdom with its
+architectural horror, made one arena of an empire, and in one year drank
+up more blood than sank into the sands of the Coliseum in centuries.
+
+The revolutionary tribunal was in permanent session. Its trials were
+summary. It heard with predetermination, and decided without evidence.
+It was the mere routine formality of death. Proof often consisted solely
+in the identification of the person whose death had been predetermined.
+Prostitutes sold acquittals, and revenged themselves by convictions.
+Paris now ruled France, the Jacobins ruled Paris, and the mob ruled the
+Jacobins. They had pressed the Girondists, those men of lofty genius and
+superb eloquence, from their high position into complicity with crimes
+with which they had no sympathy, and this want of sympathy now became
+their crime. It was resolved to destroy them. The mob of Paris again
+came forth. Devilish men and women again crowded the assembly, and even
+took part in its deliberations. The act of accusation was passed, and
+twenty-six of the leaders of the Gironde went from their places to the
+scaffold, where they suffered death sublimely.
+
+Madame Roland was also arrested. Her husband had fled from Paris. She
+was consigned to the prison of St. Pelagie, and afterwards, after
+suffering the cruel mockery of a release, she was imprisoned in the
+Conciergerie. This prison was the abiding place of assassins, thieves,
+and all impurity. It was the anteroom to the scaffold, for incarceration
+there was an infallible symptom of death. The inmates were crowded into
+rooms with merciless disregard of their relative characters or
+antecedents. Madame Roland was first associated with the duchess of
+Grammont, with a female pick-pocket, with a nun, with an insane woman,
+and with a street-walker. She finally procured a cell to herself, which
+she made bloom with flowers. The prison was populous with the most
+degraded of her sex. Yet she asserted here the same marvelous ascendancy
+which she had always possessed over her associates. The obscene outcries
+of lost women died away when she approached. Her cell was an ark of
+safety for any dove seeking refuge from that deluge of human sin. When
+she went into the courtyard the lost of her own sex gathered around her
+with reverence, as around a tutelary and interceding angel, the same
+women who inflicted upon Madame Du Barry, that princess of their caste,
+every torment which the malice of their sex could inspire. Inmates and
+visitors crowded to the door of her cell, and she spoke to them through
+its iron bars with eloquence, which increased as inspiring death drew
+near, of liberty, country, equality, and of better days for France, but
+when they went away she would look through her window to the sky, and,
+thinking of her hunted husband and sequestered little daughter, cry and
+moan like the simplest wife and mother. Then she would send by
+surreptitious conveyance, letters to refugee statesmen, which discussed
+the political situation as calmly as if written upon the work-table of a
+secure and peaceful home. Calumny now busied itself to defile her.
+Hebert, vilest of editors, flung the ordure of Pere Duchesne, vilest of
+newspapers, upon this spotless woman, soon to be a saint, and sent the
+newsmen to cry the disgusting charges under her prison windows, so that
+she heard them rendered in all the villainies of a language whose
+under-drains have sources of vileness filthier than any other speech of
+man. She did not fear death, but she did fear calumny. She had never
+delighted in any public display of her enormous intellectual powers, and
+she had never made any such display. She had fixed the sentiment of
+Lyons by an anonymous newspaper article, of which sixty thousand copies
+had been bought in one day. She had written to the king a letter which
+drove her husband from power, and which, when read by the people,
+compelled the king to restore him. She had written a dispatch to the
+pope, claiming rights for certain French in Rome, in which the sanctity
+of his office and the dignity of her country was respected, appealed to,
+and asserted. It is said that the state papers were hers which persuaded
+William Pitt to abstain so long from intervention in the affairs of
+France, in that time of English terror and hope, which furnished
+arguments to Fox, and which drew from Burke those efforts of massive
+reason and gorgeous imagination which will endure as long as the
+language itself. The counsel by which she had disentangled the
+perplexity of wisest men had been repeated by them to applauding senates
+in tones less eloquent than those by which they had been received, and
+triumph had followed. In none of these efforts did she avow herself. She
+shrank from the honors which solicited her, though the world knew that
+they came from her just as the world knows that moon and planets shine
+with the reflected light of a hidden sun. But now, when thus assailed,
+she resolved to speak personally and for herself. And so, sitting in her
+cell, she wrote in concealment and sent out by trusty hands, in cantos,
+that autobiography in which she appealed to posterity, and by which
+posterity has been convinced. She traced her career from earliest
+childhood down to the very brink of the grave into which she was
+looking. Her intellectual, affectional and mental history are all there
+written with a hand as steady and a mind as serene as though she were at
+home, with her baby sleeping in its cradle by her side. Here are found
+history, philosophy, political science, poetry, and ethics as they were
+received and given out again by one of the most receptive and imparting
+minds ever possessed by woman. She knew that husband, home, child, and
+friends were not for her any more, and that very soon she was to see the
+last of earth from beside the headsman and from the block, and yet she
+turned from all regret and fear, and summoned the great assize of
+posterity, "of foreign nations and the next ages," to do her justice.
+There was no sign of fear. She looked as calmly on what she knew she
+must soon undergo as the spirit released into never-ending bliss looks
+back upon the corporeal trammels from which it has just earned its
+escape.
+
+There are those who believe that a woman can not be great as she was and
+still be pure. These ghouls of history will to the end of time dig into
+the graves where such queens lie entombed. This woman has slept serenely
+for nearly a century. Sweet oblivion has dimmed with denial and
+forgetfulness the obloquy which hunted her in her last days. Tears such
+as are shed for vestal martyrs have been shed for her, and for all her
+faults she has the condonation of universal sorrow. Nothing but the evil
+magic of sympathetic malice can restore these calumnies, and even then
+they quickly fade away in the sunlight of her life. Nothing can touch
+her further. Dismiss them with the exorcism of Carlyle, grown strangely
+tender and elegiac here. "Breathe not thy poison breath! Evil speech!
+That soul is taintless; clear as the mirror sea." She was brought to
+trial. The charge against her was, "That there has existed a horrible
+conspiracy against the unity and indivisibility of the French people;
+that Marie Jeanne Phlipon, wife of Jean Marie Roland has been one of the
+abettors or accomplices of that conspiracy." This was the formula by
+which this woman was killed, and it simply meant that the Gironde had
+existed and that she had sympathized with it.
+
+She was racked with interrogations, and returned to the prison, weeping
+at the infernal imputations which they cast upon her womanhood. On the
+day of her final trial she dressed herself in spotless white, and let
+fall the voluminous masses of her brown, abundant hair. She was asked to
+betray her husband by disclosing his hiding place. Her answer is full of
+wifely loyalty and dignity--"Whether I know it or not I neither ought
+nor will say."
+
+There was absolutely no evidence against her except of her affiliations
+with the Girondists. The mockery ended by her condemnation to death
+within twenty-four hours, and this Iphigenia of France went doomed back
+to her cell. Her return was awaited with dreadful anxiety by her
+associates in confinement, who hoped against hope for her safe
+deliverance. As she passed through the massive doors, she smiled, and
+drew her hand knife-like across her neck, and then there went up a wail
+from all assembled there, the wail of titled women, of sacred nuns, of
+magdalens and thieves, a dirge of inconsolable sorrow, of humanity
+weeping for its best beloved child.
+
+Late in the afternoon of November 8, 1693, the rude cart which was to
+bear her to the guillotine received her. She was dressed in white; her
+hair fell like a mantle to her knees. The chilly air and her own courage
+brought back to her prison-blanched cheek the rosy hues of youth. She
+spoke words of divine patience to the crowd which surged around her on
+her way and reviled her. With a few low words she raised the courage of
+a terror-stricken old man who took with her the same last journey, and
+made him smile. As the hours wore into twilight, she passed the home of
+her youth, and perhaps longed to become a little child again and enter
+there and be at rest. At the foot of the scaffold she asked for pen and
+paper to bequeath to posterity the thoughts which crowded upon her; they
+were refused, and thus was one of the books of the sibyls lost. She
+bowed to the great statue of Liberty near by, exclaiming, "_O Liberte!
+comme on t' a jouee!_"[2] and gave her majestic form to the headsman to
+be bound upon the plank.
+
+The knife fell, and the world darkened upon the death of the queenliest
+woman who ever lived and loved.--EX-GOVERNOR C.K. DAVIS, _of Minnesota_.
+
+    What though the triumph of thy fond forecasting
+      Lingers till earth is fading from thy sight?
+    Thy part with Him whose arms are everlasting,
+      Is not forsaken in a hopeless night.
+
+    Paul was begotten in the death of Stephen;
+      Fruitful through time shall be that precious blood:
+    No morning yet has ever worn to even
+      And missed the glory of its crimson flood.
+
+    There is a need of all the blood of martyrs,
+      Forevermore the eloquence of God;
+    And there is need of him who never barters
+      His patience in that desert way the Master trod.
+
+    What mean the strange, hard words, "through tribulation?"
+      O Man of sorrows, only Thou canst tell,
+    And such as in Thy life's humiliation,
+      Have oft been with Thee, ay, have known Thee well.
+
+    The failures of the world are God's successes,
+      Although their coming be akin to pain;
+    And frowns of Providence are but caresses,
+      Prophetic of the rest sought long in vain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+CHEERFUL AND BRAVE.
+
+
+THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON--SIR WALTER RALEIGH--XENOPHON--
+CAESAR--NELSON--HENRY OF NAVARRE--QUEEN ELIZABETH-- SYDNEY SMITH--ROBERT
+HALL--LATIMER--TOM HOOD.
+
+
+Baron Muffling relates of the Duke of Wellington, that that great
+general remained at the Duchess of Richmond's ball till about three
+o'clock on the morning of the 16th of June, 1815, "showing himself very
+cheerful." The baron, who is a very good authority on the subject,
+having previously proved that every plan was laid in the duke's mind,
+and Quatre Bras and Waterloo fully detailed, we may comprehend the value
+of the sentence. It was the bold, trusting heart of the hero that made
+him cheerful. He showed himself cheerful, too, at Waterloo. He was never
+very jocose; but on that memorable 18th of June he showed a symptom of
+it. He rode along the line and cheered men by his look and his face, and
+they too cheered him. But, when the danger was over--when the 21,000
+brave men of his own and the Prussian army lay stiffening in death--the
+duke, who was so cheerful in the midst of his danger, covered his face
+with his hands and wept. He asked for that friend, and he was slain; for
+this, and a bullet had pierced his heart. The men who had devoted
+themselves to death for their leader and their country had been blown to
+pieces, or pierced with lances, or hacked with sabers, and lay, like
+Ponsonby covered with thirteen wounds, upon the ground. Well might the
+duke weep, iron though he was. "There is nothing," he writes, "nothing
+in the world so dreadful as a battle lost, unless it be such a battle
+won. Nothing can compensate for the dreadful cruelty, carnage, and
+misery of the scene, save the reflection on the public good which may
+arise from it."
+
+Forty years' peace succeeded the great battle. Forty years of
+prosperity, during which he himself went honored to his tomb, rewarded
+the constant brave look and tongue which answered his men, when he saw
+the whole side of a square blown in, with "Hard work, gentlemen! They
+are pounding away! We must see who can pound the longest." It is not too
+much to say that the constant cheerfulness of the Duke of Wellington was
+one great element of success in the greatest battle ever fought, one of
+the fifteen decisive battles in the world, great in the number engaged,
+greater in the slaughter, greatest in the results. But all commanders
+ought to be cheerful. Gloomy looks do not do in the army. A set of
+filibusters or pirates may wear looks and brows as black as the
+sticking-plasters boots that their representatives are dressed in at the
+minor theaters; but a soldier or a sailor should be, and as a rule is,
+the most cheerful of fellows, doing his duty in the trench or the storm,
+dying when the bullet comes, but living like a hero the while. Look, for
+instance, at the whole-hearted cheerfulness of Raleigh, when with his
+small English ships he cast himself against the navies of Spain; or at
+Xenophon, conducting back from an inhospitable and hostile country, and
+through unknown paths, his ten thousand Greeks; or Caesar, riding up and
+down the banks of the Rubicon, sad enough belike when alone, but at the
+head of his men cheerful, joyous, well dressed, rather foppish, in fact,
+his face shining with good humor as with oil. Again, Nelson, in the
+worst of dangers, was as cheerful as the day. He had even a rough but
+quiet humor in him just as he carried his coxswain behind him to bundle
+the swords of the Spanish and French captains under his arm. He could
+clap his telescope to his blind eye, and say, "Gentlemen, I can not make
+out the signal," when the signal was adverse to his wishes, and then go
+in and win, in spite of recall. Fancy the dry laughs which many an old
+sea-dog has had over that cheerful incident. How the story lights up the
+dark page of history! Then there was Henry of Navarre, lion in war,
+winner of hearts, bravest of the brave, who rode down the ranks at Ivry
+when Papist and Protestant were face to face, when more than his own
+life and kingdom were at stake, and all the horrors of religious war
+were loosened and unbound, ready to ravage poor, unhappy France. That
+beaming, hopeful countenance won the battle, and is a parallel to the
+brave looks of Queen Elizabeth when she cheered her Englishmen at
+Tilbury.
+
+But we are not all soldiers or sailors, although, too, our Christian
+profession hath adopted the title of soldiers in the battle of life. It
+is all very well to cite great commanders who, in the presence of
+danger, excited by hope, with the eyes of twenty thousand men upon them,
+are cheerful and happy; but what is that to the solitary author, the
+poor artist, the governess, the milliner, the shoemaker, the
+factory-girl, they of the thousand persons in profession or trade who
+are given to murmur, and who think life so hard and gloomy and wretched
+that they can not go through it with a smile on their faces and despair
+in their hearts? What are examples and citations to them? "Hecuba!"
+cries out poor, melancholy, morbid Hamlet, striking on a vein of
+thought, "what's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" Much.
+
+We all have trials; but it is certain that good temper and cheerfulness
+will make us bear them more easily than any thing else. "Temper," said
+one of our bishops, "is nine-tenths of Christianity." We do not live now
+in the Middle Ages. We can not think that the sect of Flagellants, who
+whipped themselves till the blood ran into their shoes, and pulled
+uncommonly long faces, were the best masters of philosophy. "True
+godliness is cheerful as the day," wrote Cowper, himself melancholy-mad
+enough; and we are to remember that the precept of the Founder of our
+faith, that when we fast we are to anoint our countenances and not to
+seem to fast, enjoins a certain liveliness of face. Sydney Smith, when a
+poor curate at Foster-le-Clay, a dreary, desolate place, wrote: "I am
+resolved to like it, and to reconcile myself to it, which is more manly
+than to fancy myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of
+being thrown away, or being desolated, and such like trash." And he
+acted up to this; said his prayers, made his jokes, did his duty, and,
+Upon fine mornings, used to draw up the blinds of his parlor, open the
+window, and "glorify the room," as he called the operation, with
+sunshine. But all the sunshine without was nothing to the sunshine
+within the heart. It was that which made him go through life so bravely
+and so well; it is that, too, which renders his life a lesson to us all.
+
+We must also remember that the career of a poor curate is not the most
+brilliant in the world. That of an apprentice boy has more fun in it;
+that of a milliner's girl has more merriment and fewer depressing
+circumstances. To hear always the same mistrust of Providence, to see
+poverty, to observe all kinds of trial, to witness death-bed
+scenes--this is not the most enlivening course of existence, even if a
+clergyman be a man of mark and of station. But there was one whose
+station was not honored, nay, even by some despised, and who had sorer
+trials than Sydney Smith. His name is well known in literature; and his
+writings and his example still teach us in religion. This was Robert
+Hall, professor of a somber creed in a somber flat country, as flat and
+"deadly-lively," as they say, as need be. To add to difficulties and
+troubles, the minister was plagued with about as painful an illness as
+falls to the lot of humanity to bear. He had fought with infidelity and
+doubt; he had refused promotion, because he would do his duty where it
+had pleased God to place him; next he had to show how well he could bear
+pain. In all his trials he had been cheerful, forcible, natural, and
+straightforward. In this deep one he preserved the same character.
+Forced to throw himself down and writhe upon the floor in his paroxysms
+of pain, he rose up, livid with exhaustion, and with the sweat of
+anguish on his brow, without a murmur.
+
+In the whole library of brave anecdote there is no tale of heroism
+which, to us, beats this. It very nearly equals that of poor, feeble
+Latimer, cheering up his fellow-martyr as he walked to the stake, "Be of
+good cheer, brother Ridley; we shall this day light such a fire in
+England as by God's grace shall not be readily put out." The very play
+upon the torture is brave, yet pathetic. Wonderful, too, was the
+boldness and cheerfulness of another martyr, Rowland Taylor, who,
+stripped to his shirt, was forced to walk toward the stake, who answered
+the jeers of his persecutors and the tears of his friends with the same
+noble constant smile, and, meeting two of his very old parishioners who
+wept, stopped and cheered _them_ as he went, adding, that he went on his
+way rejoicing.
+
+Heroes and martyrs are perhaps too high examples, for they may have, or
+rather poor, common, every-day humanity will think they have, a kind of
+high-pressure sustainment. Let us look to our own prosaic days; let us
+mark the constant cheerfulness and manliness of Dr. Maginn, or that much
+higher heroic bearing of Tom Hood. We suppose that every body knows that
+Hood's life was not of that brilliant, sparkling, fizzing, banging,
+astonishing kind which writers such as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and
+some others, depict as the general life of literary men. He did not,
+like Byron, "jump up one morning, and find himself famous." All the
+libraries were not asking for his novel, though a better was not
+written; countesses and dairy-women did not beg his autograph. His was a
+life of constant hard work, constant trial or disappointment, and
+constant illness, enlivened only by a home affection and a cheerfulness
+as constant as his pain. When slowly, slowly dying, he made cheerful fun
+as often almost as he said his prayers. He was heard, after, perhaps,
+being almost dead, to laugh gently to himself in the still night, when
+his wife or children, who were the watchers, thought him asleep. Many of
+the hard lessons of fate he seasoned, as old Latimer did his sermons,
+with a pun, and he excused himself from sending more "copy" for his
+magazine by a sketch, the "Editor's Apologies," a rough pen-and-ink
+drawing of physic-bottles and leeches. Yet Hood had not only his own
+woes to bear, but felt for others. No one had a more tender heart--few
+men a more catholic and Christian sympathy for the poor--than the writer
+of the "Song of the Shirt."
+
+What such men as these have done, every one else surely can do.
+Cheerfulness is a Christian duty; moroseness, dulness, gloominess, as
+false, and wrong, and cruel as they are unchristian. We are too far
+advanced now in the light of truth to go back into the Gothic and
+conventual gloom of the Middle Ages, any more than we could go back to
+the exercises of the Flagellants and the nonsense of the pre-Adamites.
+All whole-hearted peoples have been lively and bustling, noisy almost,
+in their progress, pushing, energetic, broad in shoulder, strong in
+lung, loud in voice, of free brave color, bold look, and bright eyes.
+They are the cheerful people in the world--
+
+    "Active doers, noble livers--strong to labors sure to conquer;"
+
+and soon pass in the way of progress the more quiet and gloomy of their
+fellows. That some of this cheerfulness may be simply animal is true,
+and that a man may be a dullard and yet sit and "grin like a Cheshire
+cat;" but we are not speaking of grinning. Laughter is all very well; is
+a healthy, joyous, natural impulse; the true mark of superiority between
+man and beast, for no inferior animal laughs; but we are not writing of
+laughter, but of that continued even tone of spirits, which lies in the
+middle zone between frantic merriment and excessive despondency.
+Cheerfulness arises from various causes: from health; but it is not
+dependent upon health;--from good fortune; but it does not arise solely
+from that;--from honor, and position, and a tickled pride and vanity;
+but, as we have seen, it is quite independent of these. The truth is, it
+is a brave habit of the mind; a prime proof of wisdom; capable of being
+acquired, and of the very greatest value.
+
+A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not "cramp his
+mind, nor take half views of men and things." He knows that there is
+much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life. He sees that in
+every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly
+joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full
+of careering and rejoicing insects, that everywhere the good outbalances
+the bad, and that every evil that there is has its compensating balm.
+Then the brave man, as our German cousins say, possesses the world,
+whereas the melancholy man does not even possess his own share of it.
+Exercise, or continued employment of some kind, will make a man
+cheerful; but sitting at home, brooding and thinking, or doing little,
+will bring gloom. The reaction of this feeling is wonderful. It arises
+from a sense of duty done, and it also enables us to do our duty.
+Cheerful people live long in our memory. We remember joy more readily
+than sorrow, and always look back with tenderness on the brave and
+cheerful. Autolycus repeats the burden of an old song with the truth
+that "a merry heart goes all the day, but your sad ones tires a mile a!"
+and what he says any one may notice, not only in ourselves, but in the
+inferior animals also. A sulky dog, and a bad-tempered horse, wear
+themselves out with half the labor that kindly creatures do. An unkindly
+cow will not give down her milk, and a sour sheep will not fatten; nay,
+even certain fowls and geese, to those who observe, will evidence
+temper--good or bad.
+
+We can all cultivate our tempers, and one of the employments of some
+poor mortals is to cultivate, cherish, and bring to perfection, a
+thoroughly bad one; but we may be certain that to do so is a very gross
+error and sin, which, like all others, brings its own punishment,
+though, unfortunately, it does not punish itself only. If he "to whom
+God is pleasant is pleasant to God," the reverse also holds good; and
+certainly the major proposition is true with regard to man. Addison says
+of cheerfulness, that it lightens sickness, poverty, affliction;
+converts ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and renders deformity
+itself agreeable; and he says no more than the truth. "Give us,
+therefore, O! give us"--let us cry with Carlyle--"the man who sings at
+his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who
+follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the
+same time; he will do it better; he will persevere longer. One is
+scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars
+are said to make harmony as they revolve in their appointed skies."
+"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness! altogether past calculation
+the powers of its endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful must be
+uniformly joyous--a spirit all sunshine--graceful from very
+gladness--beautiful because bright." Such a spirit is within every
+body's reach. Let us get out into the light of things. The morbid man
+cries out that there is always enough wrong in the world to make a man
+miserable. Conceded; but wrong is ever being righted; there is always
+enough that is good and right to make us joyful. There is ever sunshine
+somewhere; and the brave man will go on his way rejoicing, content to
+look forward if under a cloud, not bating one jot of heart or hope if
+for a moment cast down; honoring his occupation, whatever it may be;
+rendering even rags respectable by the way he wears them; and not only
+being happy himself, but causing the happiness of others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+HAROLD.
+
+
+THE LAST SAXON KING OF ENGLAND.
+
+
+The father of Harold, the last Saxon king of England, was named Godwin,
+and was the first great English statesman. It was from him that Harold
+in a great measure inherited his vigor and power, though, indeed, he
+came altogether of a noble race, both by lineage and character, for his
+mother was a daughter of Canute the Great.
+
+All the English loved Harold; he was strong and generous, and a better
+counselor than Godwin, his father, in many ways. At first he never
+sought any thing for himself; but as time went on, and he found how he
+was obeyed, and how he was beloved, how the whole country turned her
+eyes to him as the fittest king when Edward the Confessor should be
+gone, he also took the same idea into his mind, and gave himself to
+rule, to teach, and to act as one who should by and by be king.
+
+Edward's queen, Edith, was Harold's sister; but there was another Edith,
+who influenced Harold more than any one else in many ways. From his
+boyhood he and she had played together, and they grew up, never so much
+as thinking that a time would come when they would separate.
+
+The more Harold saw her the more he felt he should like to ask her to be
+his wife, and have her always with him; but there were many things which
+made that impossible. And then England required Harold. If he thought
+only of his own happiness his country must suffer. The great nobles
+wished him to establish the kingdom by marrying the daughter of one of
+the most powerful lords; this would connect the people and the land more
+closely, and prevent quarrels and divisions; and the government required
+the whole of Harold's services, and the people required his
+watchfulness, his thought, his care, his presence.
+
+All his life through he had consulted Edith, and now at this terrible
+moment he consulted her again. He stood before her, and in great trouble
+and agony of spirit told her just how things were, scarcely daring to
+look at the woman he loved; for if he looked at her, England, her
+greatness and her needs, all melted away, and he saw nothing but a
+beaming vision of a quiet, beloved home, free from the storms of the
+great world outside.
+
+But Edith too was unselfish, pure and good; so she put all thought of
+personal happiness away, and putting her hand on his shoulder, said,
+"Never, O Harold, did I feel so proud of thee, for Edith could not love
+thee as she doth, and will till the grave clasp her, if thou didst not
+love England more than Edith." So these two separated.
+
+His whole energy was given to his king and his country. He had no great
+love for the monks; but he sought out the good and noble ones, put power
+into their hands, and gave them his support in ruling wisely and well.
+The Abbey of Waltham had fallen into almost complete decay; he chose two
+humbly born men, renowned for the purity and benevolence of their lives,
+and gave to them the charge of selecting a new brotherhood there, which
+he largely endowed.
+
+At last Edward passed quietly away, and with one accord Harold, the
+beloved, was chosen king and crowned.
+
+Over the sea dwelt William, duke of the Normans, With no careless ear
+did he hear that Edward was dead Edward dead! Edward! Why, Edward, in a
+moment of friendship, had promised the English throne to him--had even,
+William asserted, left it him in will; therefore his rage was great when
+he heard that Harold was not only proclaimed and crowned king, but was
+ready to defend his claim by battle sooner than yield. William was a man
+of power and iron will; he forced his reluctant Normans to listen to his
+complaint, equipped an army, and sailed for Britain. On came the queer
+little ships of war, nearer and nearer to England's white, free cliffs,
+and cast anchor in Pevensey Bay.
+
+William, eager and impatient, sprang from his ship; but his foot
+slipping, he fell, to rise again with both his hands full of earth,
+which he showed to his scared soldiers in triumph, crying:
+
+"So do I grasp the earth of a new country."
+
+Meanwhile Harold had gathered his forces, and they were assembled on
+Senlac Hill, an advantageous position. He himself was in the center, his
+brave brother Gurth at his right hand.
+
+A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle, which raged the
+whole day, victory now leaning to the English and now to the Normans.
+There was a cry that the duke was killed. "I live!" he shouted, "and by
+God's help will conquer yet!" And tearing off his helmet he rushed into
+the thickest of the battle, and aimed right at the standard. Round that
+standard the last sharp, long struggle took place. Harold, Gurth, all
+the greatest who still survived, met there. With his tremendous
+battle-ax the king did mighty slaughter, till, looking upward as he
+swung his ax with both hands, a Norman arrow pierced his eye, and he
+fell.
+
+"Fight on!" he gasped. "Conceal my death--England to the rescue!" One
+instant he sprang to his feet, and then fell back--lifeless. One by one
+the other noble guardians fell around him, till only Gurth was left,
+brave chief and last man, with no thought of surrender, though all was
+gone and lost.
+
+"Spare him! spare the brave!" shouted one; but the brave heart was
+already pierced, and he sank beside his king and brother. So fell the
+last of the Saxon kings, and so arose the Norman race.
+
+Long did they search the battlefield for Harold's body, disfigured by
+wounds and loss of blood, but long did they seek it in vain, till a
+woman whose toil had never ceased burst into a sharp cry over a lifeless
+form. It was Edith, who with many another woman had watched the battle.
+The body was too changed to be recognized even by its nearest friends;
+but beneath his heart was punctured in old Saxon letters "Edith," and
+just below, in characters more fresh, "England," the new love he had
+taken when duty bade him turn from Edith; which recalls the lines of
+Lovelace to Lucasta:
+
+    "Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
+      That from the nunnery
+    Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
+      To war and arms I fly.
+
+    True, a new mistress now I chase,
+      The first foe of the field;
+    And with a stronger faith embrace
+      A sword, a horse, a shield.
+
+    Yet this inconstancy is such
+      As you too shall adore;
+    I could not love thee, dear, so much
+      Loved I not not honor more."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+PETER COOPER,
+
+(BORN 1791--DIED 1883.)
+
+
+THE LESSON OF A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE.
+
+
+Barzillai, of sacred history, was a very old man, a very kind man, a
+very affectionate man, a very rich man of the tenth century before
+Christ, a type of our American philanthropist, Peter Cooper, in the
+nineteenth century after Christ. When I see Barzillai, from his wealthy
+country seat at Rogelim, coming out to meet David's retreating army, and
+providing them with flour and corn and mattresses, it makes me think of
+the hearty response of our modern philanthropist in time of trouble and
+disaster, whether individual, municipal, or national. The snow of his
+white locks has melted from our sight, and the benediction of his genial
+face has come to its long amen. But his influence halted not a
+half-second for his obsequies to finish, but goes right on without
+change, save that of augmentation, for in the great sum of a useful life
+death is a multiplication instead of subtraction, and the tombstone,
+instead of being the goal of the race, is only the starting point. What
+means this rising up of all good men, with hats off, in reverence to one
+who never wielded a sword or delivered masterly oration or stood in
+senatorial place? Neither general, nor lord, nor governor, nor
+President. The LL. D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to
+him. The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix,
+seemed a superfluity. He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper.
+Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common
+council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from
+multitudes who have no adequate way to express their bereavement?
+
+First, he was in some respects the father of American philanthropies.
+There have been far larger sums donated to the public since this man
+founded Cooper Institute, but I think that hundreds of the charities
+were born of his example. Sometimes a father will have a large family of
+children who grow up to be larger than himself. When that six-storied
+temple of instruction was built on Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street by
+Mr. Cooper, at an expense of $630,000, and endowed by him with $150,000,
+you must remember $100,000 was worth as much as $500,000 now, and that
+millionaires, who are so common now that you hardly stop to look at
+them, were a rare spectacle. Stephen Girard and John Jacob Astor, of the
+olden time, would in our day almost excite the sympathy of some of our
+railroad magnates. The nearly $800,000, which built and endowed Cooper
+Institute, was as much as $3,000,000 or $5,000,000 now. But there are
+institutions in our day that have cost many times more dollars in
+building and endowment which have not accomplished more than a fraction
+of the good done by this munificence of 1857. This gift brooded
+charities all over the land. This mothered educational institutions.
+This gave glorious suggestion to many whose large fortune was hitherto
+under the iron grasp of selfishness. If the ancestral line of many an
+asylum or infirmary or college or university were traced back far
+enough, you would learn that Peter Cooper was the illustrious
+progenitor. Who can estimate the effect of such an institution, standing
+for twenty-six years, saying to all the millions of people passing up
+and down the great thoroughfares: "I am here to bless and educate,
+without money and without price, all the struggling ones who come under
+my wings?" That institution has for twenty-six years been crying shame
+on miserliness and cupidity. That free reading-room has been the
+inspiration of five hundred free reading-rooms. Great reservoir of
+American beneficence!
+
+Again, Peter Cooper showed what a wise thing it is for a man to be his
+own executor. How much better is ante-mortem charity than post-mortem
+beneficence. Many people keep all their property for themselves till
+death, and then make good institutions their legatees. They give up the
+money only because they have to. They would take it all with them if
+they only had three or four stout pockets in their shroud. Better late
+than never, but the reward shall not be as great as the reward of those
+who make charitable contribution while yet they have power to keep their
+money. Charity, in last will and testament, seems sometimes to be only
+an attempt to bribe Charon, the ferryman, to land the boat in celestial
+rather than infernal regions. Mean as sin when they disembark from the
+banks of this world, they hope to be greeted as benefactors when they
+come up the beach on the other side. Skinflints when they die, they hope
+to have the reception of a George Peabody. Besides that, how often
+donations by will and testament fail of their final destination. The
+surrogate's courts are filled with legal quarrels. If a philanthropist
+has any pride of intellect, and desires to help Christian institutions,
+he had better bestow the gift before death, for the trouble is, if he
+leaves any large amount to Christian institutions, the courts will be
+appealed to to prove he was crazy. They will bring witnesses to prove
+that for a long time he has been becoming imbecile, and as almost every
+one of positive nature has idiosyncrasies, these idiosyncrasies will be
+brought out on the trial, and ventilated and enlarged and caricatured,
+and the man who had mind enough to make $1,000,000, and heart enough to
+remember needy institutions, will be proved a fool. If he have a second
+wife, the children of the first wife will charge him with being unduly
+influenced. Many a man who, when he made his will, had more brain than
+all his household put together, has been pronounced a fit subject for a
+lunatic asylum. Be your own executor. Do not let the benevolent
+institutions of the country get their chief advantage from your last
+sickness and death. How much better, like Peter Cooper, to walk through
+the halls you have built for others and see the young men being educated
+by your beneficence, and to get the sublime satisfaction of your own
+charities! I do not wonder that Barzillai, the wealthy Gileadite, lived
+to be eighty, for he stood in the perpetual sunshine of his beneficence.
+I do not wonder that Peter Cooper, the modern Barzillai, lived to be
+ninety-two years of age, for he felt the healthful reaction of helping
+others. Doing good was one of the strongest reasons of his longevity.
+There is many a man with large estate behind him who calls up his past
+dollars as a pack of hounds to go out and hunt up one more dollar before
+he dies. Away away the hunter and his hounds for that last dollar!
+Hotter and hotter the chase. Closer on the track and closer. Whip up and
+spur on the steed! The old man just ahead, and all the pack of hounds
+close after him. Now they are coming in at the death, that last dollar
+only a short distance ahead. The old hunter, with panting breath and
+pale cheek and outstretched arm, clutches for it as it turns on its
+track, but, missing it, keeps on till the exhausted dollar plunges into
+a hole and burrows and burrows deep; and the old hunter, with both
+hands, claws at the earth, and claws deeper down, till the burrowed
+embankment gives way, and he rolls over into his own grave. We often
+talk of old misers. There are but few old misers. The most of them are
+comparatively young. Avarice massacres more than a war. In contrast,
+behold the philanthropist in the nineties, and dying of a cold caught in
+going to look after the affairs of the institution he himself founded,
+and which has now about two thousand five hundred persons a day in its
+reading-rooms and libraries, and two thousand students in its evening
+schools.
+
+Again, Peter Cooper has shown the world a good way of settling the old
+quarrel between capital and labor, the altercation between rich and
+poor. There are two ways in which this conflict can never be settled.
+One is the violent suppression of the laboring classes, and the other
+the violent assault of the rich. This is getting to be the age of
+dynamite--dynamite under the Kremlin, dynamite in proximity to
+Parliament House and railroad track, dynamite near lordly mansions,
+dynamite in Ireland, dynamite in England, dynamite in America. The rich
+are becoming more exclusive, and the poor more irate. I prescribe for
+the cure of this mighty evil of the world a large allopathic dose of
+Peter Cooperism. You never heard of dynamite in Cooper Institute. You
+never heard of any one searching the cellar of that man's house for a
+keg of dynamite. At times of public excitement, when prominent men had
+their houses guarded, there were no sentinels needed at his door. The
+poorest man with a hod on his shoulder carrying brick up a wall
+begrudged not the philanthropist his carriage as he rode by. No one put
+the torch to Peter Cooper's glue factory. When on some great popular
+occasion the masses assembled in the hall of Cooper Institute and its
+founder came on the platform, there were many hard hands that clapped in
+vigorous applause. Let the rich stretch forth toward the great masses of
+England, Ireland, and America as generous and kind a hand as that of
+Peter Cooper, and the age of dynamite will end. What police can not do,
+and shot and shell can not do, and strongest laws severely executed can
+not do, and armies can not do, will yet be accomplished by something
+that I see fit to baptize as Peter Cooperism. I hail the early twilight
+of that day when a man of millions shall come forth and say: "There are
+seventy thousand destitute children in New York, and here I put up and
+endow out of my fortune a whole line of institutions to take care of
+them; here are vast multitudes in filthy and unventilated
+tenement-houses, for whom I will build a whole block of residences at
+cheap rents; here are nations without Christ, and I turn my fortune
+inside out to send them flaming evangels; there shall be no more hunger,
+and no more sickness, and no more ignorance, and no more crime, if I can
+help it." That spirit among the opulent of this country and other
+countries would stop contention, and the last incendiary's torch would
+be extinguished, and the last dagger of assassination would go to
+slicing bread for poor children, and the last pound of dynamite that
+threatens death would go to work in quarries to blast foundation-stones
+for asylums and universities and churches. May the spirit of Peter
+Cooper and Wm. E. Dodge come down on all the bank stock and government
+securities and railroad companies and great business houses of America!
+
+Again, this Barzillai of the nineteenth century shows us a more sensible
+way of monumental and epitaphal commemoration. It is natural to want to
+be remembered. It would not be a pleasant thought to us or to any one to
+feel that the moment you are out of the world you would be forgotten. If
+the executors of Peter Cooper should build on his grave a monument that
+would cost $20,000,000, it would not so well commemorate him as that
+monument at the junction of Third and Fourth Avenues, New York. How few
+people would pass along the silent sepulcher as compared with those
+great numbers that will ebb and flow around Cooper Institute in the ages
+to come! Of the tens of thousands to be educated there, will there be
+one so stupid as not to know who built it, and what a great heart he
+had, and how he struggled to achieve a fortune, but always mastered that
+fortune, and never allowed the fortune to master him? What is a monument
+of Aberdeen granite beside a monument of intellect and souls? What is an
+epitaph of a few words cut by a sculptor's chisel beside the epitaph of
+coming generations and hundreds writing his praise? Beautiful and
+adorned beyond all the crypts and catacombs and shrines of the dead! But
+the superfluous and inexcusable expense of catafalque and sarcophagus
+and tumulus and necropolis the world over, put into practical help,
+would have sent intelligence into every dark mind and provided a home
+for every wanderer. The pyramids of Egypt, elevated at vast expense,
+were the tombs of kings--their names now obliterated. But the monuments
+of good last forever. After "Old Mortality" has worn out his chisel in
+reviving the epitaphs on old tombstones, the names of those who have
+helped others will be held in everlasting remembrance. The fires of the
+Judgment Day will not crumble off one of the letters. The Sabbath-school
+teacher builds her monument in the heavenly thrones of her converted
+scholars. Geo. Mueller's monument is the orphan-houses of England.
+Handel's monument was his "Hallelujah Chorus." Peabody's monument, the
+library of his native village and the schools for educating the blacks
+in the South. They who give or pray for a church have their monument in
+all that sacred edifice ever accomplishes. John Jay had his monument in
+free America. Wilberforce his monument in the piled up chains of a
+demolished slave trade. Livingstone shall have his monument in
+regenerated Africa. Peter Cooper has his monument in all the
+philanthropies which for the last quarter of a century he encouraged by
+his one great practical effort for the education of the common people.
+That is a fame worth having. That is a style of immortality for which
+any one without degradation may be ambitious. Fill all our cities with
+such monuments till the last cripple has his limb straightened, and the
+last inebriate learns the luxury of cold water, and the last outcast
+comes home to his God, and the last abomination is extirpated, and
+"Paradise Lost" has become "Paradise Regained."
+
+But notice, also, that the longest life-path has a terminus. What a
+gauntlet to run--the accidents, the epidemics, the ailments of
+ninety-two years! It seemed as if this man would live on forever. His
+life reached from the administration of George Washington to that of
+President Arthur. But the liberal hand is closed, and the beaming eye is
+shut, and the world-encompassing heart is still. When he was at my
+house, I felt I was entertaining a king. But the king is dead, and we
+learn that the largest volume of life has its last chapter, its last
+paragraph, and its last word. What are ninety-two years compared with
+the years that open the first page of the future? For that let us be
+ready. Christ came to reconstruct us for usefulness, happiness, and
+heaven.
+
+I know not the minutiae of Peter Cooper's religious opinions. Some men
+are worse than their creed, and some are better. The grandest profession
+of Jesus Christ is a life devoted to the world's elevation and
+betterment. A man may have a membership in all the orthodox Churches in
+Christendom, and yet, if he be mean and selfish and careless about the
+world's condition, he is no Christian; while, on the other hand, though
+he may have many peculiarities of belief, if he live for others more
+than for himself, he is Christ-like, and, I think, he must be a
+Christian. But let us remember that the greatest philanthropist of the
+ages was Jesus Christ, and the greatest charity ever known was that
+which gave not its dollars, but its blood, for the purchase of the
+world's deliverance. Standing in the shadow of Peter Cooper's death, I
+pray God that all the resources of America may be consecrated. We are
+coming on to times of prosperity that this country never imagined.
+Perhaps here and there a few years of recoil or set-back, but God only
+can estimate the wealth that is about to roll into the lap of this
+nation. Between five years ago, when I visited the South, and my recent
+visit, there has been a change for the better that amounts to a
+resurrection. The Chattahoochee is about to rival the Merrimac in
+manufactures, and the whole South is being filled with the dash of
+water-wheels and the rattle of spindles. Atlanta has already $6,000,000
+invested in manufactures. The South has gone out of politics into
+business. The West, from its inexhaustible mines, is going to, disgorge
+silver and gold, and pour the treasure all over the nation. May God
+sanctify the coming prosperity of the people. The needs are as awful as
+the opulence is to be tremendous. In 1880 there were 5,000,000 people
+over ten years of age in the United States that could not read, and over
+6,000,000 who could not write, and nearly 2,000,000 of the voters. We
+want 5,000 Cooper Institutes and churches innumerable, and just one
+spiritual awakening, but that reaching from the St. Lawrence to Key
+West, and from Barnegat Light-house to the Golden Gate. We can all
+somewhere be felt in the undertaking. I like the sentiment and the
+rhythm of some anonymous poet, who wrote:
+
+    "When I am dead and gone,
+    And the mold upon my breast,
+    Say not that he did well or ill,
+    Only 'He did his best.'"
+        --DR. TALMAGE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+GOODNESS.
+
+
+    Goodness needs no lure:
+    All compensations are in her enshrined,
+    Whatever things are right and fair and pure,
+    Wealth of the heart and mind.
+
+    Failure and Success,
+    The Day and Night of every life below,
+    Are but the servants of her blessedness,
+    That come and spend and go.
+
+    Life is her reward,
+    A life brim-full, in every day's employ,
+    Of sunshine, inspiration, every word
+    And syllable of joy.
+
+    Heaven to thee is known,
+    If Goodness in the robes of common earth
+    Becomes a presence thou canst call thine own,
+    To warm thy heart and hearth.
+
+    Clothed in flesh and blood,
+    She flits about me every blessed day,
+    The incarnation of sweet womanhood;
+    And age brings no decay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+ILLUSIONS
+
+
+"THEREFORE TRUST TO THY HEART, AND WHAT THE WORLD CALLS
+ILLUSIONS."--LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+This curious sentence of Longfellow's deserves reading again. He is an
+earnest man, and does not mean to cheat us; he has done good work in the
+world by his poems and writings; he has backed up many, and lifted the
+hearts of many, by pure thought; he means what he says. Yet, what is
+altogether lighter than vanity? The human heart, answers the
+religionist. What is altogether deceitful upon the scales? The human
+heart. What is a Vanity Fair, a mob, a hubbub and babel of noises, to be
+avoided, shunned, hated? The world. And, lastly, what are our thoughts
+and struggles, vain ideas, and wishes? Vain, empty illusions, shadows,
+and lies. And yet this man, with the inspiration which God gives every
+true poet, tells us to trust to our _hearts_, and what the world calls
+_illusions_. And he is right.
+
+Now there are, of course, various sorts of illusions. The world is
+itself illusive. None of us are exactly what we seem; and many of those
+things that we have the firmest faith in really do not exist. When the
+first philosopher declared that the world was round, and not a plane as
+flat and circular as a dinner-plate or a halfpenny, people laughed at
+him, and would have shut him up in a lunatic asylum. They said he had an
+"illusion;" but it was they who had it. He was so bold as to start the
+idea that we had people under us, and that the sun went to light them,
+and that they walked with their feet to our feet. So they do, we know
+well now; but the pope and cardinals would not have it, and so they met
+in solemn conclave, and ordered the philosopher's book to be burnt, and
+they would have burnt him, too, in their hardly logical way of saving
+souls, only he recanted, and, sorely against his will, said that it was
+all an "illusion." But the pope and his advisers had an illusion, too,
+which was, that dressing up men who did not believe in their faith, in
+garments on which flames and devils were represented--such a garment
+they called a _san benito_--and then burning them, was really something
+done for the glory of God. They called it with admirable satire an _auto
+da fe_ (an "act of faith"), and they really did believe--for many of the
+inquisitors were mistaken but tender men--that they did good by this;
+but surely now they have outgrown this illusion. How many of these have
+we yet to outgrow; how far are we off the true and liberal Christianity
+which is the ideal of the saint and sage; how ready are we still to
+persecute those who happen, by mere circumstances attending their birth
+and education, to differ from us!
+
+The inner world of man, no less than the external world, is full of
+illusions. They arise from distorted vision, from a disorder of the
+senses, or from an error of judgment upon data correctly derived from
+their evidence. Under the influence of a predominant train of thought,
+an absorbing emotion, a person ready charged with an uncontrolled
+imagination will see, as Shakspeare has it--
+
+    "More devils than vast hell can hold."
+
+Half, if not all, of the ghost stories, which are equally dangerous and
+absorbing to youth, arise from illusion--there they have their
+foundation; but believers in them obstinately refuse to believe anything
+but that which their overcharged and predisposed imagination leads them
+to. Some of us walk about this world of ours--as if it were not of
+itself full enough of mystery--as ready to swallow any thing wonderful
+or horrible, as the country clown whom a conjurer will get upon his
+stage to play tricks with. Fooled by a redundant imagination, delighted
+to be tricked by her potency, we dream away, flattered by the idea that
+a supernatural messenger is sent to us, and to us alone. We all have our
+family ghosts, in whom we more than half believe. Each one of us has a
+mother or a wise aunt, or some female relation, who, at one period of
+her life, had a dream, difficult to be interpreted, and foreboding good
+or evil to a child of the house.
+
+We are so grand, we men, "noble animals, great in our deaths and
+splendid even in our ashes," that we can not yield to a common fate
+without some overstrained and bombast conceit that the elements
+themselves give warning. Casca, in "Julius Caesar," rehearses some few
+of the prodigies which predicted Caesar's death:
+
+    "A common slave (you know him well by sight)
+    Held up his left hand, which did flame, and burn
+    Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
+    Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched....
+    And, yesterday, the bird of night did sit,
+    Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
+    Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
+    Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
+    '_These are their reasons--they are natural_;
+    For, I believe, they are portentous things."
+
+A great many others besides our good Casca believe in these portents and
+signs, and their dignity would be much hurt if they were persuaded that
+the world would go on just the same if they and their family were
+utterly extinct, and that no eclipse would happen to portend that
+calamity. In Ireland, in certain great families, a Banshee, or a
+_Benshee_, for they differ who spell it, sits and wails all night when
+the head of the family is about to stretch his feet towards the dim
+portals of the dead; and in England are many families who, by some
+unknown means, retain a ghost which walks up and down a terrace, as it
+did in that fanciful habitation of Sir Leicester Dedlock. In Scotland,
+they have amongst them prophetic shepherds, who, on the cold, misty
+mountain top, at eventide, shade their shaggy eyebrows with their hands,
+and, peering into the twilight, see funerals pass by, and the decease of
+some neighbor portended by all the paraphernalia of death.
+
+With us all these portents "live no longer in the faith of Reason;" we
+assert, in Casca's words, that "they are natural;" but we offend the
+credulous when we do so. "Illusions of the senses," says an acute
+writer, "are common in our appreciation of form, distance, color, and
+motion; and also from a lack of comprehension of the physical powers of
+Nature, in the production of images of distinct objects. A stick in the
+water appears bent or broken; the square tower at the distance looks
+round; distant objects appear to move when we are in motion; the
+heavenly bodies appear to revolve round the earth." And yet we know that
+all these appearances are mere illusions. At the top of a mountain in
+Ireland, with our back to the sun, we, two travelers, were looking at
+the smiling landscape gilded by the sunshine; suddenly a white cloud
+descended between us and the valley, and there upon it were our two
+shadows, distorted, gigantic, threatening or supplicatory, as we chose
+to move and make them. Here was an exactly similar apparition to the
+Specter of the Brocken. The untaught German taxed his wits to make the
+thing a ghost; but the philosopher took off his hat and bowed to it, and
+the shadow returned the salute; and so with the Fata Morgana, and the
+mirage. We now know that these things had no supernatural origin, but
+are simply due to the ordinary laws of atmospheric influence and light;
+so all our modern illusions are easily rectified by the judgment, and
+are fleeting and transitory in the minds of the sane.
+
+But, beyond these, there are the illusions of which we first spoke, from
+which we would not willingly be awakened. The sick man in Horace, who
+fancied that he was always sitting at a play, and laughed and joked, or
+was amazed and wept as they do in a theater, rightly complained to his
+friends that they had killed him, not cured him, when they roused him
+from his state of hallucination. There are some illusions so beautiful,
+so healthful, and so pleasant, that we would that no harshness of this
+world's ways, no bitter experience, no sad reality, could awaken us from
+them. It is these, we fancy, that the poet tells us to trust to; such
+are the illusions--so-called by the world--to which we are always to
+give our faith. It will be well if we do so. Faith in man or woman is a
+comfortable creed; but you will scarcely find a man of thirty, or a
+woman either, who retains it. They will tell you bitterly "they have
+been so deceived!" One old gentleman we know, deceived, and ever again
+to be deceived, who is a prey to false friends, who lends his money
+without surety and gets robbed, who fell in love and was jilted, who has
+done much good and has been repaid with much evil. This man is much to
+be envied. He can, indeed, "trust in his heart and what the world calls
+illusions." To him the earth is yet green and fresh, the world smiling
+and good-humored, friends are fast and loving, woman a very well-spring
+of innocent and unbought love. The world thinks him an old simpleton;
+but he is wiser than the world. He is not to be scared by sad proverbs,
+nor frightened by dark sayings. An enviable man, he sits, in the evening
+of life, loving and trusting his fellow-men, and, from the mere
+freshness of his character, having many gathered round him whom he can
+still love and trust.
+
+With another sort of philosophers all around is mere illusion, and the
+mind of man shall in no way be separated from it; from the beginning to
+the end it is all the same. Our organization, they would have us
+believe, creates most of our pleasure and our pain. Life is in itself an
+ecstasy. "Life is as sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman, dripping
+all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the railway intersection, the
+farmer in the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street,
+the hunter in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the
+ball--all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment which they
+themselves give to it. Health and appetite impart the sweetness to
+sugar, bread, and meat." So fancy plays with us; but, while she tricks
+us, she blesses us. The mere prosaic man, who strips the tinsel from
+every thing, who sneers at a bridal and gladdens at a funeral; who tests
+every coin and every pleasure, and tells you that it has not the true
+ring; who checks capering Fancy and stops her caracoling by the whip of
+reality, is not to be envied. "In the life of the dreariest alderman,
+Fancy enters into all details, and colors them with a rosy hue," says
+Emerson. "He imitates the air and action of people whom he admires, and
+is raised in his own eyes.... In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San
+Francisco, the masquerade is at its height. Nobody drops his domino. The
+chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint; nay, God is the
+painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many
+illusions."
+
+Happy are they with whom this domino is never completely dropped! Happy,
+thrice happy, they who believe, and still maintain that belief, like
+champion knights, against all comers, in honor, chastity, friendship,
+goodness, virtue, gratitude. It is a long odds that the men who do not
+believe in these virtues have none themselves; for we speak from our
+hearts, and we tell of others that which we think of ourselves. The
+French, a mournful, sad, and unhappy nation--even at the bottom of all
+their external gaiety--have a sad word, a participle, _desillusionne_,
+disillusioned; and by it they mean one who has worn out all his youthful
+ideas, who has been behind the scenes, and has seen the bare walls of
+the theater, without the light and paint, and has watched the ugly
+actors and gaunt actresses by daylight. The taste of life is very bitter
+in the mouth of such a man; his joys are Dead Sea apples--dust and ashes
+in the mouths of those who bite them. No flowers spring up about his
+path; he is very melancholy and suspicious, very hard and incredulous;
+he has faith neither in the honesty of man nor in the purity of woman.
+He is _desillusionne_--by far too wise to be taken in with painted toys.
+Every one acts with self-interest! His doctor, his friend, or his valet
+will be sorry for his death merely from the amount of money interest
+that they have in his life. Bare and grim unto tears, even if he had
+any, is the life of such a man. With him, sadder than Lethe or the Styx,
+the river of time runs between stony banks, and, often a calm suicide,
+it bears him to the Morgue. Happier by far is he who, with whitened hair
+and wrinkled brow, sits crowned with the flowers of illusion; and who,
+with the ear of age, still remains a charmed listener to the songs which
+pleased his youth, trusting "his heart and what the world calls
+illusions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+PHILLIPS BROOKS
+
+
+AT HOME.
+
+
+Phillips Brooks at home, of course, means Phillips Brooks in Trinity
+Church, Boston. Other than his church, home proper he has none, for he
+abides a bachelor.
+
+And somehow it seems almost fit that a man like Mr. Brooks, a man so
+ample, so overflowing; a man, as it were, more than sufficient to
+himself, sufficient also to a multitude of others, should have his home
+large and public; such a home, in fact, as Trinity Church. Here Phillips
+Brooks shines like a sun--diffusing warmth and light and life. What a
+blessing to what a number! To what a number of souls, it would have been
+natural to say; but, almost as natural, to what a number of bodies! For
+the physical man is a source of comfort, in its kind, hardly less so
+than the intellectual and the spiritual. How that massive, majestic
+manhood makes temperature where it is, and what temperature! Broad,
+equable, temperate, calm; yet tonic, withal, and inspiring. You rejoice
+in it. You have an irrational feeling that it would be a wrong to shut
+up so much opulence of personal vitality in any home less wide and open
+than a great basilica like Trinity Church. At least, you are not pained
+with sympathy for homelessness in the case of a man so richly endowed.
+To be so pained would be like shivering on behalf of the sun, because,
+forsooth, the sun had nothing to make him warm and bright. Phillips
+Brooks in Trinity Church is like the sun in its sphere. Still, and were
+it not impertinent, I could even wish for Phillips Brooks an every-day
+home, such as would be worthy of him. What a home it should be! And with
+thus much of loyal, if of doubtfully appropriate tribute, irresistibly
+prompted, and therefore not to be repressed, let me go on to speak of
+Phillips Brooks as he is to be seen and heard Sunday after Sunday at
+home in Trinity Church.
+
+Every body knows how magnificent an edifice, with its arrested tower yet
+waiting and probably long to wait completion, Trinity Church is. The
+interior is decorated almost to the point of gorgeousness. The effect,
+however, is imposing for "the height, the glow, the glory." Good taste
+reigning over lavish expenditure has prevented chromatic richness from
+seeming to approach tawdriness. It is much to say for any man preaching
+here that the building does not make him look disproportionate,
+inadequate. This may strongly be said for Phillips Brooks. But even for
+him it can not be said that the form and construction of the interior do
+not oppose a serious embarrassment to the proper effect of oratory. I
+could not help feeling it to be a great wrong to the truth, or, to put
+it personally, a great wrong to the preacher and to his hearers, that an
+audience-room should be so broken up with pillars, angles, recesses, so
+sown with contrasts of light and shade, as necessarily, inevitably, to
+disperse and waste an immense fraction of the power exerted by the
+preacher, whatever the measure, great or small, of that power might be.
+The reaction of this audience-room upon the oratorical instinct and
+habit of the man who should customarily speak in it could not but be
+mischievous in a very high degree. The sense, which ought to live in
+every public speaker, of his being fast bound in a grapple of mind to
+mind, and heart to heart, and soul to soul, with his audience, must be
+oppressed, if not extinguished, amid such architectural conditions as
+those which surround Phillips Brooks when he stands to preach. That in
+him this needful sense is not extinguished is a thing to be thankful
+for. That it is, in fact, oppressed, I can not doubt. There is evidence
+of it, I think, in his manner of preaching. For Mr. Brooks is not an
+orator such as Mr. Beecher is. He does not speak _to_ people _with_
+people, as Mr. Beecher does; rather he speaks _before_ them, in their
+presence. He soliloquizes. There is almost a minimum of mutual relation
+between speaker and hearer. Undoubtedly the swift, urgent monologue is
+quickened, reinforced, by the consciousness of an audience present. That
+consciousness, of course, penetrates to the mind of the speaker. But it
+does not dominate the speaker's mind; it does not turn monologue into
+dialogue; the speech is monologue still.
+
+This is not invariably the case; for, occasionally, the preacher turns
+his noble face toward you, and for that instant you feel the aim of his
+discourse leveled full at your personality. Now there is a glimpse of
+true oratorical power. But the glimpse passes quickly. The countenance
+is again directed forward toward a horizon, or even lifted toward a
+quarter of the sky above the horizon, and the but momentarily
+interrupted rapt soliloquy proceeds.
+
+Such I understand to have been the style of Robert Hall's pulpit speech.
+It is a rare gift to be a speaker of this sort. The speaker must be a
+thinker as well as a speaker. The speech is, in truth, a process of
+thinking aloud--thinking accelerated, exhilarated, by the vocal exercise
+accompanying, and then, too, by the blindfold sense of a listening
+audience near. This is the preaching of Mr. Brooks.
+
+It is, perhaps, not generally known that Mr. Brooks practices two
+distinct methods of preaching: one, that with the manuscript; the other,
+that without. The last time that I had the chance of a Sunday in Trinity
+Church was Luther's day. The morning discourse was a luminous and
+generous appreciation of the great reformer's character and work. This
+was read in that rapid, vehement, incessant manner which description has
+made sufficiently familiar to the public. The precipitation of utterance
+is like the flowing forth of the liquid contents of a bottle suddenly
+inverted; every word seems hurrying to be foremost. The unaccustomed
+hearer is at first left hopelessly in the rear; but presently the
+contagion of the speaker's rushing thought reaches him, and he is drawn
+into the wake of that urgent ongoing; he is towed along in the great
+multitudinous convoy that follows the mighty motor-vessel, steaming,
+unconscious of the weight it bears, across the sea of thought. The
+energy is sufficient for all; it overflows so amply that you scarcely
+feel it not to be your own energy. The writing is like in character to
+the speaking--continuous, no break, no shock, no rest, not much change
+of swifter and slower till the end. The apparent mass of the speaker,
+physical and mental, might at first seem equal to making up a full,
+adequate momentum without multiplication by such a component of
+velocity; but by-and-by you come to feel that the motion is a necessary
+part of the power. I am told, indeed, that a constitutional tendency to
+hesitation in utterance is the speaker's real reason for this indulged
+precipitancy of speech. Not unlikely; but the final result of habit is
+as if of nature.
+
+Of the discourse itself on Luther, I have left myself room to say no
+more than that Mr. Brooks's master formula for power in the preacher,
+truth plus personality, came very fitly in to explain the problem of
+Luther's prodigious career. It was the man himself, not less than the
+truth he found, that gave Luther such possession of the present and such
+a heritage in the future.
+
+In the afternoon, Mr. Brooks took Luther's "The just shall live by
+faith," and preached extemporarily. The character of the composition and
+of the delivery was strikingly the same as that belonging to morning's
+discourse. It was hurried, impetuous soliloquy; in this particular case
+hurried first, and then impetuous. That is, I judged from various little
+indications that Mr. Brooks used his will to urge himself on against
+some obstructiveness felt in the current mood and movement of his mind.
+But it was a noteworthy discourse, full and fresh with thought. The
+interpretation put upon Luther's doctrine of justification by faith was
+free rather than historic. If one should apply the formula, truth plus
+personality, the personality--Mr. Brooks's personality--would perhaps be
+found to prevail in the interpretation over the strict historic
+truth.--W.C. WILKINSON _in The Christian Union_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+SAINT JOHN AND THE ROBBER.
+
+
+A LEGEND OF THE FIRST CENTURY.
+
+
+    There is a beautiful legend
+     Come down from ancient time,
+    Of John, the beloved disciple,
+     With the marks of his life sublime.
+
+    Eusebius has the story
+     On his quaint, suggestive page;
+    And God in the hearts of his people
+     Has preserved it from age to age.
+
+    It was after the vision in Patmos,
+     After the sanctified love
+    Which flowed to the Seven Churches,
+     Glowing with light from above:
+
+    When his years had outrun the measure
+     Allotted to men at the best,
+    And Peter and James and the others
+     Had followed the Master to rest,
+
+    In the hope of the resurrection,
+     And the blessed life to come
+    In the house of many mansions,
+     The Father's eternal home;
+
+    It was in this golden season,
+     At the going down of his sun,
+    When his work in the mighty harvest
+     Of the Lord was almost done;
+
+    At Ephesus came a message,
+     Where he was still at his post,
+    Which unto the aged Apostle
+     Was the voice of the Holy Ghost.
+
+    Into the country he hastened
+     With all the ardor of youth,
+    Shod with the preparation
+     Of the Gospel of peace and truth.
+
+    His mission was one of mercy
+     To the sheep that were scattered abroad,
+    And abundant consolation,
+     Which flowed through him from the Lord.
+
+    O, would my heart could paint him,
+     The venerable man of God,
+    So lovingly showing and treading
+     The way the Master had trod!
+
+    O, would my art could paint him,
+     Whose life was a fact to prove
+    The joy of the Master's story,
+     And fill their hearts with his love!
+
+    At length, when the service was ended,
+     His eye on a young man fell,
+    Of beautiful form and feature,
+     And grace we love so well.
+
+    At once he turned to the bishop,
+     And said with a love unpriced,
+    "To thee, to thee I commit him
+     Before the Church and Christ."
+
+    He then returned to the city,
+     The beloved disciple, John,
+    Where the strong unceasing current
+     Of his deathless love flowed on.
+
+    The bishop discharged his duty
+     To the youth so graceful and fair;
+    With restraining hand he held him,
+     And trained him with loving care.
+
+    At last, when his preparation
+     Was made for the holy rite,
+    He was cleansed in the sanctified water,
+     And pronounced a child of light.
+
+    For a time he adorned the doctrine
+     Which Christ in the Church has set.
+    But, alas! for a passionate nature
+     When Satan has spread his net!
+
+    Through comrades base and abandoned
+     He was lured from day to day,
+    Until, like a steed unbridled,
+     He struck from the rightful way;
+
+    And a wild consuming passion
+     Raised him unto the head
+    Of a mighty band of robbers,
+     Of all the country the dread.
+
+    Time passed. Again a message
+     Unto the Apostle was sent,
+    To set their affairs in order,
+     And tell them the Lord's intent.
+
+    And when he had come and attended
+     To all that needed his care,
+    He turned him and said, "Come, Bishop,
+     Give back my deposit so rare."
+
+    "What deposit?" was the answer,
+     Which could not confusion hide.
+    "I demand the soul of a brother,"
+     Plainly the Apostle replied,
+
+    "Which Christ and I committed
+     Before the Church to thee."
+    Trembling and even weeping,
+     "The young man is dead," groaned he.
+
+    "How dead? What death?" John demanded.
+     "He the way of the tempter trod,
+    Forgetting the Master's weapon,
+     And now he is dead unto God.
+
+    Yonder he roves a robber."
+     "A fine keeper," said John, "indeed,
+    Of a brother's soul. Get ready
+     A guide and a saddled steed."
+
+    And all as he was the Apostle
+     Into the region rode
+    Where the robber youth and captain
+     Had fixed his strong abode.
+
+    When hardly over the border,
+     He a prisoner was made,
+    And into their leader's presence
+     Demanded to be conveyed.
+
+    And he who could brave a thousand
+     When each was an enemy,
+    Beholding John approaching,
+     Turned him in shame to flee.
+
+    But John, of his age forgetful,
+     Pursued him with all his might.
+    "Why from thy defenseless father,"
+     He cried, "dost thou turn in flight?
+
+    Fear not; there is hope and a refuge,
+     And life shall yet be thine.
+    I will intercede with the Master
+     And task His love divine."
+
+    Subdued by love that is stronger
+     Than was ever an armed band,
+    He became once more to the Father
+     A child to feel for His hand.
+
+    Subdued by a love that is stronger
+     Than a world full of terrors and fears,
+    He returned to the House of the Father
+     Athrough the baptism of tears.
+
+    Such is the beautiful legend
+     Come down from ancient days,
+    Of love that is young forever;
+     And is he not blind who says
+
+    That charity ever faileth,
+     Or doth for a moment despair,
+    Or that there is any danger
+     Too great for her to dare;
+
+    When John, the beloved disciple,
+     With the faith of the Gospel shod,
+    Went forth in pursuit of the robber,
+     And brought him back to God?
+
+    O Church, whose strength is the doctrine
+     Of the blessed Evangelist,
+    This doctrine of love undying
+     Which the world can not resist!
+
+    Put on thy beautiful garments
+     In this sordid and selfish day,
+    And be as of old a glory
+     To turn us from Mammon away;
+
+    Until to the prayer of thy children,
+     The sweetly simple prayer,
+    That bathed in the light of Heaven
+     Thy courts may grow more fair,
+
+    There comes the eternal answer
+     Of works that are loving and grand,
+    To remain for the generations
+     The praises of God in the land.
+
+    O Church, whose strength is the doctrine
+     Of the blessed Evangelist,
+    The doctrine of love undying
+     Which the world can not resist!
+
+    Go forth to the highways and hedges
+     To gather the sheep that are lost,
+    Conveying the joyful tidings,
+     Their redemption at infinite cost.
+
+    Proclaim there is hope and a refuge
+     For every wanderer there;
+    For every sin there is mercy--
+     Yea, even the sin of despair!
+
+    O, then will thy beautiful garments,
+     As once in the prime of thy youth,
+    Appear in celestial splendor,
+     Thou pillar and ground of the Truth!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+JOHN PLOUGHMAN AGAIN
+
+
+THE PITH AND MARROW OF CERTAIN OLD PROVERBS.
+
+
+The Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, of London, who has furnished our readers with
+several specimens of "John Ploughman's Talk," has also published "John
+Ploughman's Pictures," some of which we present in pen and ink, without
+any help from the engraver. John thus introduces himself:
+
+
+IF THE CAP FITS, WEAR IT.
+
+
+Friendly Readers: Last time I made a book I trod on some people's corns
+and bunions, and they wrote me angry letters, asking, "Did you mean me?"
+This time, to save them the expense of a halfpenny card, I will begin my
+book by saying--
+
+    Whether I please or whether I tease,
+     I'll give you my honest mind;
+    If the cap should fit, pray wear it a bit;
+     If not, you can leave it behind.
+
+No offense is meant; but if any thing in these pages should come home to
+a man, let him not send it next door, but get a coop for his own
+chickens. What is the use of reading or hearing for other people? We do
+not eat and drink for them: why should we lend them our ears and not our
+mouths? Please then, good friend, if you find a hoe on these premises,
+weed your own garden with it.
+
+I was speaking with Will Shepherd the other day about our master's old
+donkey, and I said, "He is so old and stubborn, he really is not worth
+his keep." "No," said Will, "and worse still, he is so vicious that I
+feel sure he'll do somebody a mischief one of these days." You know they
+say that walls have ears; we were talking rather loud, but we did not
+know that there were ears to haystacks. We stared, I tell you, when we
+saw Joe Scroggs come from behind the stack, looking as red as a
+turkey-cock, and raving like mad. He burst out swearing at Will and me,
+like a cat spitting at a dog. His monkey was up and no mistake. He'd let
+us know that he was as good a man as either of us, or the two put
+together, for the matter of that. Talk about _him_ in that way; he'd
+do--I don't know what. I told old Joe we had never thought of him nor
+said a word about him, and he might just as well save his breath to cool
+his porridge, for nobody meant him any harm. This only made him call me
+a liar and roar the louder. My friend Will was walking away, holding his
+sides; but when he saw that Scroggs was still in a fume, he laughed
+outright, and turned round on him and said, "Why, Joe, we were talking
+about master's old donkey, and not about you; but, upon my word, I shall
+never see that donkey again without thinking of Joe Scroggs." Joe puffed
+and blowed, but perhaps he thought it an awkward job, for he backed out
+of it, and Will and I went off to our work in rather a merry cue, for
+old Joe had blundered on the truth about himself for once in his life.
+
+The aforesaid Will Shepherd has sometimes come down rather heavy upon me
+in his remarks, but it has done me good. It is partly through his
+home-thrusts that I have come to write this new book, for he thought I
+was idle; perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not. Will forgets that I have
+other fish to fry and tails to butter; and he does not recollect that a
+ploughman's mind wants to lie fallow a little, and can't give a crop
+every year. It is hard to make rope when your hemp is all used up, or
+pancakes without batter, or rook pie without the birds; and so I found
+it hard to write more when I had said just about all I knew. Giving much
+to the poor doth increase a man's store, but it is not the same with
+writing; at least, I am such a poor scribe that I don't find it come
+because I pull. If your thoughts only flow by drops, you can't pour them
+out in bucketfuls.
+
+However, Will has ferreted me out, and I am obliged to him so far. I
+told him the other day what the winkle said to the pin: "Thank you for
+drawing me out, but you are rather sharp about it." Still, Master Will
+is not far from the mark: after three hundred thousand people had bought
+my book it certainly was time to write another. So, though I am not a
+hatter, I will again turn capmaker, and those who have heads may try on
+my wares; those who have none won't touch them. So, friends, I am,
+
+    Yours, rough and ready, JOHN PLOUGHMAN.
+
+
+BURN A CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS, AND IT WILL SOON BE GONE.
+
+
+Well may he scratch his head who burns his candle at both ends; but do
+what he may, his light will soon be gone and he will be all in the dark.
+Young Jack Careless squandered his property, and now he is without a
+shoe to his foot. His was a case of "easy come, easy go; soon gotten,
+soon spent." He that earns an estate will keep it better than he that
+inherits it. As the Scotchman says, "He that gets gear before he gets
+wit is but a short time master of it," and so it was with Jack. His
+money burned holes in his pocket. He could not get rid of it fast enough
+himself, and so he got a pretty set to help him, which they did by
+helping themselves. His fortune went like a pound of meat in a kennel of
+hounds. He was every body's friend, and now he is every body's fool.
+
+
+HUNCHBACK SEES NOT HIS OWN HUMP, BUT HE SEES HIS NEIGHBOR'S.
+
+
+He points at the man in front of him, but he is a good deal more of a
+guy himself. He should not laugh at the crooked until he is straight
+himself, and not then. I hate to hear a raven croak at a crow for being
+black. A blind man should not blame his brother for squinting, and he
+who has lost his legs should not sneer at the lame. Yet so it is, the
+rottenest bough cracks first, and he who should be the last to speak is
+the first to rail. Bespattered hogs bespatter others, and he who is full
+of fault finds fault. They are most apt to speak ill of others who do
+most ill themselves.
+
+We may chide a friend, and so prove our friendship, but it must be done
+very daintily, or we may lose our friend for our pains. Before we rebuke
+another we must consider, and take heed that we are not guilty of the
+same thing, for he who cleanses a blot with inky fingers makes it worse.
+To despise others is a worse fault than any we are likely to see in
+them, and to make merry over their weaknesses shows our own weakness and
+our own malice too. Wit should be a shield for defense, and not a sword
+for offense. A mocking word cuts worse than a scythe, and the wound is
+harder to heal. A blow is much sooner forgotten than a jeer. Mocking is
+shocking.
+
+
+A LOOKING-GLASS IS OF NO USE TO A BLIND MAN.
+
+
+Some men are blinded by their worldly business, and could not see heaven
+itself if the windows were open over their heads. Look at farmer Grab,
+he is like Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversation is all among beasts, and
+if he does not eat grass it is because he never could stomach salads.
+His dinner is his best devotion; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of
+beef, and sweats at it more than at his labor. As old Master Earle says:
+"His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his
+landlord, and refers wholly to his lordship's discretion. If he gives
+him leave, he goes to church in his best clothes, and sits there with
+his neighbors, but never prays more than two prayers--for rain and for
+fair weather, as the case may be. He is a niggard all the week, except
+on market-days, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk
+with a good conscience. He is sensible of no calamity but the burning of
+a stack of corn, or the overflowing of a meadow, and he thinks Noah's
+flood the greatest plague that ever was, not because it drowned the
+world, but spoiled the grass. For death he is never troubled, and if he
+gets in his harvest before it happens, it may come when it will, he
+cares not." He is as stubborn as he is stupid, and to get a new thought
+into his head you would need to bore a hole in his skull with a
+center-bit. The game would not be worth the candle. We must leave him
+alone, for he is too old in the tooth, and too blind to be made to see.
+
+
+DON'T CUT OFF YOUR NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE.
+
+
+Anger is a short madness. The less we do when we go mad the better for
+every body, and the less we go mad the better for ourselves. He is far
+gone who hurts himself to wreak his vengeance on others. The old saying
+is: "Don't cut off your head because it aches," and another says: "Set
+not your house on fire to spite the moon." If things go awry, it is a
+poor way of mending to make them worse, as the man did who took to
+drinking because he could not marry the girl he liked. He must be a fool
+who cuts off his nose to spite his face, and yet this is what Dick did
+when he had vexed his old master, and because he was chid must needs
+give up his place, throw himself out of work, and starve his wife and
+family. Jane had been idle, and she knew it, but sooner than let her
+mistress speak to her, she gave warning, and lost as good a service as a
+maid could wish for. Old Griggs was wrong, and could not deny it, and
+yet because the parson's sermon fitted him rather close he took the
+sulks, and vowed he would never hear the good man again. It was his own
+loss, but he wouldn't listen to reason, but was as willful as a pig.
+
+
+IT IS HARD FOR AN EMPTY SACK TO STAND UPRIGHT.
+
+
+Sam may try a fine while before he will make one of his empty sacks
+stand upright. If he were not half daft he would have left off that job
+before he began it, and not have been an Irishman either. He will come
+to his wit's end before he sets the sack on its end. The old proverb,
+printed at the top, was made by a man who had burned his fingers with
+debtors, and it just means that when folks have no money and are over
+head and ears in debt, as often as not they leave off being upright, and
+tumble over one way or another. He that has but four and spends five
+will soon need no purse, but he will most likely begin to use his wits
+to keep himself afloat, and take to all sorts of dodges to manage it.
+
+Nine times out of ten they begin by making promises to pay on a certain
+day when it is certain they have nothing to pay with. They are as bold
+at fixing the time as if they had my lord's income; the day comes round
+as sure as Christmas, and then they haven't a penny-piece in the world,
+and so they make all sorts of excuses and begin to promise again. Those
+who are quick to promise are generally slow to perform. They promise
+mountains and perform mole-hills. He who gives you fair words and
+nothing more feeds you with an empty spoon, and hungry creditors soon
+grow tired of that game. Promises don't fill the belly. Promising men
+are not great favorites if they are not performing men. When such a
+fellow is called a liar he thinks he is hardly done by; and yet he is
+so, as sure as eggs are eggs, and there's no denying it, as the boy said
+when the gardener caught him up the cherry-tree.
+
+
+A HAND-SAW IS A GOOD THING, BUT NOT TO SHAVE WITH.
+
+
+Our friend will cut more than he will eat, and shave oft something more
+than hair, and then he will blame the saw. His brains don't lie in his
+beard, nor yet in the skull above it, or he would see that his saw will
+only make sores. There's sense in choosing your tools, for a pig's tail
+will never make a good arrow, nor will his ear make a silk purse. You
+can't catch rabbits with drums, nor pigeons with plums. A good thing is
+not good out of its place. It is much the same with lads and girls; you
+can't put all boys to one trade, nor send all girls to the same service.
+One chap will make a London clerk, and another will do better to plough,
+and sow, and reap, and mow, and be a farmer's boy. It's no use forcing
+them; a snail will never run a race, nor a mouse drive a wagon.
+
+    "Send a boy to the well against his will,
+    The pitcher will break, and the water spill."
+
+With unwilling hounds it is hard to hunt hares. To go against nature and
+inclination is to row against wind and tide. They say you may praise a
+fool till you make him useful. I don't know so much about that, but I do
+know that if I get a bad knife I generally cut my finger, and a blunt
+axe is more trouble than profit. No, let me shave with a razor if I
+shave at all, and do my work with the best tools I can get.
+
+Never set a man to work he is not fit for, for he will never do it well.
+They say that if pigs fly they always go with their tails forward, and
+awkward workmen are much the same. Nobody expects cows to catch crows,
+or hens to wear hats. There's reason in roasting eggs, and there should
+be reason in choosing servants. Don't put a round peg into a square
+hole, nor wind up your watch with a corkscrew, nor set a tender-hearted
+man to whip wife-beaters, nor a bear to be a relieving-officer, nor a
+publican to judge of the licensing laws. Get the right man in the right
+place, and then all goes as smooth as skates on ice; but the wrong man
+puts all awry, as the sow did when she folded the linen.
+
+
+TWO DOGS FIGHT FOR A BONE, AND A THIRD RUNS AWAY WITH IT.
+
+
+We have all heard of the two men who quarreled over an oyster, and
+called in a judge to settle the question; he ate the oyster himself, and
+gave them a shell each. This reminds me of the story of the cow which
+two farmers could not agree about, and so the lawyers stepped in and
+milked the cow for them, and charged them for their trouble in drinking
+the milk. Little is got by law, but much is lost by it. A suit in law
+may last longer than any suit a tailor can make you, and you may
+yourself be worn out before it comes to an end. It is better far to make
+matters up and keep out of court, for if you are caught there you are
+caught in the brambles, and won't get out without damage. John Ploughman
+feels a cold sweat at the thought of getting into the hands of lawyers.
+He does not mind going to Jericho, but he dreads the gentlemen on the
+road, for they seldom leave a feather upon any goose which they pick up.
+
+
+HE HAS A HOLE UNDER HIS NOSE. AND HIS MONEY RUNS INTO IT.
+
+
+This is the man who is always dry, because he takes so much heavy wet.
+He is a loose fellow who is fond of getting tight. He is no sooner up
+than his nose is in the cup, and his money begins to run down the hole
+which is just under his nose. He is not a blacksmith, but he has a spark
+in his throat, and all the publican's barrels can't put it out. If a pot
+of beer is a yard of land, he must have swallowed more acres than a
+ploughman could get over for many a day, and still he goes on swallowing
+until he takes to wallowing. All goes down Gutter Lane. Like the snipe,
+he lives by suction. If you ask him how he is, he says he would be quite
+right if he could moisten his mouth. His purse is a bottle, his bank is
+the publican's till, and his casket is a cask; pewter is his precious
+metal, and his pearl is a mixture of gin and beer. The dew of his youth
+comes from Ben Nevis, and the comfort of his soul is cordial gin. He is
+a walking barrel, a living drain-pipe, a moving swill-tub. They say
+"loath to drink and loath to leave off," but he never needs persuading
+to begin, and as to ending that is out of the question while he can
+borrow twopence.
+
+
+STICK TO IT AND DO IT.
+
+
+Set a stout heart to a stiff hill, and the wagon will get to the top of
+it. There's nothing so hard but a harder thing will get through it; a
+strong job can be managed by a strong resolution. Have at it and have
+it. Stick to it and succeed. Till a thing is done men wonder that you
+think it can be done, and when you have done it they wonder it was never
+done before.
+
+In my picture the wagon is drawn by two horses; but I would have every
+man who wants to make his way in life pull as if all depended on
+himself. Very little is done right when it is left to other people. The
+more hands to do work the less there is done. One man will carry two
+pails of water for himself; two men will only carry one pail between
+them, and three will come home with never a drop at all. A child with
+several mothers will die before it runs alone. Know your business and
+give your mind to it, and you will find a buttered loaf where a sluggard
+loses his last crust.
+
+
+LIKE CAT LIKE KIT.
+
+
+Most men are what their mothers made them. The father is away from home
+all day, and has not half the influence over the children that the
+mother has. The cow has most to do with the calf. If a ragged colt grows
+into a good horse, we know who it is that combed him. A mother is
+therefore a very responsible woman, even though she may be the poorest
+in the land, for the bad or the good of her boys and girls very much
+depends upon her. As is the gardener such is the garden, as is the wife
+such is the family. Samuel's mother made him a little coat every year,
+but she had done a deal for him before that; Samuel would not have been
+Samuel if Hannah had not been Hannah. We shall never see a better set of
+men till the mothers are better. We must have Sarahs and Rebekahs before
+we shall see Isaacs and Jacobs. Grace does not run in the blood, but we
+generally find that the Timothies have mothers of a goodly sort.
+
+Little children give their mother the headache, but if she lets them
+have their own way, when they grow up to be great children they will
+give her the heartache. Foolish fondness spoils many, and letting faults
+alone spoils more. Gardens that are never weeded will grow very little
+worth, gathering; all watering and no hoeing will make a bad crop. A
+child may have too much of its mother's love, and in the long run it may
+turn out that it had too little. Soft-hearted mothers rear soft-hearted
+children; they hurt them for life because they are afraid of hurting
+them when they are young. Coddle your children, and they will turn out
+noodles. You may sugar a child till every body is sick of it. Boys'
+jackets need a little dusting every now and then, and girls' dresses are
+all the better for occasional trimming. Children without chastisement
+are fields without ploughing. The very best colts want breaking in. Not
+that we like severity; cruel mothers are not mothers, and those who are
+always flogging and fault-finding ought to be flogged themselves. There
+is reason in all things, as the madman said when he cut off his nose.
+
+Good mothers are very dear to their children. There's no mother in the
+world like our own mother. My friend Sanders, from Glasgow, says, "The
+mither's breath is aye sweet." Every woman is a handsome woman to her
+own son. That man is not worth hanging who does not love his mother.
+When good women lead their little ones to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus
+blesses not only the children, but their mothers as well. Happy are they
+among women who see their sons and daughters walking in the truth.
+
+
+A BLACK HEN LAYS A WHITE EGG.
+
+
+The egg is white enough, though the hen is black as a coal. This is a
+very simple thing, but it has pleased the simple mind of John Ploughman,
+and made him cheer up when things have gone hard with him. Out of evil
+comes good, through the great goodness of God. From threatening clouds
+we get refreshing showers; in dark mines men find bright jewels; and so
+from our worst troubles come our best blessings. The bitter cold
+sweetens the ground, and the rough winds fasten the roots of the old
+oaks, God sends us letters of love in envelopes with black borders. Many
+a time have I plucked sweet fruit from bramble bushes, and taken lovely
+roses from among prickly thorns. Trouble is to believing men and women
+like the sweetbrier in our hedges, and where it grows there is a
+delicious smell all around, if the dew do but fall upon it from above.
+
+Cheer up, mates, all will come right in the end. The darkest night will
+turn to a fair morning in due time. Only let us trust in God, and keep
+our heads above the waves of fear. When our hearts are right with God
+every thing is right. Let us look for the silver which lines every
+cloud, and when we do not see it let us believe that it is there. We are
+all at school, and our great Teacher writes many a bright lesson on the
+blackboard of affliction. Scant fare teaches us to live on heavenly
+bread, sickness bids us send off for the good Physician, loss of friends
+makes Jesus more precious, and even the sinking of our spirits brings us
+to live more entirely upon God. All things are working together for the
+good of those who love God, and even death itself will bring them their
+highest gain. Thus the black hen lays a white egg.
+
+
+EVERY BIRD LIKES ITS OWN NEST.
+
+
+It pleases me to see how fond the birds are of their little homes. No
+doubt each one thinks his own nest is the very best; and so it is for
+him, just as my home is the best palace for me, even for me, King John,
+the king of the Cottage of Content. I will ask no more if Providence
+only continues to give me
+
+    "A little field well tilled,
+    A little house well filled,
+    And a little wife well willed."
+
+An Englishman's house is his castle, and the true Briton is always fond
+of the old roof-tree. Green grows the house-leek on the thatch, and
+sweet is the honeysuckle at the porch, and dear are the gilly-flowers in
+the front garden; but best of all is the good wife within, who keeps all
+as neat as a new pin. Frenchmen may live in their coffee-houses, but an
+Englishman's best life is seen at home.
+
+    "My own house, though small,
+    Is the best house of all."
+
+When boys get tired of eating tarts, and maids have done with winning
+hearts, and lawyers cease to take their fees, and leaves leave off to
+grow on trees, then will John Ploughman cease to love his own dear home.
+John likes to hear some sweet voice sing,
+
+    "'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+    Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
+    A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
+    Which, wherever we rove, is not met with elsewhere.
+        Home! Home! sweet, sweet home!
+        There's no place like home!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+HENRY WILSON
+
+(BORN 1812--DIED 1875.)
+
+
+FROM THE SHOEMAKER'S BENCH TO THE CHAIR OF VICE-PRESIDENT.
+
+
+Henry Wilson, the Vice-president of the United States, was at my
+tea-table with the strangest appetite I ever knew. The fact was, his
+last sickness was on him, and his inward fever demanded everything cold.
+It was tea without any tea. He was full of reminiscence, and talked over
+his life from boyhood till then. He impressed me with the fact that he
+was nearly through his earthly journey. Going to my Church that evening
+to speak at our young peoples' anniversary, he delivered the last
+address of his public life. While seated at the beginning of the
+exercises, his modesty seemed to overcome him, and he said: "I am not
+prepared to address such a magnificent audience as that. Can not you get
+somebody else to speak? I wish you would." "O no," I said, "these people
+came to hear Henry Wilson." He placed a chair in the center of the
+platform to lean on. Not knowing he had put it in that position, I
+removed it twice. Then he whispered to me, saying: "Why do you remove
+that chair? I want it to lean on." The fact was, his physical strength
+was gone. When he arose his bands and knees trembled with excitement,
+and the more so as the entire audience arose and cheered him. One hand
+on the top of the chair, he stood for half an hour, saying useful
+things, and, among others, these words: "I hear men sometimes say, when
+a man writes his name on the records of a visible Church, that he had
+better let other things alone, especially public affairs. I am not a
+believer in that Christianity which hides itself away. I believe in that
+robust Christianity that goes right out in God's world and works. If
+there ever was a time in our country, that time is now, when the young
+men of this country should reflect and act according to the teachings of
+God's holy Word, and attempt to purify, lift up, and carry our country
+onward and forward, so that it shall be in practice what it is in
+theory--the great leading Christian nation of the globe. You will be
+disappointed in many of your hopes and aspirations. The friends near and
+dear to you will turn sometimes coldly from you; the wives of your bosom
+and the children of your love will be taken from you; your high hopes
+may be blasted; but, gentlemen, when friends turn their backs upon you,
+when you lay your dear ones away, when disappointments come to you on
+the right hand and on the left, there is one source for a true and brave
+heart, and that is an abiding faith in God, and a trust in the Lord
+Jesus Christ."
+
+Having concluded his address he sat down, physically exhausted. When we
+helped him into his carriage we never expected to see him again. The
+telegram from Washington announcing his prostration and certain death
+was no surprise. But there and then ended as remarkable a life as was
+ever lived in America.
+
+It is no great thing if a man who has been carefully nurtured by
+intelligent parents, and then passed through school, college, and those
+additional years of professional study, go directly to the front. But
+start a man amid every possible disadvantage, and pile in his way all
+possible obstacles, and then if he take his position among those whose
+path was smooth, he must have the elements of power. Henry Wilson was
+great in the mastering and overcoming all disadvantageous circumstances.
+He began at the bottom, and without any help fought his own way to the
+top. If there ever was a man who had a right at the start to give up his
+earthly existence as a failure, that man was Henry Wilson. Born of a
+dissolute father, so that the son took another name in order to escape
+the disgrace; never having a dollar of his own before he was twenty-one
+years of age; toiling industriously in a shoemaker's shop, that he might
+get the means of schooling and culture; then loaning his money to a man
+who swamped it all and returned none of it; but still toiling on and up
+until he came to the State Legislature, and on and up until he reached
+the American Senate, and on and up till he became Vice-president. In all
+this there ought to be great encouragement to those who wake up late in
+life to find themselves unequipped. Henry Wilson did not begin his
+education until most of our young men think they have finished theirs.
+If you are twenty-five or thirty, or forty or fifty, it is not too late
+to begin. Isaac Walton at ninety years of age wrote his valuable book;
+Benjamin Franklin, almost an octogenarian, went into philosophic
+discoveries; Fontenelle's mind blossomed even in the Winter of old age;
+Arnauld made valuable translations at eighty years of age; Christopher
+Wren added to the astronomical and religious knowledge of the world at
+eighty-six years of age.
+
+Do not let any one, in the light of Henry Wilson's career, be
+discouraged. Rittenhouse conquered his poverty; John Milton overcame his
+blindness; Robert Hall overleaped his sickness; and plane and hammer,
+and adze and pickax, and crowbar and yardstick, and shoe-last have
+routed many an army of opposition and oppression. Let every disheartened
+man look at two pictures--Henry Wilson teaching fifteen hours a day at
+five dollars a week to get his education, and Henry Wilson under the
+admiring gaze of Christendom at the national capital. He was one of the
+few men who maintained his integrity against violent temptations. The
+tides of political life all set toward dissipation. The congressional
+burying-ground at Washington holds the bones of many congressional
+drunkards. Henry Wilson seated at a banquet with senators and presidents
+and foreign ministers, the nearest he ever came to taking their
+expensive brandies and wines was to say, "No, sir, I thank you; I never
+indulge." He never drank the health of other people in any thing that
+hurt his own. He never was more vehement than in flinging his
+thunderbolts of scorn against the decanter and the dram-shop. What a
+rebuke it is for men in high and exposed positions in this country who
+say, "We can not be in our positions without drinking." If Henry Wilson,
+under the gaze of senators and presidents, could say No, certainly you
+under the jeers of your commercial associates ought to be able to say
+No. Henry Wilson also conquered all temptations to political corruption.
+He died comparatively a poor man, when he might have filled his own
+pockets and the pockets of his friends if he had only consented to go
+into some of the infamous opportunities which tempted our public men.
+_Credit Mobilier_, which took down so many senators and representatives,
+touched him, but glanced off, leaving him uncontaminated in the opinion
+of all fair-minded men. He steered clear of the "Lobby," that maelstrom
+which has swallowed up so many strong political crafts. The bribing
+railroad schemes that ran over half of our public men always left him on
+the right side of the track. With opportunities to have made millions of
+dollars by the surrender of good principles, he never made a cent. Along
+by the coasts strewn with the hulks of political adventurers he voyaged
+without loss of rudder or spar. We were not surprised at his funeral
+honors. If there ever was a man after death fit to lie on Abraham
+Lincoln's catafalque, and near the marble representation of Alexander
+Hamilton, and under Crawford's splendid statue of Freedom, with a
+sheathed sword in her hand and a wreath of stars on her brow, and to be
+carried out amid the acclamation and conclamation of a grateful people,
+that man was Henry Wilson.
+
+The ministers did not at his obsequies have a hard time to make out a
+good case as to his future destiny, as in one case where a clergyman in
+offering consolation as to the departure of a man who had been very
+eminent, but went down through intemperance till he died in a snow-bank,
+his rum-jug beside him. At the obsequies of that unfortunate, the
+officiating pastor declared that the departed was a good Greek and Latin
+scholar. We have had United States senators who used the name of God
+rhetorically, and talked grandly about virtue and religion, when at that
+moment they were so drunk they could scarcely stand up. But Henry Wilson
+was an old-fashioned Christian, who had repented of his sins and put his
+trust in Christ. By profession he was a Congregationalist; but years ago
+he stood up in a Methodist meeting-house and told how he had found the
+Lord, and recommending all the people to choose Christ as their
+portion--the same Christ about whom he was reading the very night before
+he died, in that little book called "The Changed Cross," the more tender
+passages marked with his own lead-pencil; and amid these poems of Christ
+Henry Wilson had placed the pictures of his departed wife and departed
+son, for I suppose he thought as these were with Christ in heaven their
+dear faces might as well be next to His name in the book.
+
+It was appropriate that our Vice-president expire in the Capitol
+buildings, the scene of so many years of his patriotic work. At the door
+of that marbled and pictured Vice-president's room many a man has been
+obliged to wait because of the necessities of business, and to wait a
+great while before he could get in; but that morning, while the
+Vice-president was talking about taking a ride, a sable messenger
+arrived at the door, not halting a moment, not even knocking to see if
+he might get in, but passed up and smote the lips into silence forever.
+The sable messenger moving that morning through the splendid Capitol
+stopped not to look at the mosaics, or the fresco, or the panels of
+Tennessee and Italian marble, but darted in and darted out in an
+instant, and his work was done. It is said that Charles Sumner was more
+scholarly, and that Stephen A. Douglas was a better organizer, and that
+John J. Crittenden was more eloquent; but calling up my memory of Henry
+Wilson, I have come to the conclusion that that life is grandly eloquent
+whose peroration is heaven.--DR. TALMADGE, _in The Sunday Magazine_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+JOAN OF ARC
+
+(BORN 1412--DIED 1431.)
+
+
+THE PEASANT MAIDEN WHO DELIVERED HER COUNTRY AND BECAME A MARTYR IN ITS
+CAUSE.
+
+
+No story of heroism has greater attractions for youthful readers than
+that of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. It would be long to tell how
+for hundreds of years the greatest jealousy and mistrust existed between
+England and France, and how constant disputes between their several
+sovereigns led to wars and tumults; how, in the time of Henry the Fifth,
+of England, a state of wild confusion existed on the continent, and how
+that king also claimed to be king of France; how this fifth Henry was
+married to Catherine, daughter of King Charles, and how they were
+crowned king and queen of France; how, in the midst of his triumphs,
+Henry died, and his son, an infant less than a year old, was declared
+king in his stead; how wars broke out, and how, at last, a simple maiden
+saved her country from the grasp of ambitious men. Hardly anything in
+history is more wonderful than, the way in which she was raised up to
+serve her country's need, and, having served it, died a martyr in its
+cause.
+
+Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, was born in the forest of Greux, upon the
+Meuse, in the village of Domremy, in Lorraine, in the year 1412. At this
+time France was divided into two factions--the Burgundians and the
+Armagnacs--the former of whom favored the English cause, and the latter
+pledged to the cause of their country.
+
+Joan was the daughter of simple villagers. She was brought up
+religiously, and from her earliest youth is said to have seen visions
+and dreamed dreams; the one great dream of her life was, however, the
+deliverance of her country from foreign invasions and domestic broils.
+When only about thirteen years of age, she announced to the astonished
+townspeople that she had a mission, and that she meant to fulfill it.
+
+The disasters of the war reached Joan's home; a party of Burgundians
+dashed into Domremy, and the Armagnacs fled before them. Joan's family
+took refuge in the town of Neufchateau, and she paid for their lodging
+at an inn by helping the mistress of the house.
+
+Here, in a more public place, it was soon seen and wondered at that such
+a young girl was so much interested in the war. Her parents were already
+angry that she would not marry. They began to be frightened now. Jacques
+D'Arc told one of his sons that sooner than let Joan go to the camp he
+would drown her with his own hands. She could not, however, be kept
+back. Very cautiously, and as though afraid to speak of such high
+things, she began to let fall hints of what she saw. Half-frightened
+herself at what she said, she exclaimed to a neighbor, "There is now,
+between Colombey and Vaucouleurs, a maid who will cause the king of
+France to be crowned!"
+
+Now came the turn in the war, when all the strength of both sides was to
+be gathered up into one great struggle, and it was to be shown whether
+the king was to have his right, or the usurper triumph. The real leaders
+of the war were the Duke of Bedford, regent of England, and the captains
+of the French army. Bedford gathered a vast force, chiefly from
+Burgundy, and gave its command to the Earl of Salisbury. The army went
+on; they gained, without a struggle, the towns of Rambouillet, Pithwier,
+Jargean, and others. Then they encamped before the city of Orleans. To
+this point they drew their whole strength. Orleans taken, the whole
+country beyond was theirs, as it commanded the entrance to the River
+Loire and the southern provinces; and the only stronghold left to King
+Charles was the mountain country of Auvergne and Dauphine.
+
+The men of Orleans well knew how much depended upon their city. All that
+could be done they did to prepare for a resolute defense. The siege of
+Orleans was one of the first in which cannon were used. Salisbury
+visiting the works, a cannon broke a splinter from a casement, which
+struck him and gave him his death wound. The Earl of Suffolk, who was
+appointed to succeed him, never had his full power.
+
+Suffolk could not tame the spirit of the men of Orleans by regular
+attack, so he tried other means. He resolved to block it up by
+surrounding it with forts, and starve the people out. But for some time,
+before the works were finished, food was brought into the city; while
+the French troops, scouring the plains, as often stopped the supplies
+coming to the English. Faster, however, than they were brought in, the
+provisions in Orleans wasted away. And through the dreary Winter the
+citizens watched one fort after another rise around them. The enemy was
+growing stronger, they were growing weaker; they had no prospect before
+them but defeat; when the Spring came would come the famine; their city
+would be lost, and then their country.
+
+The eyes of all France were upon Orleans. News of the siege and of the
+distress came to Domremy, and Joan of Arc rose to action. Her mind was
+fixed to go and raise the siege of Orleans and crown Charles king. Not
+for one moment did she think it impossible or even unlikely. What God
+had called her to do, that she would carry out. She made no secret of
+her call, but went to Vaucouleurs and told De Briancourt that she meant
+to save France. At first the governor treated her lightly, and told her
+to go home and dream about a sweetheart; but such was her earnestness
+that at last not only he, but thousands of other people, believed in the
+mission of Joan of Arc. And so, before many days, she set out, with many
+noble attendants, to visit Charles at the castle of Chinon.
+
+On all who saw her, Joan's earnestness, singleness of heart, and deep
+piety made but one impression. Only the king remained undecided; he
+could hardly be roused to see her, but at last he named a day, and Joan
+of Arc had her desire and stood before him in the great hall of Chinon.
+Fifty torches lighted the hall, which was crowded with knights and
+nobles. Joan, too self-forgetful to feel abashed, walked forward firmly.
+Charles had placed himself among his courtiers, so that she should not
+know him. Not by inspiration, as they thought, but because with her
+enthusiasm she must have heard him described often and often, she at
+once singled him out and clasped his knees. Charles denied that he was
+the king. "In the name of God," Joan answered, "it no other but
+yourself. Most noble Lord Dauphin, I am Joan, the maid sent on the part
+of God to aid you and your kingdom; and by his command I announce to you
+that you shall be crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall become his
+lieutenant in the realm of France." Charles led her aside, and told his
+courtiers afterward that in their private conversation she had revealed
+to him secrets. But all that she said appears to have been, "I tell thee
+from my Lord that thou art the true heir of France." A few days before
+the king had offered a prayer for help only on condition that he was the
+rightful sovereign, and it has been well said that "such a coincidence
+of idea on so obvious a topic seems very far from supernatural or even
+surprising." It is but one out of many proofs how ready every one in
+those days was to believe in signs and wonders.
+
+Her fame spread wide; there went abroad all kinds of reports about her
+miraculous powers. Already the French began to hope and the English to
+wonder.
+
+The king still doubted, and so did his council. People in our own day,
+who admire the wisdom of the Dark Ages, would do well to study the story
+of Joan of Arc. She was taken before the University of Poictiers. Six
+weeks did the learned doctors employ in determining whether Joan was
+sent by God or in league with the devil. She never made any claim to
+supernatural help beyond what she needed to fulfill her mission. She
+refused to give them a sign, saying that her sign would be at
+Orleans--the leading of brave men to battle. She boasted no attainments,
+declaring that she knew neither A nor B; only, she must raise the siege
+of Orleans and crown the Dauphin. The friars sent to her old home to
+inquire about her, and brought back a spotless report of her life. So,
+after the tedious examination, the judgment of the learned and wise men
+of Poictiers was that Charles might accept her services without peril to
+his soul.
+
+The vexatious delays over, Joan of Arc set out for Orleans. In the
+church of Fierbois she had seen, among other old weapons, a sword marked
+with five crosses. For this she sent. When she left Vaucouleurs she had
+put on a man's dress; now she was clad in white armor. A banner was
+prepared under her directions; this also was white, strewn with the
+lilies of France.
+
+So much time had been lost that Joan was not at Blois till the middle of
+April. She entered the town on horseback; her head was uncovered. All
+men admired her skillful riding and the poise of her lance. Joan carried
+all before her now; she brought spirit to the troops; the armor laid
+down was buckled on afresh when she appeared; the hearts of the people
+were lifted up--they would have died for her. Charles, who had been with
+the army, slipped back to Chinon; but he left behind him better and
+braver men--his five bravest leaders. Joan began her work gloriously by
+clearing the camp of all bad characters. Father Pasquerel bore her
+banner through the streets, while Joan, with the priests who followed,
+sang the Litany and exhorted men to prepare for battle by repentance and
+prayer. In this, as in all else, she succeeded.
+
+When the English heard that Joan was really coming, they pretended to
+scorn her. Common report made Joan a prophet and a worker of miracles.
+Hearts beat higher in Orleans than they had done for months. More terror
+was in the English camp than it had ever known before.
+
+The English took no heed of Joan's order to submit. They little thought
+that in a fortnight they would flee before a woman.
+
+She entered the city at midnight. LaHire and two hundred men, with
+lances, were her escort. Though she had embarked close under an English
+fort, she was not molested. Untouched by the enemy, coming in the midst
+of the storm, bringing plenty, and the lights of her procession shining
+in the black night, we can not wonder that the men of Orleans looked on
+her as in very truth the messenger of God. They flocked round her, and
+he who could touch but her horse was counted happy.
+
+Joan went straight to the cathedral, where she had the Te Deum chanted.
+The people thought that already they were singing their thanksgivings
+for victory. Despair was changed to hope; fear to courage. She was known
+as "the Maid of Orleans." From the cathedral she went to the house of
+one of the most esteemed ladies of the town, with whom she had chosen to
+live. A great supper had been prepared for her, but she took only a bit
+of bread sopped in wine before she went to sleep. By her orders, the
+next day an archer fastened to his arrow a letter of warning, and shot
+it into the English lines. She went herself along the bridge and
+exhorted the enemy to depart. Sir William Gladsdale tried to conceal his
+fright by answering her with such rude words as made her weep. Four days
+afterwards the real terror of the English was shown. The Maid of Orleans
+and LaHire went to meet the second load of provisions. As it passed
+close under the English lines not an arrow was shot against it; not a
+man appeared.
+
+Joan of Arc was now to win as much glory by her courage as before her
+very name had brought. While she was lying down to rest, that same
+afternoon, the townspeople went out to attack the Bastile of St. Loup.
+They had sent her no word of the fight. But Joan started suddenly from
+her bed, declaring that her voices told her to go against the English.
+She put on her armor, mounted her horse, and, with her banner in her
+hand, galloped through the streets. The French were retreating, but they
+gathered again round her white banner, and Joan led them on once more.
+Her spirit rose with the thickness of the fight. She dashed right into
+the midst. The battle raged for three hours round the Bastile of St.
+Loup, then Joan led on the French to storm it. Joan of Arc, the Maid of
+Orleans, had gained her first victory.
+
+The day after there was no fighting, for it was the Feast of the
+Ascension. Joan had been first in the fight yesterday; she was first in
+prayer to-day. She brought many of the soldiers to their knees for the
+first time in their lives.
+
+All along the captains had doubted the military skill of "the simplest
+girl they had ever seen," and they did not call her to the council they
+held that day. They resolved to attack the English forts on the southern
+and weakest side. After a little difficulty Joan consented, when she was
+told of it. The next day, before daybreak, she took her place with
+LaHire on a small island in the Loire, from whence they crossed in boats
+to the southern bank. Their hard day's work was set about early. Joan
+would not wait for more troops, but began the fight at once. The English
+joined two garrisons together, and thus for a time overpowered the
+French as they attacked the Bastile of the Augustins.
+
+Carried on for a little while with the flying, Joan soon turned round
+again upon the enemy. The sight of the witch, as they thought her, was
+enough. The English screened themselves from her and her charms behind
+their walls. Help was coming up for the French. They made a fresh
+attack; the bastile was taken and set on fire. Joan returned to the city
+slightly wounded in the foot.
+
+The only fort left to the English was their first-made and strongest,
+the Bastile de Tournelles. It was held by the picked men of their army,
+Gladsdale and his company. The French leaders wished to delay its attack
+until they had fresh soldiers. This suited Joan little. "You have been
+to your council," she said, "and I have been to mine. Be assured that
+the council of my Lord will hold good, and that the council of men will
+perish." The hearts of the people were with her; the leaders thought it
+best to give in. Victory followed wherever she led, and, after several
+actions, at which she took active part, the siege was raised. It began
+on the 12th of October, 1428, and was raised on the 14th of May, 1429.
+
+Even now, in Orleans, the 14th of May is held sacred, that day on which,
+in 1429, the citizens watched the English lines growing less and less in
+the distance.
+
+Joan of Arc had even yet done but half her work. Neither Charles nor
+Henry had been crowned. That the crown should be placed on Charles's
+head was what she still had to accomplish. Though we have always spoken
+of him as "King," he was not so in reality until this had been done. He
+was strictly but the Dauphin. Bedford wished much that young Henry
+should be crowned; for let Charles once have the holy crown on _his_
+brow, and the oil of anointing on his head, and let him stand where for
+hundreds of years his fathers had stood to be consecrated kings of
+France, in the Cathedral of Rheims, before his people as their king, any
+crowning afterwards would be a mockery. Charles was now with the Court
+of Tours. Rheims was a long way off in the north, and to get there would
+be a work of some difficulty; yet get there he must, for the coronation
+could not take place anywhere else. Joan went to Tours, and, falling
+before him, she begged him to go and receive his crown, saying, that
+when her voices gave her this message she was marvelously rejoiced.
+Charles did not seem much rejoiced to receive it. He said a great deal
+about the dangers of the way, and preferred that the other English posts
+on the Loire should be taken first. It must have been very trying to one
+so quick and eager as Joan to deal with such a person, but, good or bad,
+he was her king. She was not idle because she could not do exactly as
+she wished; she set out with the army at once.
+
+The news flew onwards. The inhabitants of Chalons and of Rheims rose and
+turned out the Burgundian garrisons. The king's way to Rheims was one
+triumph, and, amidst the shouts of the people, he entered Rheims on the
+16th of July. The next day Charles VII was crowned. The visions of the
+Maid had been fulfilled. By her arm Orleans had been saved, through her
+means the king stood there. She was beside the king at the high altar,
+with her banner displayed; and when the service was over, she knelt
+before him with streaming eyes, saying, "Gentle king, now is done the
+pleasure of God, who willed that you should come to Rheims and be
+anointed, showing that you are the true king, and he to whom the kingdom
+should belong."
+
+All eyes were upon her as the savior of her country. She might have
+secured every thing for herself; but she asked no reward, she was
+content to have done her duty. And of all that was offered her, the only
+thing she would accept was that Domremy should be free forever from any
+kind of tax. So, until the time of the first French Revolution, the
+collectors wrote against the name of the village, as it stood in their
+books, "_Nothing, for the Maid's sake_."
+
+Joan of Arc said that her work was done. She had seen her father and her
+uncle in the crowd, and, with many tears, she begged the king to let her
+go back with them, and keep her flocks and herds, and do all as she had
+been used to do. Never had man or woman done so much with so simple a
+heart. But the king and his advisers knew her power over the people, and
+their entreaties that she would stay with them prevailed. So she let her
+father and her uncle depart without her. They must have had enough to
+tell when they reached home.
+
+We have little heart to tell the rest of the story. At length the king
+reached Paris, and the Duke of Bedford was away in Normandy. Joan wished
+to attack the city, and it was done. Many of the soldiers were jealous
+of her, and they fought only feebly. They crossed the first ditch round
+the city, but found the second full of water. Joan was trying its depth
+with her lance, when she was seriously wounded. She lay on the ground
+cheering the troops, calling for fagots and bundles of wood to fill the
+trench, nor would she withdraw until the evening, when the Duke of
+Alencon persuaded her to give up the attempt, as it had prospered so
+ill.
+
+Were it not so wicked and so shameful, it might be laughable to think of
+the king's idleness. It is really true that he longed for his lovely
+Chinon, and a quiet life, as a tired child longs to go to sleep. He made
+his misfortune at Paris, which would have stirred up almost any one else
+to greater exertions, an excuse for getting away. The troops were sent
+to winter quarters; he went back across the Loire now, when the English
+leader was away, and the chief towns in the north ready to submit. Had
+he but shown himself a man, he might have gained his capital, and the
+whole of the north of France. The spirit lately roused for him was down
+again. It seemed really not worth while to fight for a king who would
+not attend to business for more than two months together.
+
+We know little more of the Maid of Orleans in the Winter, than that she
+continued with the army. After her defeat at Paris, she hung her armor
+up in the church at St. Denis, and made up her mind to go home. The
+entreaties of the French leaders prevailed again; for, though they were
+jealous of her, and slighted her on every occasion, they knew her power,
+and were glad to get all out of her that they could. In December, Joan
+and all her family were made nobles by the king. They changed their name
+from Arc to Du Lys, "Lys" being French for lily, the flower of France,
+as the rose is of England; and they were given the lily of France for
+their coat of arms.
+
+With the return of Spring the king's troops marched into the northern
+provinces. Charles would not leave Chinon. The army was utterly
+disorderly, and had no idea what to set about. Joan showed herself as
+brave as ever in such fighting as there was. But, doubting whether she
+was in her right place or her wrong one, in the midst of fierce and
+lawless men, nothing pointed out for her to do, her situation was most
+miserable. The Duke of Gloucester sent out a proclamation to strengthen
+the hearts of the English troops against her. The title was "against the
+feeble-minded captains and soldiers who are terrified by the
+incantations of the Maid."
+
+A long and troublesome passage had Joan of Arc from this bad world to
+her home in heaven, where dwelt those whom she called "her brothers of
+Paradise." Her faith was to be tried in the fire--purified seven times.
+All the French army were jealous of her. The governor of the fortress of
+Compiegne was cruel and tyrannical beyond all others, even in that age.
+Compiegne was besieged by the English; Joan threw herself bravely into
+the place. She arrived there on the 24th of May, and that same evening
+she headed a party who went out of the gates to attack the enemy. Twice
+they were driven back by her; but, seeing more coming up, she made the
+sign to go back. She kept herself the last; the city gate was partly
+closed, so that but few could pass in at once. In the confusion she was
+separated from her friends; but she still fought bravely, until an
+archer from Picardy seized her and dragged her from her horse. She
+struggled, but was obliged to give up; and so the Maid of Orleans was
+taken prisoner.
+
+Joan was first taken to the quarters of John of Luxembourg. Her prison
+was changed many times, but the English were eager to have her in their
+own power. In November John of Luxemburg sold her to them for a large
+sum of money. When she was in his prison she had tried twice to escape.
+She could not try now; she was put in the great tower of the castle of
+Rouen, confined between iron gratings, with irons upon her feet. Her
+guards offered her all kinds of rudeness, and even John of Luxembourg
+was so mean as to go and rejoice over her in her prison.
+
+It would have been a cruel thing to put her to death as a prisoner of
+war; but those were dark days, and such things were often done. The
+desire of the English was to hold Joan up to public scorn as a witch,
+and to prove that she had dealings with the devil. With this wicked
+object, they put her on her trial. They found Frenchmen ready enough to
+help them. One Canchon, bishop of Beauvais, even petitioned that the
+trial might be under his guidance. He had his desire; he was appointed
+the first judge, and a hundred and two other learned Frenchmen were
+found ready to join him.
+
+Before these false judges Joan of Arc was called--as simple a girl as
+she was when, just two years before, she left Domremy. All that malice
+and rage could do was done against her. She was alone before her
+enemies. Day after day they tried hard to find new and puzzling
+questions for her; to make her false on her own showing; to make her
+deny her visions or deny her God. They could not. Clearheaded,
+simple-hearted, she had been always, and she was so still. She showed
+the faith of a Christian, the patience of a saint, in all her answers.
+Piety and wisdom were with her, wickedness and folly with her enemies.
+They tried to make evil out of two things in particular: her banner,
+with which it was declared she worked charms, and the tree she used to
+dance around when she was a child, where they said she went to consult
+the fairies. Concerning her banner, Joan said that she carried it on
+purpose to spare the sword, so she might not kill any one with her own
+hand; of the tree, she denied that she knew any thing about fairies, or
+was acquainted with any one who had seen them there. She was tormented
+with questions as to whether the saints spoke English when she saw them,
+what they wore, how they smelt, whether she helped the banner or the
+banner her, whether she was in mortal sin when she rode the horse
+belonging to the bishop of Senlis, whether she could commit mortal sin,
+whether the saints hated the English. Every trap they could lay for her
+they laid. She answered all clearly; when she had forgotten any thing
+she said so; her patience never gave way; she was never confused. When
+asked whether she was in a state of grace, she said: "If I am not, I
+pray to God to bring me to it; and, if I am, may he keep me in it."
+
+After all, they did not dare condemn her. Try as they could, they could
+draw nothing from her that was wrong. They teased her to give the matter
+into the hands of the Church. She put the Church in heaven, and its
+head, above the Church on earth and the pope. The English were afraid
+that after all she might escape, and pressed on the judgment. The
+lawyers at Rouen would say nothing, neither would the chapter. The only
+way to take was to send the report of the trial to the University of
+Paris, and wait the answer.
+
+On the 19th of May arrived the answer from Paris. It was this: that the
+Maid of Orleans was either a liar or in alliance with Satan and with
+Behemoth; that she was given to superstition, most likely an idolater;
+that she lowered the angels, and vainly boasted and exalted herself;
+that she was a blasphemer and a traitor thirsting for blood, a heretic
+and an apostate. Yet they would not burn her at once; they would first
+disgrace her in the eyes of people. This was done on the 23d of May. A
+scaffold was put up behind the Cathedral of St. Onen; here in solemn
+state sat the cardinal of Winchester, two judges, and thirty-three
+helpers. On another scaffold was Joan of Arc, in the midst of guards,
+notaries to take reports, and the most famous preacher of France to
+admonish her. Below was seen the rack upon a cart.
+
+The preacher began his discourse. Joan let him speak against herself,
+but she stopped him when he spoke against the king, that king for whom
+she had risked every thing, but who was dreaming at Chinon, and had not
+stretched out a finger to save her. Their labor was nearly lost; her
+enemies became furious. Persuading was of no use; she refused to go back
+from any thing she had said or done. Her instant death was threatened if
+she continued obstinate, but if she would recant she was promised
+deliverance from the English. "I will sign," she said at last. The
+cardinal drew a paper from his sleeve with a short denial. She put her
+mark to it. They kept their promise of mercy by passing this sentence
+upon her: "Joan, we condemn you, through our grace and moderation, to
+pass the rest of your days in prison, to eat the bread of grief and
+drink the water of anguish, and to bewail your sins."
+
+When she went back to prison there was published through Rouen, not the
+short denial she had signed, but one six pages long.
+
+Joan was taken back to the prison from whence she came. The next few
+days were the darkest and saddest of all her life, yet they were the
+darkest before the dawn. She had, in the paper which she had signed,
+promised to wear a woman's dress again, and she did so. Her enemies had
+now a sure hold on her. They could make her break her own oath. In the
+night her woman's dress was taken away, and man's clothes put in their
+place. She had no choice in the morning what to do.
+
+As soon as it was day Canchon and the rest made haste to the prison to
+see the success of their plot. Canchon laughed, and said, "She is
+taken." No more hope for her on earth; no friend with her, save that in
+the fiery furnace was "One like unto the Son of God."
+
+Brought before her judges, Joan only said why she had put on her old
+dress. They could not hide their delight, and joked and laughed among
+themselves. God sent her hope and comfort; she knew that the time of her
+deliverance was near. She was to be set free by fire. They appointed the
+day after the morrow for her burning. But a few hours' notice was given
+her. She wept when she heard that she was to be burnt alive, but after
+awhile she exclaimed: "I shall be to-night in Paradise!"
+
+Eight hundred Englishmen conducted her to the market-place! On her way,
+the wretched priest L'Oiseleur threw himself on the ground before her,
+and begged her to forgive him. Three scaffolds had been set up. On one
+sat the cardinal with all his train. Joan and her enemies were on
+another. The third, a great, towering pile, built up so high that what
+happened on it should be in the sight of all the town, had upon it the
+stake to which she was to be tied. Canchon began to preach to her. Her
+faith never wavered; her Saviour, her best friend, was with her. To him
+she prayed aloud before the gathered multitude. She declared that she
+forgave her enemies, and begged her friends to pray for her. Even
+Canchon and the cardinal shed tears. But they hastened to dry their
+eyes, and read the condemnation. All the false charges were named, and
+she was given over to death.
+
+They put her on the scaffold and bound her fast to the stake. Looking
+round on the crowd of her countrymen, who stood looking over, she
+exclaimed: "O Rouen! I fear thou wilt suffer for my death!" A miter was
+placed on her head, with the words: "Relapsed Heretic, Apostate,
+Idolater." Canchon drew near, to listen whether even now she would not
+say something to condemn herself. Her only words were, "Bishop, I die
+through your means." Of the worthless king she said: "That which I have
+well or ill done I did it of myself; the king did not advise me." These
+were her last words about earthly matters. The flames burnt from the
+foot of the pile, but the monk who held the cross before her did not
+move. He heard her from the midst of the fire call upon her Saviour.
+Soon she bowed her head and cried aloud "Jesus!" And she went to be with
+him forever.
+
+We have little to add of the character of the Maid of Orleans. She was
+simple amid triumph and splendor; unselfish, when she might have had
+whatever she had asked; humane and gentle, even on the battlefield;
+patient in the midst of the greatest provocation; brave in the midst of
+suffering; firm in faith and hope when all beside were cast down;
+blameless and holy in her life, when all beside were wicked and corrupt.
+
+The English never recovered from the blow struck by the Maid. Their
+power in France gradually weakened. In 1435 peace was made between
+Charles VII and the Duke of Burgundy. One by one the ill-gotten gains
+were given up, and the English king lost even the French provinces he
+inherited. In the year 1451 the only English possession in France was
+the town of Calais. This, too, was lost about a hundred years after, in
+the reign of Queen Mary. Yet the kings of England kept the empty title
+of kings of France, and put the lilies of France in their coat of arms
+until the middle of the reign of George III.
+
+The last incident in the strange story of Joan of Arc remains to be
+told. Ten years after her execution, to the amazement of all who knew
+him, Charles VII suddenly shook off his idleness and blazed forth a wise
+king, an energetic ruler. Probably in this, his better state of mind, he
+thought with shame and sorrow of Joan of Arc. In the year 1456 he
+ordered a fresh inquiry to be made. At this every one was examined who
+had known or seen her at any period of her short life. The judgment
+passed on her before was contradicted, and she was declared a good and
+innocent woman. They would have given the whole world then to have had
+her back and to have made amends to her for their foul injustice. But
+the opinions of men no longer mattered to her. The twenty-five years
+since she had been burnt at Rouen had been the first twenty-five of her
+uncounted eternity of joy.
+
+"The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful
+men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away
+from the evil to come."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+THE SONG OF WORK
+
+
+MANY PHASES AND MANY EXAMPLES.
+
+
+Music.
+
+
+    In every leaf and flower
+     The pulse of music beats,
+    And works the changes hour by hour,
+     In those divine retreats.
+
+    Alike in star and clod
+     One melody resides,
+    Which is the working will of God,
+     Beyond all power besides.
+
+    It is by angels heard,
+     By all of lower birth,
+    The silent music of the Word
+     Who works in heaven and earth.
+
+    For music order is
+     To which all work belongs,
+    And in this wondrous world of His
+     Work is the song of songs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Divine Workers.
+
+
+    The Father hitherto,
+     And his Eternal Son
+    Work, work, and still have work to do
+     With each successive sun.
+
+    O bow the heart in awe,
+     And work as with the Lord,
+    Who, with his everlasting law,
+     Works on in sweet accord.
+
+    Work is the law of love
+     Which rules the world below,
+    Which rules the brighter world above,
+     Through which, like God, we grow.
+
+    And this and every day
+     The work of love is rest
+    In which our sorrows steal away,
+     Which cares may not infest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Will of God.
+
+
+    With heart as strong as fate,
+     Brave worker, girt and shod,
+    Adore! and know that naught is great
+     Except the will of God.
+
+    O sweet, sweet light of day,
+     Through which such wonders run,
+    Thou ownest, in thy glorious sway,
+     Allegiance to the sun.
+
+    And thou, O human will,
+     As wondrous as the light,
+    Cans't thou thy little trust fulfill
+     Save through Another's might?
+
+    With heart to conquer fate,
+     Brave worker, girt and shod,
+    Work on! and know that he is great
+     Who does the will of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+"Laborare est Orare."
+
+
+    To labor is to pray,
+     As some dear saint has said,
+    And with this truth for many a day
+     Have I been comforted.
+
+    The Lord has made me bold
+     When I have labored most,
+    And with his gifts so manifold,
+     Has given the Holy Ghost
+
+    When I have idle been
+     Until the sun went down,
+    Mine eyes, so dim, have never seen
+     His bright, prophetic crown.
+
+    O, praise the Lord for work
+     Which maketh time so fleet,
+    In which accusers never lurk,
+     Whose end is very sweet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Birds of Grace.
+
+
+    O little birds of grace,
+     To-day ye sweetly sing,
+    Yea, make my heart your nesting-place,
+     And all your gladness bring.
+
+    When ye are in my heart,
+     How swiftly pass the days!
+    The fears and doubts of life depart,
+     And leave their room to praise.
+
+    My work I find as play,
+     And all day long rejoice;
+    But, if I linger on my way,
+     I hear this warning voice:
+
+    _With fervor work and pray,
+     And let not coldness come,
+    Or birds of grace will fly away
+     To seek a warmer home_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Duty.
+
+
+    O work that Duty shows
+     Through her revealing light!
+    It is in thee my bosom glows
+     With infinite delight!
+
+    The shadows flee away
+     Like mist before the sun;
+    And thy achievement seems to say,
+     The will of God is done!
+
+    Ah, what if Duty seem
+     A mistress cold and stern!
+    Can he who owns her rule supreme
+     From her caresses turn?
+
+    O work that Duty shows
+     In light so fair and clear,
+    Whoever thy completion knows
+     Is 'minded heaven is near!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Moses.
+
+
+    In Pharaoh's dazzling court
+     No work did Moses find
+    That could heroic life support
+     And fill his heart and mind.
+
+    Beneath their grievous task
+     Did not his kindred groan?
+    And a great voice above him ask,
+     "Dost thou thy brethren own?"
+
+    The work which Duty meant
+     At length he found and did,
+    And built a grander monument
+     Than any pyramid.
+
+    Sometimes his eyes were dim,
+     All signs he could not spell;
+    Yet he endured as seeing Him
+     Who is invisible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Discoverers.
+
+
+    In search of greener shores
+     The Northmen braved the seas
+    And reached, those faith-illumined rowers,
+     Our dear Hesperides.
+
+    And when Oblivion
+     Swept all their work away,
+    And left for faith to feed upon
+     But shadows lean and gray,
+
+    Columbus dreamed the dream
+     Which fired a southern clime
+    And hailed a world--O toil supreme!--
+     As from the womb of Time.
+
+    God's dauntless witnesses
+     For toil invincible,
+    They gazed across uncharted seas
+     On the invisible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+God's Order.
+
+
+    In gazing into heaven
+     In idle ecstacy,
+    What progress make ye to the haven
+     Where ye at length would be?
+
+    In heaven-appointed work
+     The sure ascension lies.
+    O, never yet did drone or shirk
+     Make headway to the skies.
+
+    Who in his heart rebels
+     Has never ears to hear
+    The morning and the evening bells
+     On yonder shores so clear.
+
+    For work communion is
+     With God's one order here,
+    And all the secret melodies
+     Which fill our lives with cheer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+David.
+
+
+    In action day by day
+     King David's manhood grew,
+    A character to live for aye,
+     It was so strong and true.
+
+    Hordes of misrule became
+     As stubble to the fire,
+    Till songs of praise like leaping flame
+     Burst from his sacred lyre.
+
+    He grappled with all rude
+     And unpropitious things:
+    A garden from the solitude
+     Smiled to the King of kings.
+
+    And fiercer yet the strife
+     With mighty foes within,
+    Who stormed the fortress of his life
+     And triumphed in his sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Good out of Evil.
+
+
+    True David halted not
+     When sin had cast him down,
+    Upon his royal life a blot,
+     Death reaching for his crown.
+
+    His work was but half done;
+    A man of action still,
+     He struggled in the gloaming sun
+    To do his Maker's will;
+
+    Till in the golden light
+     Great words began to shine:
+    _In sorrow is exalting might,
+     Repentance is divine_.
+
+    And now the shepherd king
+     We count the human sire
+    Of One who turns our hungering
+     Into achieved desire.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Elijah.
+
+
+    Elijah, through the night
+     Which shrouded Israel
+    In toiling, groping for the light,
+     Foretold Immanuel.
+
+    And in heroic trust
+     That night would yield to day--
+    His imperfections thick as dust
+     Along the desert way;
+
+    His bold, rebuking cry
+     Heard in the wilderness.
+    Till from the chariot of the sky
+     His mantle fell to bless--
+
+    The stern, half-savage seer
+     Became a prophecy
+    Of gladness and the Golden Year,
+     In all high minstrelsy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Aelemaehus the Monk.
+
+
+    How well he wrought who stood
+     Against an ancient wrong,
+    And left the spangles of his blood
+     To light the sky of song!
+
+    A gladiatorial show,
+     And eighty thousand men
+    For savage pastime all aglow--
+     O marvel there and then!
+
+    An unknown monk, his life
+     Defenseless, interposed,
+    Forbade the old barbaric strife--
+     The red arena closed!
+
+    That unrecovered rout!
+     Those fire-shafts from the Sun!
+    O Telemaque! who, who shall doubt
+     Thy Master's will was done?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Washington.
+
+
+    The deeds of Washington
+     Were lit with patriot flame;
+    A crown for Liberty he won,
+     And won undying fame.
+
+    He heard his country's cry,
+     He heard her bugle-call,
+    'Twas sweet to live for her, or die;
+    Her cause was all in all.
+
+    He heard the psalm of peace,
+     He sought again the plow;
+    O civic toil, canst thou increase
+     The laurels for his brow?
+
+    As with a father's hand
+     He led the infant state;
+    Colossus of his native land,
+     He still is growing great.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Lincoln.
+
+
+    God placed on Lincoln's brow
+     A sad, majestic crown;
+    All enmity is friendship now,
+     And martyrdom renown.
+
+    A mighty-hearted man,
+     He toiled at Freedom's side,
+    And lived, as only heroes can,
+     The truth in which he died.
+
+    Like Moses, eyes so dim,
+     All signs he could not spell;
+    Yet he endured, as seeing Him
+     Who is invisible.
+
+    His life was under One
+     "Who made and loveth all;"
+    And when his mighty work was done,
+     How grand his coronal!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Garfield.
+
+
+    Of Garfield's finished days,
+     So fair and all too few,
+    Destruction, which at noon-day strays,
+     Could not the work undo.
+
+    O martyr prostrate, calm,
+     I learn anew that pain
+    Achieves, as God's subduing psalm,
+     What else were all in vain!
+
+    Like Samson in his death,
+     With mightiest labor rife,
+    The moments of thy halting breath
+     Were grandest of thy life.
+
+    And now, amid the gloom
+     Which pierces mortal years,
+    There shines a star above thy tomb
+     To smile away our tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Not Too Near.
+
+
+    O workers brave and true,
+     Whose lives are full of song,
+    I dare not take too near a view,
+     Lest I should do you wrong.
+
+    I only look to see
+     The marks of sacrifice,
+    The heraldry of sympathy,
+     Which can alone suffice.
+
+    For nothing else is great,
+     However proudly won,
+    Or has the light to indicate
+     The will of God is done.
+
+    Ah, who would judge what fire
+     Will surely burn away!
+    And ask not, What doth God require
+     At the Eternal Day?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+"Stonewall" Jackson.
+
+
+    God somehow owns the creeds
+     That seem so much amiss,
+    What time they bear heroic deeds
+     Above analysis.
+
+    How, in his burning zeal,
+     Did Stonewall breast his fate,
+    Converted to his country's weal
+     With fame beyond debate!
+
+    Sincere and strong of heart,
+     In very truth he thought
+    His ensign signaled duty's part;
+     And as he thought he fought.
+
+    And truth baptized in blood,
+     As many a time before,
+    Gave honor to his soldierhood,
+    Though trailed the flag he bore.
+
+
+Work Its Own Reward
+
+
+      O worker with the Lord,
+      To crown thee with success,
+    Believe thy work its own reward,
+      Let self be less and less.
+
+      In all things be sincere,
+      Afraid not of the light,
+    A prophet of the Golden Year
+      In simply doing right.
+
+      And be content to serve,
+      A little one of God,
+    In loyalty without reserve,
+      A hero armored, shod.
+
+      Or this dear life of thine,
+      Of every charm bereft,
+    Will crumble in the fire divine,
+      Naught, naught but ashes left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Now and Here
+
+
+      O not to-morrow or afar,
+      Thy work is now and here;
+    Thy bosom holds the fairest star--
+      Dost see it shining clear?
+
+      The nearest things are great,
+      Remotest very small,
+    To him with eyes to penetrate
+      The silent coronal.
+
+      So deep the basis lies
+      Of life's great pyramid,
+    That out of reach of common eyes
+      Prophetic work is hid.
+
+    His reign for which we pray,
+      His kingdom undefiled,
+    Whose scepter shall not pass away,
+      Is in a little child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A Little Child
+
+
+      Come hither, little child,
+      And bring thy heart to me;
+    Thou art the true and unbeguiled,
+      So full of melody.
+
+      The presence of a child
+      Has taught me more of heaven,
+    And more my heart has reconciled
+      Than Greece's immortal Seven.
+
+      For when I sometimes think
+      That life is void of song,
+    Before a little child I sink
+      And own that I am wrong.
+
+      And lo my heart grows bright
+      That was so dark and drear,
+    Till in the tender morning light
+      I find the Lord is near.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Divine Presence
+
+
+      O, when the Lord is near,
+      The rainbow banners wave;
+    The star I follow shineth clear,
+      I am no more a slave.
+
+
+      As if to honor Him,
+      My work is true and free;
+    And flowing to the shining brim,
+      The cup of heaven I see.
+
+      I marvel not that song
+      Should be employment there
+    In which the innumerable throng
+      Their palms of triumph bear;
+
+      Or that the choral strife
+      And golden harps express
+    The stirring labors of the life
+      Of peace and righteousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Death in Life
+
+
+      The song of work, I know,
+      Has here its minor tone;
+    And in its ever-changing flow,
+      Death, death in life is known.
+
+      Discordant notes, alas!
+      So often cleave the air
+    And smite the music as they pass,
+      And leave their poison there.
+
+      And oft, ah me! from some
+      Wild region of the heart
+    Will startling intimations come,
+      And peace at once depart.
+
+      With open foes without,
+      And secret foes within,
+    His heart must needs be brave and stout
+      That would life's battle win.
+
+
+Evil
+
+
+      In the great wilderness
+      Through which I hold my way,
+    Is there no refuge from distress,
+      Where foes are kept at bay?
+
+      Saint Anthony of old
+      Could not from evil flee;
+    The desert cave was found to hold
+      His mortal enemy.
+
+      And knew untiring Paul
+      The world's relentless scorn;
+    While in his flesh, amid it all,
+      He bore another thorn.
+
+      Our common lot is cast
+      In a great camp of pain!
+    Until the night be over-past,
+      Some foe will yet remain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+With His Foes
+
+
+      The king of beasts was dead--
+      By an old hero slain;
+    Did dreams of honey for his bread
+      Dance through the hero's brain?
+
+      Or did he chafe at this:
+      That pain is everywhere?
+    Down, down, thou fabled right to bliss,
+      Life is to do and bear!
+
+      Beguiled, enslaved, made blind,
+      Yet unsubdued in will,
+    He kept the old heroic mind
+      To serve his country still.
+
+
+      And in recovered might
+      Pulled the tall pillars down,
+    Died _with_ his foes--_that was his right_--
+      And built his great renown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+For His Foes
+
+
+      Devotion all supreme
+      Throbs in the mighty psalm
+    Of One who filled our highest dream
+      And poured His healing balm;
+
+      Who worlds inherited
+      And yet renounced them all;
+    Who had not where to lay His head
+      And drank the cup of gall;
+
+      Who emptied of His power
+      Became the foremost man--
+    Calm at the great prophetic hour
+      Through which God's purpose ran;
+
+      Who in the darkest fight
+      Imagination knows,
+    Saluted Thee, Eternal Light,
+      And died as _for_ His foes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Master
+
+
+      The Master many a day
+      In pain and darkness wrought:
+    Through death to life He held His way,
+      All lands the glory caught.
+
+
+      And He unlocked the gain
+      Shut up in grievous loss,
+    And made the stairs to heaven as plain
+      As His uplifted cross--
+
+      The stairs of pain and woe
+      In all the work on earth,
+    Up which the patient toilers go
+      To their eternal birth.
+
+      O Master, Master mine,
+      I read the legend now,
+    _To work and suffer is divine_,
+      All radiant on Thy brow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Life in Death
+
+
+      Strong children of decay,
+      Ye live by perishing:
+    To-morrow thrives on dead to-day,
+      And joy on suffering.
+
+      The labor of your hearts,
+      Like that of brain and hands,
+    Shall be for gain in other marts,
+      For bread in other lands.
+
+      And will ye now despond
+      Amid consuming toil,
+    When there is hope and joy beyond
+      Which death can not despoil?
+
+      Herein all comfort is:
+      _In usefulness and zeal,
+    The Lord announces who are His
+      And gives eternal weal_.
+
+
+Sacrifice
+
+
+    Through stern and ruthless years
+    Beyond the ken of man,
+    All filled with ruin, pain, and tears,
+    Has God worked out His plan.
+
+    Change on the heels of change,
+    Like blood-hounds in the chase,
+    Has swept the earth in tireless range,
+    Spangled with heavenly grace.
+
+    At last the mystery
+    Of the great Cross of Christ,
+    Red with a world-wide agony,
+    The God-Man sacrificed;
+
+    And from the Sacrifice
+    The seven great notes of Peace,
+    Which pierce the clouds beneath all skies
+    Till pain and sorrow cease.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Mind of Christ
+
+
+    Into the surging world,
+    Upon thy lips His word,
+    And in thy hand His flag unfurled,
+    Go, soldier of the Lord;
+
+    Like Him who came from far
+    To toil for our release,
+    And framed the startling notes of war
+    Out of the psalm of peace.
+
+    And all the recompense
+    Which thou wilt ever need,
+    Shall kindle in the throbbing sense
+    Of this life-laden creed:
+
+
+      _Grace has for him sufficed
+      Who has St. Michael's heart,
+    The fullness of the mind of Christ,
+      To do a hero's part_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Sympathy.
+
+
+      The Master we revere,
+      Who bled on Calvary,
+    To fill us with heroic cheer,
+      Abides eternally.
+
+      From His ascended heights
+      Above the pain and ruth,
+    To all His servants He delights
+      To come in grace and truth.
+
+      His presence is so dear,
+      His face so brave and fair,
+    That all our heavy burdens here
+      He somehow seems to share.
+
+      Copartner in our work,
+      He every pain beguiles;
+    How can the fear of failure lurk
+      In that on which He smiles!
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Love for Love.
+
+
+      Master, far Thy dear sake
+      I bear my anguish now,
+    And in Thy blessed cross partake
+      Whose sign is on my brow.
+
+      For Thy dear sake I toil
+      Who didst so toil for me;
+    O more than balm, or wine, or oil,
+      The cheer that comes from Thee.
+
+
+     For Thy dear sake I live
+     A servant unto all,
+    And know that Thou wilt surely give
+     Thyself as coronal.
+
+     For Thy dear sake I watch
+     And keep my flag unfurled,
+    Until her golden gleam I catch,
+     Sweet evening of the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Conclusion,
+
+
+      True worker with the Lord,
+      He labors not for hire;
+    Co-partner in the sure reward,
+      What can he more desire?
+
+      Sometimes his eyes are dim,
+      All signs he can not spell;
+    Yet he endures as seeing Him
+      Who is invisible.
+
+      The work he ought is bliss,
+      The highest thing to crave;
+    And all his life is found in this
+      Memorial for his grave:
+
+      _A worker with the Lord_,
+      _He sought no other name_,
+    _And found therein enough reward_,
+      _Enough, enough of fame_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+ALVIN S. SOUTHWORTH
+
+
+CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT.
+
+
+This gentleman, a member of the American Geographical Society, has
+furnished, in the columns of _The Sunday Magazine_, the following
+picture of his experience in crossing the most perilous of the African
+deserts:
+
+Those who have not actually undergone the hardships of African travel
+almost always believe that the most dangerous desert routes are found in
+the Great Sahara. Such is not the fact. The currency given to this
+popular delusion is doubtless due to the immensity of the arid waste
+extending from the Mediterranean to the Soudan, and which is deceptive
+in its imagined dangers because of its large area. All travelers who
+have made the transit of the Nubian Desert from Korosko, situated
+between the First and Second Cataracts, southward across the burning
+sands of the Nubian Desert, a distance of 425 miles, concur in the
+statement that it is an undertaking unmatched in its severity and rigors
+by any like journey over the treeless and shrub-less spaces of the
+earth. "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe," as told by De Quincey, in his
+matchless descriptive style, carrying his readers with him through
+scenes of almost unparalleled warfare, privation, and cruelty, until the
+remnant of the Asiatic band stands beneath the shadow of the Chinese
+Wall to receive the welcome of their deliverer, but imperfectly portrays
+the physical suffering that must be endured in the solitude of the most
+dangerous of African deserts. Let me, therefore, briefly record my life
+in the Nubian Desert, at a time when I was filled with the hopes and
+ambitions which led Bruce, in the last century, to the fountains of the
+Blue Nile, and but a few years since guided Speke and Grant, Sir Samuel
+Baker, and Stanley to the great basin of the major river, and determined
+the general geography of the equatorial regions.
+
+It was in the middle of January, after a pleasant journey up the Nile
+from Lower Egypt, on board a luxuriously fitted up "dahabeah," that I
+arrived at Korosko, a Nubian village about a thousand miles from the
+Mediterranean. The ascent of the Nile was simply a prolonged feast in
+this comfortable sailing-craft, with the panorama of imposing temples
+and gigantic ruins relieving the dreary monotony of the river-banks. The
+valley of this ancient stream, from the First Cataract, where it ceases
+to be navigable, to Cairo, is remarkable alone to the traveler for its
+vast structures and mausoleums. The _sikeahs_ and _shadofs_, which are
+employed to raise water from the river, in order that it may be used for
+irrigation, suggest that no improvement has been made in Egyptian
+farming for four thousand years. But the smoke curling away from tall
+chimneys, and the noise of busy machinery in the midst of extensive
+fields of sugarcane, remind us that Egypt has become one of the greatest
+sugar-producing powers of the East. From the site of ancient Memphis to
+Korosko, comprising about six degrees of latitude, the soil under
+cultivation rarely extends beyond the distance of a mile into the
+interior, while to eastward and westward is one vast, uninhabited waste,
+the camping-ground of the Bedouins, who roam from river to sea in
+predatory bands, leading otherwise aimless lives. Thinly populated, and
+now without the means of subsisting large communities, Upper Egypt can
+never become what it was when, as we are taught, the walls of Thebes
+inclosed 4,000,000 of people, and the Nile was bridged from shore to
+shore. Turning from this strange land, I encamped on the border of the
+Nubian Desert, and prepared to set out on camel-back toward the sources
+of the Nile.
+
+In conjunction with the local officials I began the necessary
+preparations, which involved the selection of forty-two camels, three
+donkeys, and nineteen servants. My ample provision and preparation
+consisted of the camels' feed--durah and barley, stowed in plaited
+saddle-bags; filling the goatskins with water, each containing an
+average of five gallons. Eighty were required for the journey. Three
+sheep, a coup-full of chickens, a desert range, a wall-tent, with the
+other supplies, made up over 10,000 pounds of baggage as our caravan,
+entering the northern door of the barren and dreary steppe, felt its way
+through a deep ravine paved with boulders, shifting sands, and dead
+camels. We soon left the bluffs and crags which form the barrier between
+the Nile and the desolate land beyond, and then indeed the real journey
+began.
+
+Our camp apparatus was quite simple, consisting of a few plates, knives
+and forks, blankets and rugs, a kitchen-tent, and a pine table; and this
+outfit formed the nucleus of our nomadic village, not omitting the rough
+cooking-utensils. I recall now one of these strange scenes in that
+distant region, under the cloudless sky, beneath the Southern Cross. A
+few feet distant from my canvas chateau was my aged Arab cook,
+manipulating his coals, his tongs, and preparing the hissing mutton, the
+savory pigeons and potatoes. The cook is the most popular man on such an
+expedition, and is neither to be coaxed nor driven. The baggage-camels
+were disposed upon the ground, a few yards distant, eating their grain
+and uttering those loud, yelping, beseeching sounds--a compound of an
+elephant's trumpet and a lion's roar--which were taken up, repeated by
+the chorus, and re-echoed by the hills. These patient animals, denuded
+of their loads and water, the latter having been corded in mats, became
+quiet only with sleep. Add to these scenes and uproar the deafening
+volubility of twenty Arabs and Nubians, each shouting within the true
+barbaric key, the seven-eighths nudity of the blacks, the elaborate and
+flashing wear of the upper servants, and the small asperities of this my
+menial world--all of these with a refreshing breeze, a clear atmosphere,
+the air laden with ozone and electric life, the sky inviting the
+serenest contemplation, with the great moon thrice magnified as it rose,
+and I recall an evening when I was supremely content.
+
+Piloted by the carcasses of decayed camels, we took up our route in the
+morning, led by our guide, and soon emerged on the sublimest scenery of
+the desert. Our line of travel lay through the center of grand
+elliptical amphitheaters, which called to mind the Coliseum at Rome and
+the exhumed arena at Pompeii. These eroded structures, wrought by the
+hand of nature at some remote period, were floored over by hard,
+gravelly sand, inclosed by lofty, semi-circular sides, and vaulted only
+by the blue sky, and are among the grandest primitive formations I have
+ever seen. From the maroon shade of the sand to the dark, craggy
+appearance of the terraced rocks, there is as much variety as can be
+found in landscape without verdure and in solitude without civilization.
+These amphitheaters are linked together by narrow passages; and so
+perfect were the formations, that four doorways, breaking the view into
+quadrants, were often seen. The view broadened and lengthened day by
+day, until our journey lay through a plain of billowing sand. Then the
+sun grew fierce and intolerable. The lips began to crack, the eyebrows
+and mustache were burned to a light blonde, the skin peeled, and the
+tongue became parched, while the fine sand, ever present in the hot
+wind, left its deposits in the delicate membranes of the eye. It is thus
+that a period of ten hours in the saddle, day after day, under the
+scorching sun, takes the edge off the romance of travel, and calls to
+one's mind the green lawn, the sparkling fountain, and the beauties of a
+more tolerable zone.
+
+We were making about thirty miles a day, sleeping soundly at night, when
+the ever-watchful hyena, and occasionally a troop of wild asses, would
+pay us their nocturnal visits, and upon the fourth morning we began to
+approach the shores of the Mirage Seas. These atmospheric phenomenas on
+the Nubian Desert are not only very perfect imitations of real lakes,
+but have on many occasions inveigled expeditions away, to perish of heat
+and thirst. A little time before my expedition to Central Africa a body
+of Egyptian troops crossing this desert found their water almost at a
+boiling point in the skins, and nearly exhausted. They beheld, a few
+miles distant, an apparent lake overshadowed by a forest, and bordered
+with verdure and shrubbery. Although told by the guide that it was an
+illusion, they broke ranks, started off in pursuit of the sheet of
+water, chasing the aerial phantom, although it receded with the pace of
+their approach. At last they sunk down from thirst and fatigue, and
+died! Twelve hours on the Nubian Desert without water means a certain
+and terrible death; and even to this day, having been near such an end,
+with all of its indescribable anguish, I seldom raise a glass of water
+to my lips that I do not recall a day when I lay upon the burning sand,
+awaiting with impatience the moment that should snap asunder the vital
+cord and give peace to my burning body.
+
+A mirage certainly presents an incomparable scenic effect. Once in its
+midst, you are encompassed by an imponderable mirror. It reflects the
+rocks, the mountains, the stray mimosa trees, and reproduces by inverted
+mirage every prominent object of the extended landscape. It has the blue
+of polished platinum, and lies like a motionless sea, stretching away
+from the craggy bluffs. Sometimes during the noonday heat it dances
+within a few yards of the caravan, and gives motion to every object
+within its area, changing the waste to the semblance of rolling seas
+peopled with the semblance of men.
+
+Attacked by semi-blindness, with a blistering nose, and lips almost
+sealed to speech because of the agony of attempted articulation, I found
+the fifth day brought me to the extreme of suffering, when a terrific
+simoon burst over the desert, gathering up and dispersing the sands with
+indescribable fury. My mouth and nostrils were filled with earthy atoms,
+and my eyes were filled with irritating particles. The storm grew so
+dense and awful that it became a tornado, and we were soon enveloped in
+total darkness. All routes of travel were obliterated, and destruction
+threatened my command. These sand spouts are frequent, making a clean
+swathe, burying alike man and beast, and often they blow for weeks.
+During the approach of one of those death-dealing simoon's I noted a
+sublime phenomenon. To southward were fine equi-distant sand spouts,
+rising perpendicularly to a great height, and losing their swelling
+capitals in the clouds. They seemed to stand as majestic columns
+supporting the vault of the sky, and the supernatural architecture was
+further heightened by mirage-lakes, whose waters seemed to dash against
+the pillars as the green of doom-palms waved through the colonnade. The
+spectacle appeared like the ruin of a supernal pantheon once reared by
+the banks of the Nile, whose welcome and real waters greeted my eye
+after a fourteen days' journey, which I trust I may never be called upon
+to repeat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+A FORBIDDEN TOPIC.
+
+
+WHICH SOME PEOPLE PERSIST IN INTRODUCING.
+
+
+Why don't they stop it? Why do some people persist, spite of my hopes
+and prayers, my silent tears and protestations, in asking if "I'm well,"
+when I'm before their eyes apparently the personification of health?
+
+Why am I of that unfortunate class of beings who are afflicted with
+friends ("Heaven defend me from such friends") who appear to take a
+fiendish delight in recounting to me my real or (by them) imagined
+ill-looks; who come into my presence, and scrutinizing me closely,
+inquire, with what looks to me like a shade of anxiety, "Are you sick?"
+and if I, in astonishment, echo, "Sick? why, no; I never felt better in
+my life," observe, with insulting mock humility, "O, excuse me; I
+thought you looked badly," and turn again to other subjects.
+
+But I do not flatter myself they are done with me. I know their
+evil-working dispositions are far from satisfied; and, presently they
+renew the attack by asking, still more obnoxiously, "My dear, are you
+sure you are quite well today? you certainly are pale;" and if I, thus
+severely cross-questioned, am induced to admit, half sarcastically, and,
+perhaps, just to note the effect, that I have--as who has not--a little
+private ache somewhere about me (that, by the way, I considered was only
+mine to bear, and therefore nobody's business but my own, and which may
+have been happily forgotten for a few moments), I have removed the
+barrier, given the opportunity desired, and the flood rushes in. "I knew
+you were not well," they cry, triumphantly. "Your complexion is very
+sallow; your lips are pale; your eyes look dull, and have dark rings
+under them; and surely you are thinner than when I saw you
+last"--concerning all which I may have doubts, though I have none that a
+frantic desire is taking possession of me to get away, and investigate
+these charges; and when, finally, I am released from torture, I fly to
+my good friend, the mirror; and, having obtained from it the blissful
+reassurance that these charges are without foundation in my features, I
+feel like girding on my armor and confronting my disagreeable ex-callers
+and all their kind with a few pertinent (or impertinent) questions.
+
+I want to ask them if it does them any particular good to go and sit in
+people's houses by the hour, watch their every look and action, and
+harrow up their feelings by such gratuitous information? I want to ask
+them if they suppose our eyesight is not so sharp as theirs? And I take
+great pleasure in informing them, and in politely and frigidly
+requesting them to remember, that, so far as my observation goes, when
+people are ill, or looking ill, they are not so blind, either to
+feelings or appearances, as not to have discovered the fact; that,
+indeed, they must be exceptions to the general rule of half-invalids if
+they do not frequently and critically examine every lineament of their
+face, and secretly grieve over their increasing imperfections;
+consequently, ye provokingly observant ones, when you meet them and find
+them not looking well, even find yourselves in doubt as to whether they
+are looking quite as well as when you last saw them, and are sure you
+shall perish unless you introduce what Emerson declares "a forbidden
+topic" in some form--at least give your friends the benefit of the
+doubt; tell them they are looking _better_ than usual, and, my word for
+it, they _will_ be by the time they hear that; for if there is anything
+that will make a person, especially a woman look well, and feel better,
+it is the knowledge that some one thinks she does.
+
+But if she is thin, remember there is nothing fat-producing in your
+telling her of the fact; or if her eyes are dull, they will not brighten
+at the certainty that you know it, unless with anger that your knowledge
+should be conveyed in such a fashion; and if she is pale, telling her of
+it will not bring the color to her face, unless it be a blush of shame
+for your heartless ill-breeding.
+
+So much for the class who appear purposely to wound one's feelings. Then
+there is another class who accomplish the same result with no such
+intention, who do it seemingly from pure thoughtlessness, but who should
+none the less be held accountable for their acts.
+
+One of these unlucky mortals, who would not willingly cause any one a
+single heartache, lately met a gentleman friend of ours, who is, 't is
+true--and "pity 'tis 'tis true"--in very delicate health, and thus
+accosted him:
+
+"I tell you, my man, unless you do something for yourself, right off,
+you won't be alive three months from now!"
+
+"Do something!" As if he had not just returned from a thousand mile
+journey taken to consult one of the most eminent physicians in the
+country, to whom he paid a small fortune for services that saved his
+life; and as if he were not constantly trying every thing he possibly
+can to help and save himself! Nevertheless, after this blunt prophecy,
+he did something more, something he is not in the habit of doing. He
+went home utterly miserable, related the circumstances to his wife
+(whose murderous inclinations toward his officious fellow-man were
+forgivable), assured her that were his appearance so horrifying to
+casual acquaintances he must indeed be a doomed man; and, spite of her
+efforts, always directed to the contrary, got the blues, and conscious
+of having done every thing else, began contemplating death as the only
+remedy still untried.
+
+Now, to me, such carelessness seems criminal. The gentleman addressed
+was attending to his extensive business, was more cheerful than half the
+men who are considered in perfect health, and was, for him, really
+looking, as well as feeling, finely; and to give him such startling
+intelligence, when he was so totally unprepared for it, was inflicting
+misery upon him that one human being has no right to inflict upon
+another; he has no right to advise a friend to do an indefinite
+"something," unless he knows what will help or cure him; he has no right
+to verbally notice his condition, and particularly when he meets him
+doing his duty in active business life.
+
+People should "think before they speak," that if their friends or
+acquaintances are ill, for that very reason they are generally
+discouraged enough, and need all the gladsome aid and comfort those
+about them can possibly give; and it is their simple duty to give it.
+
+Said a mother to me once, when urging me to call upon her invalid
+daughter, "And when you come, do not tell her she looks badly; tell her
+she looks better, and you hope soon to see her well. Every one who comes
+in exclaims about her terrible aspect, and it drives me almost
+distracted to note its ill effect on her."
+
+"Why, how can people be so heedless?" cried I. "Do they not know that
+even truth is not to be spoken at all times? When I come I'll give her
+joy, you may be sure;" and I did, though my heart ached the while, for I
+feared, all too truly, her days on earth were numbered; but I had my
+reward in her changed, happy countenance and the gratitude of her
+sorrowing mother.
+
+Therefore, if you are not the enviable possessor of one of those "merry
+hearts that doeth good like a medicine," both to yourself and to those
+with whom you come in contact, at least avoid wounding these by dwelling
+upon their infirmities. Even should you see your friends in the last
+stages of a long illness; though their cheeks are terrifying in their
+hollowness, and their eyes resemble dark caverns with faint lights at
+the far ends, and all their other features prove them soon to be
+embraced by the king of terrors, not only in sweet mercy's name do not
+speak of it, but, unless compelled to do so, except by your softened
+tones, make no sign that you notice it; remember you can not smooth
+their way to the tomb by descanting upon their poor emaciated bodies,
+and there is just a chance that they may recollect you a trifle more
+kindly when they have cast them off, like worn-out garments, if you now
+talk on pleasanter themes--themes with which they are not already so
+grievously familiar.--GALE FOREST, _in The Christian Union_.
+
+
+    COURTESY.
+
+    The savor of our household talk,
+      Which earneth silent thanks;
+    The glory of our daily walk
+      Among the busy ranks.
+
+    Life's cleanly, lubricating oil,
+      In which a help is found
+    To make the wheels of common toil
+      Go lightly, swiftly round.
+
+    Benevolence and grace of heart
+      That gives no needless pain,
+    And pours a balm on every smart
+      Till smiles appear again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+IDA LEWIS WILSON.
+
+
+THE GRACE DARLING OF AMERICA.
+
+
+About forty-six years ago a story of English heroism stirred the heart
+of the world. Grace Darling was born at Bamborough, on the coast of
+Northumberland, in 1815, and died in 1842. Her father was the keeper of
+the Long-stone Light-house, on one of the most exposed of the Farne
+islands. On the night of September 6, 1838, the Forfarshire steamer,
+proceeding from Hull to Dundee, was wrecked on one of the crags of the
+Farne group. Of fifty-three persons on board, thirty-eight perished,
+including the captain and his wife. On the morning of the 7th the
+survivors were discovered by Grace clinging to the rocks and remnants of
+the vessel, in imminent danger of being washed off by the returning
+tide. Grace, with the assistance of her parents, but against their
+remonstrance, immediately launched a boat and, with her father,
+succeeded in rescuing nine of them, and six escaped by other means.
+Presents and admiration were showered upon her from all parts of the
+United Kingdom, and a public subscription to the amount of L700 was
+raised for her. Among the many poets who sang her praises was
+Wordsworth, in a poem of considerable length, of which the following is
+a passage:
+
+    "Among the dwellers in the silent fields
+    The natural heart is touched, and public way
+    And crowded street resound with ballad strains,
+    Inspired by one whose very _name_ bespeaks
+    Favor divine, exalting, human love;
+    Whom, since her birth on bleak Northumbrian coast,
+    Known unto few, but prized as far as known,
+    A single act endears to high and low
+    Through the whole land--to manhood, moved in spite
+    Of the world's freezing cares; to generous youth;
+    To infancy, that lisps her praise; to age,
+    Whose eye reflects it, glistening through tears
+    Of generous admiration. Such true fame
+    Awaits her _now_; but, verily, good deeds
+    Do no imperishable record find
+    Save in the roll of heaven, where hers may live
+    A theme for angels, when they celebrate
+    The high-souled virtues which forgetful earth
+    Has witnessed."
+
+These lines describe equally well Ida Lewis, the heroine of our own
+country, whose brave deeds have passed into the habit of a life.
+
+Ida Lewis Wilson, for she is now married, is the daughter of Hosea
+Lewis, who was formerly of the revenue service, became keeper of Lime
+Rock Lighthouse, in the inner harbor of Newport, R.I. The lighthouse is
+situated on one of the small rocks of limestone in that harbor, and is
+entirely surrounded by water.
+
+From her thirteenth year Ida has resided on the rock. As the only means
+of connection with the city of Newport is by water, she early learned
+the use of oars. When she was about fifteen years of age she rescued
+from drowning four boys who had been thrown into the water by the
+upsetting of their boat near the lighthouse. During the Winter of
+1865-66, on one of the coldest days of that season, she rescued a
+soldier belonging to Fort Adams, who was clinging to a skiff, which had
+upset with him and become full of water. She lifted him out of the water
+into her own boat and carried him to the lighthouse.
+
+About this time the duty of looking after the light depended on Ida and
+her mother, her father having become a hopeless cripple from paralysis.
+This charge they fulfilled in the most perfect manner, no light on the
+coast being more regularly or more perfectly attended to. It is a
+singular life to imagine, these two women living thus isolated from the
+rest of the world. The freedom of the life, however, and the constant
+abundance of stimulating sea air, together with the exercise of rowing
+to and from the city, gave Ida a physical strength and a health which
+makes her richer in all the valuable part of life than many of her sex
+whose lives are passed in constant repining for something to live for,
+while surrounded with all the appliances of luxury. That Miss Lewis has
+also developed an independence of courage is shown by her deeds, which
+prove also that the isolation of her life has not in any way prevented
+the development of the tenderness of sympathy with suffering which is
+supposed to be peculiar to only the helplessness of women.
+
+It was owing to the efforts of the late Senator Burnside that Ida became
+the recognized keeper of the lighthouse, a promotion as graceful as it
+was deserved. The matter was arranged in January, 1879, by Senator
+Burnside and Collector Pratt.
+
+The keeper of Lime Rock Light then was Mrs. Zoradia Lewis, Ida's mother,
+who had been in charge for a number of years. Mrs. Lewis's second
+daughter, who was very sick, required all the mother's attention, and
+accordingly it was suggested to her that by her resignation the heroine
+could receive the appointment. She gladly accepted the suggestion, and
+on January 24th Ida received her appointment, with a salary of $750 a
+year, an increase of $250 over her mother's pay. In communicating the
+appointment Secretary Sherman said: "This appointment is conferred upon
+you as a mark of my appreciation for your noble and heroic efforts in
+saving human lives." Ida Lewis had given up all hope that her claims
+would ever be recognized, and the news was joyfully received.
+
+In July, 1881, the Secretary of the Treasury awarded the gold
+life-saving medal to her in recognition of her services in rescuing a
+number of persons from drowning since the passage of the act authorizing
+such awards. Most of the rescues made were under circumstances which
+called for heroic daring, and involved the risk of her life. The
+following summary of her achievements in life-saving is taken from the
+records of the Treasury Department:
+
+"The total number of lives Mrs. Ida Lewis Wilson has saved since 1854,
+so far as known, is thirteen. In all these cases except two she has
+relied wholly on herself. Her latest achievement was the rescue in
+February, 1881, of two bandsmen from Fort Adams, near Newport, R.I. The
+men were passing over the ice near Lime Rock Light-house, where Mrs.
+Lewis Wilson resides, when the ice gave way and they fell in. Hearing
+their cries, Mrs. Wilson ran out with a clothes-line which she threw to
+them, successively hauling them out at a great risk to herself from the
+double peril of the ice giving way beneath her and of being pulled in.
+Her heroism on various occasions has won her the tribute of her State's
+Legislature expressed in an official resolution; the public presentation
+to her of a boat by the citizens of Newport; a testimonial in money from
+the officers and soldiers of Fort Adams for saving their comrades; and
+medals from the Massachusetts Humane Society and the New York
+Life-saving Benevolent Association. To these offerings is now fitly
+added the gold medal of the United States Life-saving Service."
+
+The presentation took place at the Custom House at Newport, on October
+11, 1881, in the presence of many of the leading residents of the State,
+who met there upon invitation of Collector Cozzors. Mrs. Wilson was
+introduced to the company by Ex-Collector Macy. The collector introduced
+Lieutenant-commander F.E. Chadwick, U.S.N., who, in a happy speech, made
+the presentation of the highest token of merit of the kind which can be
+given in this country, the life-saving medal of the first class,
+conferred by the United States Government "for extreme heroic daring
+involving eminent personal danger." After a simple and eloquent recital
+of the circumstances in which Mrs. Wilson had, at the risk of her own
+life and in circumstances requiring the utmost skill and daring, saved
+from a watery grave on six occasions thirteen persons, Commander
+Chadwick paid a glowing tribute to the heroism of Mrs. Wilson, and
+concluded by reading the letter of Secretary of the Treasury Windom,
+conferring the medal awarded to her under the law of June 20th, 1874.
+Lieutenant-governor Fay responded on behalf of Mrs. Wilson, and an
+appropriate address was made by Ex-Governor Van Zant on behalf of
+Newport and Rhode Island.
+
+After the addresses the public were invited to inspect the gold medal,
+and were greatly impressed with its beauty. It bears upon its obverse
+side a tablet with the following inscription:
+
+    TO
+
+    Ida Lewis Wilson,
+
+    For Signal Heroism in Saving Two Men from Drowning,
+
+    FEBRUARY 4, 1881.
+
+Surrounding the tablet is the inscription:
+
+    In Testimony of Heroic Deeds in Saving Life
+      from the Peril of the Seas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+RACHEL JACKSON
+
+(BORN 1767--DIED 1828.)
+
+
+THE WIFE OF OUR SEVENTH PRESIDENT.
+
+
+Rachel Donelson was the maiden name of General Jackson's wife. She was
+born in Virginia, in the year 1767, and lived there until she was eleven
+years of age. Her father, Colonel John Donelson, was a planter and land
+surveyor, who possessed considerable wealth in land, cattle, and slaves.
+He was one of those hardy pioneers who were never content unless they
+were living away out in the woods, beyond the verge of civilization.
+Accordingly, in 1779, we find him near the head-waters of the Tennessee
+River, with all his family, bound for the western part of Tennessee,
+with a river voyage of two thousand miles before them.
+
+Seldom has a little girl of eleven years shared in so perilous an
+adventure. The party started in the depth of a severe Winter, and
+battled for two months with the ice before it had fairly begun the
+descent of the Tennessee. But, in the Spring, accompanied by a
+considerable fleet of boats, the craft occupied by John Donelson and his
+family floated down the winding stream more rapidly. Many misfortunes
+befell them. Sometimes a boat would get aground and remain immovable
+till its whole cargo was landed. Sometimes a boat was dashed against a
+projecting point and sunk. One man died of his frozen feet; two children
+were born. On board one boat, containing twenty-eight persons, the
+small-pox raged. As this boat always sailed at a certain distance behind
+the rest, it was attacked by Indians, who captured it, killed all the
+men, and carried off the women and children. The Indians caught the
+small-pox, of which some hundreds died in the course of the season.
+
+But during this voyage, which lasted several months, no misfortune
+befell the boat of Colonel Donelson; and he and his family, including
+his daughter Rachel, arrived safely at the site of the present city of
+Nashville, near which he selected his land, built his log house, and
+established himself. Never has a settlement been so infested by hostile
+Indians as this. When Rachel Donelson, with her sisters and young
+friends, went blackberrying, a guard of young men, with their rifles
+loaded and cocked, stood guard over the surrounding thickets while the
+girls picked the fruit. It was not safe for a man to stoop over a spring
+to drink unless some one else was on the watch with his rifle in his
+arms; and when half a dozen men stood together, in conversation, they
+turned their backs to each other, all facing different ways, to watch
+for a lurking savage.
+
+So the Donelsons lived for eight years, and gathered about them more
+negroes, more cattle, and more horses than any other household in the
+settlement. During one of the long Winters, when a great tide of
+emigration had reduced the stock of corn, and threatened the
+neighborhood with famine, Colonel Donelson moved to Kentucky with all
+his family and dependents, and there lived until the corn crop at
+Nashville was gathered. Rachel, by this time, had grown to be a
+beautiful and vigorous young lady, well skilled in all the arts of the
+backwoods, and a remarkably bold and graceful rider. She was a plump
+little damsel, with the blackest hair and eyes, and of a very cheerful
+and friendly disposition. During the temporary residence of her father
+in Kentucky, she gave her hand and heart to one Lewis Robards, and her
+father returned to Nashville without her.
+
+Colonel Donelson soon after, while in the woods surveying far from his
+home, fell by the hand of an assassin. He was found pierced by bullets;
+but whether they were fired by red savages or by white was never known.
+To comfort her mother in her loneliness, Rachel and her husband came to
+Nashville and lived with her, intending, as soon as the Indians were
+subdued, to occupy a farm of their own.
+
+In the year 1788 Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer from North Carolina,
+arrived at Nashville to enter upon the practice of his profession, and
+went to board with Mrs. Donelson. He soon discovered that Mrs. Rachel
+Robards lived most unhappily with her husband, who was a man of violent
+temper and most jealous disposition. Young Jackson had not long resided
+in the family before Mr. Robards began to be jealous of him, and many
+violent scenes took place between them. The jealous Robards at length
+abandoned his wife and went off to his old home in Kentucky, leaving
+Jackson master of the field.
+
+A rumor soon after reached the place that Robards Had procured a divorce
+from his wife in the Legislature of Virginia; soon after which Andrew
+Jackson and Rachel Donelson were married. The rumor proved to be false,
+and they lived together for two years before a divorce was really
+granted, at the end of which time they were married again. This
+marriage, though so inauspiciously begun, was an eminently happy one,
+although, out of doors, it caused the irrascible Jackson a great deal of
+trouble. The peculiar circumstances attending the marriage caused many
+calumnies to be uttered and printed respecting Mrs. Jackson, and some of
+the bitterest quarrels which the general ever had had their origin in
+them.
+
+At home, however, he was one of the happiest of men. His wife was an
+excellent manager of a household and a kind mistress of slaves. She had
+a remarkable memory, and delighted to relate anecdotes and tales of the
+early settlement of the country. Daniel Boone had been one of her
+father's friends, and she used to recount his adventures and escapes.
+Her abode was a seat of hospitality, and she well knew how to make her
+guests feel at home. It used to be said in Tennessee that she could not
+write; but, "as I have had the pleasure of reading nine letters in her
+own handwriting," says Parton, "one of which was eight pages long, I
+presume I have a right to deny the imputation. It must be confessed,
+however, that the spelling was exceedingly bad, and that the writing was
+so much worse as to be nearly illegible. If she was ignorant of books,
+she was most learned in the lore of the forest, the dairy, the kitchen,
+and the farm. I remember walking about a remarkably fine spring that
+gushed from the earth near where her dairy stood, and hearing one of her
+colored servants say that there was nothing upon the estate which she
+valued so much as that spring." She grew to be a stout woman, Which made
+her appear shorter than she really was. Her husband, on the contrary,
+was remarkably tall and slender; so that when they danced a reel
+together, which they often did, with all the vigor of the olden time,
+the spectacle was extremely curious.
+
+It was a great grief to both husband and wife that they had no children,
+and it was to supply this want in the household that they adopted one of
+Mrs. Donelson's nephews, and named him Andrew Jackson. This boy was the
+delight of them both as long as they lived.
+
+Colonel Benton, so long in the United States Senate, himself a pioneer
+of the still remoter West, who knew Mrs. Jackson well and long, recorded
+his opinion of her in the following forcible language:
+
+"A more exemplary woman in all the relations of life--wife, friend,
+neighbor, mistress of slaves--never lived, and never presented a more
+quiet, cheerful, and admirable management of her household. She had the
+general's own warm heart, frank manners, and admirable temper; and no
+two persons could have been better suited to each other, lived more
+happily together, or made a house more attractive to visitors. No
+bashful youth or plain old man, whose modesty sat them down at the lower
+end of the table, could escape her cordial attention, any more than the
+titled gentlemen at her right and left. Young persons were her delight,
+and she always had her house filled with them, all calling her
+affectionately 'Aunt Rachel.'"
+
+In the homely fashion of the time, she used to join her husband and
+guests in smoking a pipe after dinner and in the evening. There are now
+living many persons who well remember seeing her smoking by her fireside
+a long reed pipe.
+
+When General Jackson went forth to fight in the war of 1812, he was
+still living in a log house of four rooms. "And this house," says
+Parton, in a sketch written years ago, from which this is chiefly drawn,
+"is still standing on his beautiful farm ten miles from Nashville. I
+used to wonder, when walking about it, how it was possible for Mrs.
+Jackson to accommodate so many guests as we know she did. But a
+hospitable house, like a Third Avenue car, in never full; and in that
+mild climate the young men could sleep on the piazza or in the
+corn-crib, content if their mothers and sisters had the shelter of the
+house. It was not until long after the general's return from the wars
+that he built, or could afford to build, the large brick mansion which
+he named the 'Hermitage,' The visitor may still see in that commodious
+house the bed on which this happy pair slept and died, the furniture
+they used, and the pictures on which they were accustomed to look. In
+the hall of the second story there is still preserved the huge chest in
+which Mrs. Jackson used to stow away the woolen clothes of the family in
+the Summer, to keep them from the moths. Around the house are the
+remains of the fine garden of which she used to be proud, and a little
+beyond are the cabins of the hundred and fifty slaves, to whom she was
+more a mother than a mistress."
+
+A few weeks after the battle of New Orleans, when Jackson was in the
+first flush of his triumph, this plain planter's wife floated down the
+Mississippi to New Orleans to visit her husband and accompany him home.
+She had never seen a city before; for Nashville, at that day, was little
+more than a village. The elegant ladies of New Orleans were exceedingly
+pleased to observe that General Jackson, though he was himself one of
+the most graceful and polite of gentlemen, seemed totally unconscious of
+the homely bearing, the country manners, and awkward dress of his wife.
+In all companies and on all occasions he showed her every possible mark
+of respect. The ladies gathered about her and presented her with all
+sorts of showy knick-knacks and jewelry, and one of them undertook the
+task of selecting suitable clothes for her. She frankly confessed that
+she knew nothing at all about such things, and was willing to wear any
+thing the ladies thought proper. Much as she enjoyed her visit, she was
+glad enough to return to her old home on the banks of the Cumberland,
+and resume her oversight of the dairy and the plantation.
+
+Soon after the peace, a remarkable change came over the spirit of this
+excellent woman. Parson Blackburn, as the general always called him, was
+a favorite preacher in that part of Tennessee, and his sermons made so
+powerful an impression on Mrs. Jackson that she joined the Presbyterian
+Church, and was ever after devotedly religious. The general himself was
+almost persuaded to follow her example. He did not, however; but he
+testified his sympathy with his wife's feelings by building a church for
+her--a curious little brick edifice--on his own farm; the smallest
+church, perhaps, in the United States. It looks like a very small
+school-house; it has no steeple, no portico, and but one door; and the
+interior, which contains forty little pews, is unpainted, and the floor
+is of brick. On Sundays, the congregation consisted chiefly of the
+general, his family, and half a dozen neighbors, with as many negroes as
+the house would hold, and could see through the windows. It was just
+after the completion of this church that General Jackson made his famous
+reply to a young man who objected to the doctrine of future punishment.
+
+"I thank God," said this youth, "I have too much good sense to believe
+there is such a place as hell."
+
+"Well, sir," said General Jackson, "_I_ thank God there _is_ such a
+place."
+
+"Why, general," asked the young man, "what do you want with such a place
+of torment as hell?"
+
+To which the general replied, as quick as lightning: "To put such
+rascals as you are in, that oppose and vilify the Christian religion."'
+
+The young man said no more, and soon after found it convenient to take
+his leave.
+
+Mrs. Jackson did not live to see her husband President of the United
+States, though she lived long enough to know that he was elected to that
+office. When the news was brought to her of her husband's election, in
+December, 1828, she quietly said: "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake" (she
+always called him Mr. Jackson) "I am glad; for my own part, I never
+wished it."
+
+The people of Nashville, proud of the success of their favorite,
+resolved to celebrate the event by a great banquet on the 22d of
+December, the anniversary of the day on which the general had first
+defeated the British below New Orleans; and some of the ladies of
+Nashville were secretly preparing a magnificent wardrobe for the future
+mistress of the White House. Six days before the day appointed for the
+celebration, Mrs. Jackson, while busied about her household affairs in
+the kitchen of the hermitage, suddenly shrieked, placed her hands upon
+her heart, sank upon a chair, and fell forward into the arms of one of
+her servants. She was carried to her bed, where, for the space of sixty
+hours, she suffered extreme agony, during the whole of which her husband
+never left her side for ten minutes. Then she appeared much better, and
+recovered the use of her tongue. This was only two days before the day
+of the festival, and the first use she made of her recovered speech was
+to implore her husband to go to another room and sleep, so as to recruit
+his strength for the banquet. He would not leave her, however, but lay
+down upon a sofa and slept a little. The evening of the 22d she appeared
+to be so much better that the general consented, after much persuasion,
+to sleep in the next room, and leave his wife in the care of the doctor
+and two of his most trusted servants.
+
+At nine o'clock he bade her good-night, went to the next room, and took
+off his coat, preparatory to lying down. When he had been gone five
+minutes from her room, Mrs. Jackson, who was sitting up, suddenly gave a
+long, loud, inarticulate cry, which was immediately followed by the
+death rattle in her throat. By the time her husband had reached her
+side, she had breathed her last.
+
+"Bleed her," cried the general.
+
+But no blood flowed from her arm.
+
+"Try the temple," doctor.
+
+A drop or two of blood stained her cap, but no more followed. Still, it
+was long before he would believe her dead, and when there could no
+longer be any doubt, and they were preparing a table upon which to lay
+her out, he cried, with a choking voice:
+
+"Spread four blankets upon it; for if she does come to she will lie so
+hard upon the table."
+
+All night long he sat in the room, occasionally looking into her face,
+and feeling if there was any pulsation in her heart. The next morning
+when one of his friends arrived, just before daylight, he was nearly
+speechless and utterly unconsolable, looking twenty years older.
+
+There was no banquet that day in Nashville. On the morning of the
+funeral, the grounds were crowded with people, who saw, with emotion,
+the poor old general supported to the grave between two of his old
+friends, scarcely able to stand. The remains were interred in the garden
+of the Hermitage, in a tomb which the general had recently completed.
+The tablet which covers her dust contains the following inscription:
+
+"Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson,
+who died the 22nd of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her
+person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in
+relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures, and cultivated that divine
+pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she
+was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter;
+to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her
+benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good.
+A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound but not dishonor.
+Even death, when he tore her from the arms of husband, could but
+transport to the bosom of her God."
+
+Andrew Jackson was never the same man again. During his presidency he
+never used the phrase, "By the Eternal," nor any other language which
+could be considered profane. He mourned his wife until he himself
+rejoined her in the tomb he had prepared for them both.
+
+
+    Of all the blessed things below
+      To hint the joys above,
+    There is not one our hearts may know
+      So dear as mated love.
+
+    It walks the garden of the Lord,
+      It gives itself away;
+    To give, and think not of reward,
+      Is glory day by day.
+
+    And though sometimes the shadows fall,
+      And day is dark as night,
+    It bows and drinks the cup of gall,
+      But gives not up the fight.
+
+    For One is in the union where
+      The _mine_ is ever _thine_,
+    Whose presence keeps it brave and fair,
+      A melody divine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+DISCONTENTED GIRLS.
+
+
+ONE PANACEA FOR THEM--AND ONE REFUGE.
+
+
+Not every girl is discontented, nor are any wretched all the time. If
+they were, our homes would lose much sunshine. Certainly no class in the
+community is so constantly written about, talked at, and preached to as
+our girls. And still there always seems to be room left for one word
+more. I am persuaded that the leaven of discontent pervades girls of the
+several social ranks, from the fair daughter of a cultured home to her
+who has grown up in a crowded tenement, her highest ambition to dress
+like the young ladies she sees on the fashionable avenue. City girls and
+country girls alike know the meaning of this discontent, which sometimes
+amounts to morbidness, and again only to nervous irritability.
+
+I once knew and marveled at a young person who spent her languid
+existence idly lounging in a rocking-chair, eating candy, and reading
+novels, whilst her mother bustled about, provoking by her activity an
+occasional remonstrance from her indolent daughter. "Do, ma, keep
+still," she would say, with amiable wonder at ma's notable ways. This
+incarnation of sweet selfishness was hateful in my eyes, and I have
+often queried, in the twenty years which have passed since I saw her,
+what sort of woman she made. As a girl she was vexatious, though no
+ripple of annoyance crossed the white brow, no frown obscured it, and no
+flurry of impatience ever tossed the yellow curls. She had no
+aspirations which candy and a rocking-chair could not gratify. It is not
+so with girls of a larger mind and greater vitality--the girls, for
+instance, in our own neighborhood, whom we have known since they were
+babies. Many of them feel very much dissatisfied with life, and do not
+hesitate to say so; and, strangely enough, the accident of a collegiate
+or common-school education makes little difference in their conclusions.
+
+"To what end," says the former, "have I studied hard, and widened my
+resources? I might have been a society girl, and had a good time, and
+been married and settled sometime, without going just far enough to find
+out what pleasure there is in study, and then stopping short."
+
+I am quoting from what girls have said to me--girls who have been
+graduated with distinction, and whose parents preferred that they should
+neither teach, nor paint, nor enter upon a profession, nor engage in any
+paid work. Polished after the similitude of a palace, what should the
+daughters do except stay at home to cheer father and mother, play and
+sing in the twilight, read, shop, sew, visit, receive their friends, and
+be young women of elegant leisure? If love, and love's climax, the
+wedding march, follow soon upon a girl's leaving school, she is taken
+out of the ranks of girlhood, and in accepting woman's highest vocation,
+queenship in the kingdom of home, foregoes the ease of her girlish life
+and its peril of _ennui_ and unhappiness together. This, however, is the
+fate of the minority, and while young people continue, as thousands do,
+to dread beginning home life upon small means, it must so remain.
+
+Education is not a fetich, though some who ought to know better regard
+it in that superstitious light. No amount of school training, dissevered
+from religious culture and from that development of the heart and of the
+conscience without which intellectual wealth is poverty, will lift
+anybody, make anybody happier or better, or fit anybody for blithe
+living in this shadowy world. I have no doubt that there are numbers of
+girls whose education, having made them objects of deep respect to their
+simple fathers and mothers, has also gone far to make the old home
+intolerable, the home ways distasteful, and the old people, alas!
+subjects of secret, deprecating scorn. A girl has, indeed, eaten of the
+tree of the knowledge of good and evil when her eyes are opened in such
+wise that she is ashamed of her plain, honorable, old-fashioned parents,
+or, if not ashamed, is still willing to let them retire to the
+background while she shines in the front.
+
+I did not write this article for the purpose of saying what I hold to be
+the bounden duty of every father and mother in the land; viz., to
+educate the daughter as they educate the son, to some practical,
+bread-winning pursuit. That should be the rule, and not the exception. A
+girl should be trained so that with either head or hands, as artist or
+artisan, in some way or other, she will be able to go into the world's
+market with something for which the world, being shrewd and knowing what
+it wants, will pay in cash. Rich or poor, the American father who fails
+to give his daughter this special training is a short-sighted and cruel
+man.
+
+My thought was rather of the girls themselves. Some of them will read
+this. So will some of their mothers-Mothers and daughters often, not
+invariably, are so truly _en rapport_ that their mutual comprehension is
+without a flaw. There are homes in which, with the profoundest regard
+and the truest tenderness on both sides, they do not understand each
+other. The mother either sees the daughter's discontent, recognizes and
+resents it, or fails to see it, would laugh at its possibility, and pity
+the sentimentalist who imagined it. And there are dear, blooming,
+merry-hearted, clear-eyed young women who are as gay and as elastic as
+bird on bough or flower in field.
+
+To discontented girls I would say, there is for you one panacea--Work;
+and there is one refuge--Christ. Have you been told this before? Do you
+say that you can find no work worth the doing? Believe me, if not in
+your own home, you need go no further than your own set, your own
+street, your own town, to discover it waiting for you. No one else can
+do it so well. Perhaps no one else can do it at all. The girl can not be
+unhappy who, without reserve and with full surrender, consecrates
+herself to Christ, for then will she have work enough.--MARGARET E.
+SANGSTER.
+
+    God giveth his beloved rest through action
+      Which reacheth for the dream of joy on earth;
+    Inertness brings the heart no satisfaction,
+      But condemnation and the sense of dearth.
+
+    And shall the dream of life, the quenchless yearning
+      For something which is yet beyond control,
+    The flame within the breast forever burning,
+      Not leap to action and exalt the soul?--
+
+    Surmount all barriers to brave endeavor,
+      Make for itself a way where it would go,
+    And flash the crown of ecstacy forever,
+      Which only laborers with God may know?
+
+    In action there is joy which is no fiction,
+      The hope of something as in faith begun,
+    God's sweet and everlasting benediction,
+      The flush of victory and labor done!
+
+    Labor puts on the livery of greatness,
+      While genius idle withers from the sight,
+    And in its triumph takes no note of lateness,
+      For time exists not in Eternal Light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+
+THE VOICE IN RAMAH.
+
+
+"RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT HE COMFORTED, BECAUSE
+THEY WERE NOT."
+
+
+    We have heard the voice in Ramah,
+     The grief in the days of yore,
+    When the beautiful "flowers of the martyrs"
+     Went to bloom on another shore.
+
+    The light of our life is darkness,
+     And with sorrow we are not done;
+    For thine is the bitterest mourning,
+     Mourning for an only son!
+
+    And what shall I utter to comfort
+     The heart that is dearest of all?
+    Too young for the losses and crosses,
+     Too young for the rise and the fall?
+
+    O, yes; we own it, we own it;
+     But not too young for the grace
+    That was so nameless and blameless,
+     For the yearning and tender embrace!
+
+    He hung, he hung on thy bosom
+     In that happiest, weariest hour,
+    A dear little bird to its blossom,
+     The beautiful, dutiful flower.
+
+    And thus he grew by its sweetness,
+     He grew by its sweetness so
+    That smile unto smile responded--
+    But a little while ago!
+
+    And you and I were happy
+     In many a vision fair
+    Of a ripe and glorious manhood
+     Which the world and we should share.
+
+    In a little while the patter
+     Of two little feet was heard;
+    And many a look it cheered us,
+     A look that was more than a word.
+
+    In a little while he uttered
+     The words we longed to hear;
+    And mamma and papa blessed him
+     With a blessing of hope and fear.
+
+    In a little while he budded,
+     A bud of the promising Spring,
+    And O for the beautiful blossom,
+     And O for the fruit it will bring!
+
+    The joy, they never may know it
+     Who never have parents been,
+    The joy of a swelling bosom,
+     With a growing light within:
+
+    A light that is soft and tender,
+     And growing in strength and grace,
+    Which wreathes a form that is slender
+     And glows in a dear little face!
+
+    But life it knoweth the shadow,
+     The shadow as well as the shine;
+    For the one it follows the other,
+     And both together are thine.
+
+    For the bud it never unfolded,
+     The light it flickered away,
+    And whose is the power to utter
+     The grief of that bitterest day?
+
+    His form is yet before me,
+      With the fair and lofty brow,
+    And the day since last we kissed it--
+      Is it long since then and now?
+
+    Dearest, it seems but a minute,
+      Though Winter has spread the snow,
+    Meek purity's mantle to cover
+      The one that is resting below.
+
+    In the acre of God, that is yonder,
+      And unto the west his head,
+    He sleepeth the sleep untroubled,
+      With one to watch at his bed.
+
+    For the bright and guardian angel
+      Who beholdeth the Father's face,
+    Doth stand as a sentinel watching
+      O'er the dear one's resting-place;
+
+    Doth stand as a sentinel guarding
+      The dust of the precious dead,
+    Till at length the trumpet soundeth,
+      When the years of the world are sped;
+
+    And the throng which can not be numbered
+      Put on their garments of white,
+    And gird themselves for the glory
+      Of a realm that hath no night.
+
+    And so he is gone, the darling,
+      And the dream so fair and vain,
+    Whose light has faded to darkness,
+      We shall never dream again!
+
+    Never? Is the earth the limit
+      To bright and beautiful hope?
+    If the world brings not fruition,
+      Must we in darkness grope?
+
+    O no! There is expectation
+      Which the grave can not control;
+    There is boundless infinite promise
+      For the living and deathless soul.
+
+    And the darling who left us early
+      May yonder grow a man;
+    In deeds of the great hereafter
+      He may take his place in the van.
+
+    O, if thine is the bitterest mourning,
+      Mourning for an only son,
+    Believe that in God, the Giver,
+      Our darling his course begun;
+
+    Believe that in God, the Taker,
+      His course forever will be;
+    For this is the blessed comfort,
+      The comfort for thee and me.
+
+    Yea, this is the blessed comfort
+      In sorrow like that of yore,
+    When the beautiful "flowers of the martyrs"
+      Went to bloom on another shore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+LA FAYETTE.
+
+(BORN 1757--DIED 1834.)
+
+
+THE FRIEND AND DEFENDER OF LIBERTY ON TWO CONTINENTS.
+
+
+In the year 1730 there appeared in Paris a little volume entitled
+"Philosophic Letters," which proved to be one of the most influential
+books produced in modern times.
+
+It was written by Voltaire, who was then thirty-six years of age, and
+contained the results of his observations upon the English nation, in
+which he had resided for two years. Paris was then as far from London,
+for all practical purposes, as New York now is from Calcutta, so that
+when Voltaire told his countrymen of the freedom that prevailed in
+England, of the tolerance given to religious sects, of the honors paid
+to untitled merit, of Newton, buried in Westminster Abbey with almost
+regal pomp, of Addison, secretary of state, and Swift, familiar with
+prime ministers, and of the general liberty, happiness, and abundance of
+the kingdom, France listened in wonder, as to a new revelation The work
+was, of course, immediately placed under the ban by the French
+Government, and the author exiled, which only gave it increased currency
+and deeper influence.
+
+This was the beginning of the movement which produced at length, the
+French Revolution of 1787, and which has continued until France is now
+blessed with a free and constitutional government. It began among the
+higher classes of the people, for, at that day, not more than one-third
+of the French could read at all, and a much smaller fraction could read
+such a book as the "Philosophic Letters" and the books which it called
+forth. Republicanism was fashionable in the drawing-rooms of Paris for
+many years before the mass of the people knew what the word meant.
+
+Among the young noblemen who were early smitten in the midst of
+despotism with the love of liberty, was the Marquis de La Fayette, born
+in 1757. Few families in Europe could boast a greater antiquity than
+his. A century before the discovery of America we find the La Fayettes
+spoken of as an "ancient house," and in every generation at least one
+member of the family had distinguished himself by his services to his
+king. This young man, coming upon the stage of life when republican
+ideas were teeming in every cultivated mind, embraced them with all the
+ardor of youth and intelligence. At sixteen he refused a high post in
+the household of one of the princes of the blood and accepted a
+commission in the army. At the age of seventeen he was married to the
+daughter of a duke, whose dowry added a considerable fortune to his own
+ample possessions. She was an exceedingly lovely woman, and tenderly
+attached to her husband, and he was as fond of her as such a boy could
+be.
+
+The American Revolution broke out. In common with all the high-born
+republicans of his time, his heart warmly espoused the cause of the
+revolted colonies, and he immediately conceived the project of going to
+America and fighting under her banner. He was scarcely nineteen years of
+age when he sought an interview with Silas Deane, the American envoy,
+and offered his services to the Congress. Mr, Deane, it appears,
+objected to his youth.
+
+"When," says he, "I presented to the envoy my boyish face, I spoke more
+of my ardor in the cause than of my experience; but I dwelt much upon
+the effect my departure would have in France, and he signed our mutual
+agreement."
+
+His intention was concealed from all his family and from all his
+friends, except two or three confidants. While he was making preparation
+for his departure, most distressing and alarming news came from
+America--the retreat from Long Island, the loss of New York, the battle
+of White Plains, and the retreat through New Jersey. The American
+forces, it was said, reduced to a disheartened band of three thousand
+militia, were pursued by a triumphant army of thirty-three thousand
+English and Hessians. The credit of the colonies at Paris sank to the
+lowest ebb, and some of the Americans themselves confessed to La Fayette
+that they were discouraged, and tried to persuade him to abandon his
+project. He said to Mr. Deane:
+
+"Until now, sir, you have only seen my ardor in your cause, and that may
+not at present prove wholly useless. I shall purchase a ship to carry
+out your officers. We must feel confidence in the future, and it is
+especially in the hour of danger that I wish to share your fortune."
+
+He proceeded at once with all possible secrecy to raise the money and to
+purchase and arm a ship. While the ship was getting ready, in order the
+better to conceal his intention, he made a journey to England, which had
+previously been arranged by his family. He was presented to the British
+king, against whom he was going to fight; he dined at the house of the
+minister who had the department of the colonies; he visited Lord Rawdon,
+afterwards distinguished in the Revolutionary struggle; he saw at the
+opera Sir Henry Clinton, whom he next saw on the battlefield of
+Monmouth, and he breakfasted with Lord Shelburne, a friend of the
+colonies.
+
+"While I concealed my intentions," he tells us, "I openly avowed my
+sentiments. I often defended the Americans. I rejoiced at their success
+at Trenton, and it was my spirit of opposition that obtained for me an
+invitation to breakfast with Lord Shelburne."
+
+On his return to France his project was discovered, and his departure
+forbidden by the king. He sailed, however, in May, 1777, cheered by his
+countrymen, and secretly approved by the government itself. On arriving
+at Philadelphia, he sent to Congress a remarkably brief epistle to the
+following effect: "After my sacrifices, I have the right to ask two
+favors. One is, to serve at my own expense; the other, to begin to serve
+as a volunteer."
+
+Congress immediately named him a major-general of the American army, and
+he at once reported himself to General Washington. His services at the
+Brandywine, where he was badly wounded; in Virginia, where he held an
+important command; at Monmouth, where he led the attack--are
+sufficiently well known. When he had been in America about fifteen
+months, the news came of the impending declaration of war between France
+and England. He then wrote to Congress that, as long as he had believed
+himself free, he had gladly fought under the American flag; but that his
+own country being at war, he owed it the homage of his service, and he
+desired their permission to return home. He hoped, however, to come back
+to America; and asserted then that, wherever he went, he should be a
+zealous friend of the United States. Congress gave him leave of absence,
+voted him a sword, and wrote a letter on his behalf to the king of
+France. "We recommend this noble young man," said the letter of
+Congress, "to the favor of your majesty, because we have seen him wise
+in council, brave in battle, and patient under the fatigues of war." He
+was received in France with great distinction, which he amusingly
+describes:
+
+"When I went to court, which had hitherto only written for me orders for
+my arrest, I was presented to the ministers. I was interrogated,
+complimented, and exiled--to the hotel where my wife was residing: Some
+days after, I wrote to the king to acknowledge _my fault_. I received in
+reply a light reprimand and the colonelcy of the Royal Dragoons.
+Consulted by all the ministers, and, what was much better, embraced by
+all the women, I had at Versailles the favor of the king and celebrity
+of Paris."
+
+In the midst of his popularity he thought always of America, and often
+wished that the cost of the banquets bestowed upon him could be poured
+into the treasury of Congress. His favorite project at that time was the
+invasion of England--Paul Jones to command the fleet, and he himself the
+army. When this scheme was given up, he joined all his influence with
+that of Franklin to induce the French Government to send to America a
+powerful fleet and a considerable army. When he had secured the promise
+of this valuable aid, he returned to America and served again in the
+armies of the young republic.
+
+The success of the United States so confirmed him in his attachment to
+republican institutions, that he remained their devoted adherent and
+advocate as long as he lived.
+
+"May this revolution," said he once to Congress, "serve as a lesson to
+oppressors, and as an example to the oppressed."
+
+And, in one of his letters from the United States occurs this sentence:
+"I have always thought that a king was at least a useless being; viewed
+from this side of the ocean, a king cuts a poor figure indeed."
+
+By the time he had left America, at the close of the war, he had
+expended in the service of Congress seven hundred thousand francs--a
+free gift to the cause of liberty.
+
+One of the most pleasing circumstances of La Fayette's residence in
+America was the affectionate friendship which existed between himself
+and General Washington. He looked up to Washington as to a father as
+well as a chief; and Washington regarded him with a tenderness truly
+paternal. La Fayette named his eldest son George Washington, and never
+omitted any opportunity to testify his love and admiration for the
+illustrious American. Franklin, too, was much attached to the youthful
+enthusiast, and privately wrote to General Washington, asking him, for
+the sake of the young and anxious wife of the marquis, not to expose his
+life except in an important and decisive engagement.
+
+In the diary of the celebrated William Wilberforce, who visited Paris
+soon after the peace, there is an interesting passage descriptive of La
+Fayette's demeanor at the French court:
+
+"He seemed to be the representative of the democracy in the very
+presence of the monarch--the tribune intruding with his veto within the
+chamber of the patrician order. His own establishment was formed upon
+the English model, and amidst the gayety and ease of Fontainebleau he
+assumed an air of republican austerity. When the fine ladies of the
+court would attempt to drag him to the card-table, he shrugged his
+shoulders with an air of affected contempt for the customs and
+amusements of the old _regime_. Meanwhile, the deference which this
+champion of the new state of things received, above all from the ladies
+of the court, intimated clearly the disturbance of the social
+atmosphere, and presaged the coming tempest."
+
+From the close of the American war for independence to the beginning of
+the French Revolution a period of six years elapsed, during which France
+suffered much from the exhaustion of her resources in aiding the
+Americans. La Fayette lived at Paris, openly professing republicanism,
+which was then the surest passport to the favor both of the people and
+the court. The queen of France herself favored the republican party,
+though without understanding its object or tendencies. La Fayette
+naturally became the organ and spokesman of those who desired a reform
+in the government. He recommended, even in the palace of the king, a
+restoration of civil rights to the Protestants; the suppression of the
+heavy and odious tax on salt; the reform of the criminal courts; and he
+denounced the waste of public money on princes and court favorites.
+
+The Assembly of the Notables convened in 1787 to consider the state of
+the kingdom. La Fayette was its most distinguished and trusted member,
+and it was he who demanded a convocation of the representatives of all
+the departments of France, for the purpose of devising a permanent
+remedy for the evils under which France was suffering.
+
+"What, sir," said one of the royal princes to La Fayette, "do you really
+demand the assembling of a general congress of France?"
+
+"Yes, my Lord," replied La Fayette, "and _more than that_."
+
+Despite the opposition of the court, this memorable congress met in
+Paris in 1789, and La Fayette represented in it the nobility of his
+province. It was he who presented the "Declaration of Rights," drawn
+upon the model of those with which he had been familiar in America, and
+it was finally adopted. It was he, also, who made the ministers of the
+crown responsible for their acts, and for the consequences of their
+acts.
+
+When this National Assembly was declared permanent, La Fayette was
+elected its vice-president, and it was in that character that, after the
+taking of the Bastile, he went to the scene, at the head of a deputation
+of sixty members, to congratulate the people upon their triumph. The
+next day, a city guard was organized to preserve the peace of Paris, and
+the question arose in the assembly who should command it. The president
+arose and pointed to the bust of La Fayette, presented by the State of
+Virginia to the city of Paris. The hint was sufficient, and La Fayette
+was elected to the post by acclamation. He called his citizen soldiers
+by the name of National Guards, and he distinguished them by a
+tri-colored cockade, and all Paris immediately fluttered with
+tri-colored ribbons and badges.
+
+"This cockade," said La Fayette, as he presented one to the National
+Assembly, "will make the tour of the world." From the time of his
+acceptance of the command of the National Guard, the course of La
+Fayette changed its character, and the change became more and more
+marked as the revolution proceded. Hitherto he had been chiefly employed
+in rousing the sentiment of liberty in the minds of his countrymen; but
+now that the flame threatened to become a dangerous conflagration, it
+devolved upon him to stay its ravages. It was a task beyond human
+strength, but he most gallantly attempted it. On some occasions he
+rescued with his own hands the victims of the popular fury, and arrested
+the cockaded assassins who would have destroyed them. But even his great
+popularity was ineffectual to prevent the massacre of innocent citizens,
+and more than once, overwhelmed with grief and disgust, he threatened to
+throw up his command.
+
+On that celebrated day when sixty thousand of the people of Paris poured
+in a tumultuous flood into the park of Versailles, and surrounded the
+palace of the king, La Fayette was compelled to join the throng, in
+order, if possible, to control its movements. He arrived in the evening,
+and spent the whole night in posting the National Guard about the
+palace, and taking measures to secure the safety of the royal family. At
+the dawn of day he threw himself upon the bed for a few minutes' repose.
+Suddenly, the alarm was sounded. Some infuriated men had broken into the
+palace, killed two of the king's body-guard, and rushed into the
+bed-chamber of the queen, a minute or two after she had escaped from it.
+La Fayette ran to the scene, followed by some of the National Guard, and
+found all the royal family assembled in the king's chamber, trembling
+for their lives. Beneath the window of the apartment was a roaring sea
+of upturned faces, scarcely kept back by a thin line of National Guards.
+La Fayette stepped out upon the balcony, and tried to address the crowd,
+but could not make himself heard. He then led out upon the balcony the
+beautiful queen, Marie Antoinette, and kissed her hand; then seizing one
+of the body-guard embraced him, and placed his own cockade on the
+soldier's hat. At once the temper of the multitude was changed, and the
+cry burst forth:
+
+"Long live the general! Long live the queen! Long live the body-guard!"
+
+It was immediately announced that the king would go with the people to
+Paris; which had the effect of completely allaying their passions.
+During the long march of ten miles, La Fayette rode close to the door of
+the king's carriage, and thus conducted him, in the midst of the
+tramping crowd, in safety to the Tuilleries. When the royal family was
+once more secure within its walls, one of the ladies, the daughter of
+the late king, threw herself in the arms of La Fayette, exclaiming:
+
+"General, you have saved us."
+
+From this moment dates the decline of La Fayette's popularity; and his
+actions, moderate and wise, continually lessened it. He demanded, as a
+member of the National Assembly, that persons accused of treason should
+be fairly tried by a jury, and he exerted all his power, while giving a
+constitution to his country, to preserve the monarchy.
+
+To appease the suspicions of the people that the king meditated a flight
+from Paris, he declared that he would answer with his head for the
+king's remaining. When, therefore, in June, 1791, the king and queen
+made their blundering attempt to escape, La Fayette was immediately
+suspected of having secretly aided it. Danton cried out at the Jacobin
+club:
+
+"We must have the person of the king, or the head of the commanding
+general!"
+
+It was in vain that, after the king's return, he ceased to pay him royal
+honors; nothing could remove the suspicions of the people. Indeed, he
+still openly advised the preservation of the monarchy, and, when a mob
+demanded the suppression of the royal power, and threatened violence to
+the National Guard, the general, after warning them to disperse, ordered
+the troops to fire--an action which totally destroyed his popularity and
+influence. Soon after, he resigned his commission and his seat in the
+Assembly, and withdrew to one of his country seats.
+
+He was not long allowed to remain in seclusion. The allied dynasties of
+Europe, justly alarmed at the course of events in Paris, threatened the
+new republic with war. La Fayette was appointed to command one of the
+three armies gathered to defend the frontiers. While he was disciplining
+his troops, and preparing to defend the country, he kept an anxious eye
+upon Paris, and saw with ever-increasing alarm the prevalence of the
+savage element in the national politics. In 1792 he had the boldness to
+write a letter to the National Assembly, demanding the suppression of
+the clubs, and the restoration of the king to the place and power
+assigned him by the constitution.
+
+Learning, soon after, the new outrages put upon the king, he suddenly
+left his army and appeared before the bar of the Assembly, accompanied
+by a single aide-de-camp; there he renewed his demands, amid the
+applause of the moderate members; but a member of the opposite party
+adroitly asked:
+
+"Is the enemy conquered? Is the country delivered, since General La
+Fayette is in Paris?"
+
+"No," replied he, "the country is not delivered; the situation is
+unchanged; and, nevertheless, the general of one of our armies is in
+Paris."
+
+After a stormy debate, the Assembly declared that he had violated the
+constitution in making himself the organ of an army legally incapable of
+deliberating, and had rendered himself amenable to the minister of war
+for leaving his post without permission. Repulsed thus by the Assembly,
+coldly received at court, and rejected by the National Guard, he
+returned to his army despairing of the country. There he made one more
+attempt to save the king by inducing him to come to his camp and fight
+for his throne. This project being rejected, and the author of it
+denounced by Robespierre, his bust publicly burned in Paris, and the
+medal formerly voted him broken by the hand of the executioner, he
+deemed it necessary to seek an asylum in a neutral country. Having
+provided for the safety of his army, he crossed the frontiers in August,
+1792, accompanied by twenty-one persons, all of whom, on passing an
+Austrian post, were taken prisoners, and La Fayette was thrown into a
+dungeon. The friend of liberty and order was looked upon as a common
+enemy. His noble wife, who had been for fifteen months a prisoner in
+Paris, hastened, after her release, to share her husband's captivity.
+
+For five years, in spite of the remonstrances of England, America, and
+the friends of liberty everywhere, La Fayette remained a prisoner. To
+every demand for his liberation the Austrian Government replied, with
+its usual stupidity, that the liberty of La Fayette was incompatible
+with the safety of the governments of Europe. He owed his liberation, at
+length, to General Bonaparte, and it required all _his_ great authority
+to procure it. When La Fayette was presented to Napoleon to thank him
+for his interference, the first consul said to him:
+
+"I don't know what the devil you have done to the Austrians; but it cost
+them a mighty struggle to let you go."
+
+La Fayette voted publicly against making Napoleon consul for life,
+against the establishment of the empire. Notwithstanding this, Napoleon
+and he remained very good friends. The emperor said of him one day:
+
+"Everybody in France is corrected of his extreme ideas of liberty except
+one man, and that man is La Fayette. You see him now tranquil: very
+well; if he had an opportunity to serve his chimeras, he would reappear
+on the scene more ardent than ever."
+
+Upon his return to France, he was granted the pension belonging to the
+military rank he had held under the republic, and he recovered a
+competent estate from the property of his wife. Napoleon also gave a
+military commission to his son, George Washington; and, when the
+Bourbons were restored, La Fayette received an indemnity of four hundred
+and fifty thousand francs.
+
+Napoleon's remark proved correct. La Fayette, though he spent most of
+the evening of his life in directing the cultivation of his estate, was
+always present at every crisis in the affairs of France to plead the
+cause of constitutional liberty. He made a fine remark once in its
+defense, when taunted with the horrors of the French Revolution: "The
+tyranny of 1793," he said, "was no more a republic than the massacre of
+St. Bartholomew was a religion."
+
+His visit to America in 1824 is well remembered. He was the guest of the
+nation; and Congress, in recompense of his expenditures during the
+Revolutionary War, made him a grant of two hundred thousand dollars and
+an extensive tract of land. It was La Fayette who, in 1830, was chiefly
+instrumental in placing a constitutional monarch on the throne of
+France. The last words, he ever spoke in public were uttered in behalf
+of the French refugees who had fled from France for offenses merely
+political; and the last words he ever wrote recommended the abolition of
+slavery. He died May 19, 1834, aged seventy-seven. His son, George
+Washington, always the friend of liberty, like his father, died in 1849,
+leaving two sons--inheritors of a name so full of inspiration to the
+world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+LYDIA SIGOURNEY
+
+(BORN 1791--DIED 1865.)
+
+
+THE LESSON OF A USEFUL AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE.
+
+
+"A beautiful life I have had. Not more trial than was for my good.
+Countless blessings beyond expectation or desert.... Behind me stretch
+the green pastures and still waters by which I have been led all my
+days. Around is the lingering of hardy flowers and fruits that bide the
+Winter. Before stretches the shining shore."
+
+These are the words of Mrs. Sigourney, written near the close of a life
+of seventy-four years. All who have much observed human life will agree
+that the rarest achievement of man or woman on this earth is a solid and
+continuous happiness. There are very few persons past seventy who can
+look back upon their lives, and sincerely say that they would willingly
+live their lives over again. Mrs. Sigourney, however, was one of the
+happy few.
+
+Lydia Huntley, for that was her maiden name, was born at Norwich,
+Connecticut, on the first of September, 1791. Her father was Ezekiel
+Huntley, an exceedingly gentle, affectionate man, of Scotch parentage,
+who had as little of a Yankee in him as any man in Connecticut. Unlike a
+Yankee, he never attempted to set up in business for himself, but spent
+the whole of the active part of his life in the service of the man to
+whom he was apprenticed in his youth. His employer was a druggist of
+great note in his day, who made a large fortune in his business, and
+built one of the most elegant houses in the State. On his retirement
+from business his old clerk continued to reside under his roof, and to
+assist in the management of his estate; and, even when he died, Mr.
+Huntley did not change his abode, but remained to conduct the affairs of
+the widow. In the service of this family he saved a competence for his
+old age, and he lived to eighty-seven, a most happy, serene old man,
+delighting chiefly in his garden and his only child. He survived as late
+as 1839.
+
+Owing to the peculiar relations sustained by her father to a wealthy
+family--living, too, in a wing of their stately mansion, and having the
+free range of its extensive gardens--Lydia Huntley enjoyed in her youth
+all the substantial advantages of wealth, without encountering its
+perils. She was surrounded by objects pleasing or beautiful, but no
+menial pampered her pride or robbed her of her rightful share of
+household labor. As soon as she was old enough to toddle about the
+grounds, her father delighted to have her hold the trees which he was
+planting, and drop the seed into the little furrows prepared for it, and
+never was she better pleased than when giving him the aid of her tiny
+fingers. Her parents never kept a servant, and she was brought up to do
+her part in the house. Living on plain, substantial fare, inured to
+labor, and dressed so as to allow free play to every limb and muscle,
+she laid in a stock of health, strength, and good temper that lasted her
+down to the last year of her life. She never knew what dyspepsia was.
+She never possessed a costly toy, nor a doll that was not made at home,
+but she passed a childhood that was scarcely anything but joy. She was
+an only child, and she was the pet of two families, yet she was not
+spoiled.
+
+She was one of those children who take naturally to all kinds of
+culture. Without ever having had a child's book, she sought out, in the
+old-fashioned library of the house, everything which a child could
+understand. Chance threw a novel in her way ("Mysteries of Udolpho"),
+which she devoured with rapture, and soon after, when she was but eight
+years of age, she began to write a novel. Poetry, too, she read with
+singular pleasure, never weary of repeating her favorite pieces. But the
+passion of her childhood was painting pictures. Almost in her infancy
+she began to draw with a pin and lilac-leaf, and advanced from that to
+slate and pencil, and, by and by, to a lead-pencil and backs of letters.
+When she had learned to draw pretty well, she was on fire to paint her
+pictures, but was long puzzled to procure the colors. Having obtained in
+some way a cake of gamboge, she begged of a washerwoman a piece of
+indigo, and by combining these two ingredients she could make different
+shades of yellow, blue, and green. The trunks of her trees she painted
+with coffee-grounds, and a mixture of India ink and indigo answered
+tolerably well for sky and water. She afterwards discovered that the
+pink juice of chokeberry did very well for lips, cheeks, and gay
+dresses. Mixed with a little indigo it made a very bad purple, which the
+young artist, for the want of a better, was obliged to use for her royal
+robes. In sore distress for a better purple she squeezed the purple
+flowers of the garden and the field for the desired tint, but nothing
+answered the purpose, until, at dinner, one day, she found the very hue
+for which she longed in the juice of a currant and whortleberry tart.
+She hastened to try it, and it made a truly gorgeous purple, but the
+sugar in it caused it to come off in flakes from her kings and emperors,
+leaving them in a sorry plight. At length, to her boundless,
+inexpressible, and lasting joy, all her difficulties were removed by her
+father giving her a complete box of colors.
+
+At school she was fortunate in her teachers. One of them was the late
+Pelatiah Perit, who afterward won high distinction as a New York
+merchant and universal philanthropist. Her first serious attempts at
+practical composition were translations from Virgil, when she was
+fourteen years of age. After leaving school she studied Latin with much
+zeal under an aged tutor, and, later in life, she advanced far enough in
+Hebrew to read the Old Testament, with the aid of grammar and
+dictionary. To these grave studies her parents added a thorough drill in
+dancing. Often, when her excellent mother observed that she had sat too
+long over her books, she would get her out upon the floor of their large
+kitchen, and then, striking up a lively song, set her dancing until her
+cheeks were all aglow.
+
+This studious and happy girl, like other young people, had her day-dream
+of the future. _It was to keep a school_. This strange ambition, she
+tells us in her autobiography, she feared to impart to her companions,
+lest they should laugh at her; and she thought even her parents would
+think her _arrogant_ if she mentioned it to them. The long-cherished
+secret was revealed to her parents at length. Her mother had guessed it
+before, but her father was exceedingly surprised. Neither of them,
+however, made any objection, and one of the pleasantest apartments of
+their house was fitted up for the reception of pupils. She was then a
+delicate-looking girl of about eighteen, and rather undersized. As soon
+as her desks were brought home by the carpenter, the ambitious little
+lady went around to the families of the place, informed them of her
+intention, and solicited their patronage at the established rate of
+three dollars a quarter for each pupil. She was puzzled and disappointed
+at the coolness with which her project was received. Day after day she
+tramped the streets of Norwich, only to return at night without a name
+upon her catalogue. She surmised, after a time, that parents hesitated
+to intrust their children to her because of her extreme youth, which was
+the fact. At length, however, she began her school with two children,
+nine and eleven years of age, and not only did she go through all the
+formalities of school with them, working six hours a day for five days,
+and three hours on Saturday, but at the end of the term she held an
+examination in the presence of a large circle of her pupils' admiring
+relations.
+
+Afterwards, associating herself with another young lady, to whom she was
+tenderly attached, she succeeded better. A large and populous school
+gathered about these zealous and admirable girls, several of their
+pupils being older than themselves. Compelled to hold the school in a
+larger room, Lydia Huntley walked two miles every morning, and two more
+every night, besides working hard all day; and she was as happy as the
+weeks were long. Her experience confirms that of every genuine
+teacher--from Dr. Arnold downward--that, of all employments of man or
+woman on this earth, the one that is capable of giving the most constant
+and intense happiness is teaching in a rationally conducted school. So
+fond was she of teaching, that when the severity of the Winter obliged
+her to suspend the school for many weeks, she opened a free school for
+poor children, one of her favorite classes in which was composed of
+colored girls. In the course of time, the well-known Daniel Wadsworth,
+the great man of Hartford sixty or seventy years ago, lured her away to
+that city, where he personally organized a school of thirty young
+ladies, the daughters of his friends, and gave her a home in his own
+house. There she spent five happy years, cherished as a daughter by her
+venerable patron and his wife, and held in high honor by her pupils and
+their parents.
+
+It was in 1815, while residing in Hartford, that her fame was born. Good
+old Mrs. Wadsworth, having obtained sight of her journals and
+manuscripts in prose and verse, the secret accumulation of many years,
+inflamed her husband's curiosity so that he, too, asked to see them. The
+blushing poetess consented. Mr. Wadsworth pronounced some of them worthy
+of publication, and, under his auspices, a volume was printed in
+Hartford, entitled "Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse." The public gave it
+a generous welcome, and its success led to a career of authorship which
+lasted forty-nine years, and gave to the world fifty-six volumes of
+poetry, tales, travels, biography, and letters.
+
+So passed her life till she was past twenty-eight. She had received many
+offers of marriage from clergymen and others, but none of her suitors
+tempted her to forsake her pupils, and she supposed herself destined to
+spend her days as an old maid. But another destiny was in store for her.
+On her way to and from her school, "a pair of deep-set and most
+expressive black eyes" sometimes encountered hers and spoke "unutterable
+things." Those eyes belonged to a widower, with three children, named
+Charles Sigourney, a thriving hardware merchant, of French descent, and
+those "unutterable things" were uttered at length through the unromantic
+medium of a letter. The marriage occurred a few months after, in the
+year 1819.
+
+For the next fifteen years she resided in the most elegant mansion in
+Hartford, surrounded by delightful grounds, after Mr. Sigourney's own
+design; and even now, though the Sigourney place is eclipsed in splendor
+and costliness by many of more recent date, there is no abode in the
+beautiful city of Hartford more attractive than this. Mr. Sigourney was
+a man of considerable learning, and exceedingly interested in the study
+of languages. When he was past fifty he began the study of modern Greek.
+Mrs. Sigourney became the mother of several children, all of whom, but
+two, died in infancy. One son lived to enter college, but died at the
+age of nineteen, of consumption. A daughter grew to womanhood, and
+became the wife of a clergyman.
+
+After many years of very great prosperity in business, Mr. Sigourney
+experienced heavy losses, which compelled them to leave their pleasant
+residence, and gave a new activity to her pen. He died at the age of
+seventy-six. During the last seven years of Mrs. Sigourney's life, her
+chief literary employment was contributing to the columns of the _New
+York Ledger_. Mr. Bonner, having while an apprentice in the _Hartford
+Current_ office "set up" some of her poems, had particular pleasure in
+being the medium of her last communications with the public, and she
+must have rejoiced in the vast audience to which he gave her access--the
+largest she ever addressed.
+
+Mrs. Sigourney enjoyed excellent health to within a few weeks of her
+death. After a short illness, which she bore with much patience, she
+died in June, 1865, with her daughter at her side, and affectionate
+friends around her. Nothing could exceed her tranquility and resignation
+at the approach of death. Her long life had been spent in honorable
+labor for the good of her species, and she died in the fullest certainty
+that death would but introduce her to a larger and better sphere.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+OLD AGE AND USEFULNESS
+
+
+THE GLORY OF BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN.
+
+
+    Dear Lord! I thank thee for a life of use;
+    Dear Lord! I do not pine for any truce.
+    Peace, peace has always come from duty done;
+    Peace, peace will so until the end be won.
+    Thanks, thanks! a thankful heart is my reward;
+    Thanks, thanks befit the children of the Lord.
+    Wind, wind! the peaceful reel must still go round;
+    Wind, wind! the thread of life will soon be wound.
+    The worker has no dread of growing old;
+    First, years of toil, and then the age of gold!
+    For lo! he hopes to bear his flag unfurled
+    Beyond the threshold of another world.
+
+
+John Foster, he who sprang into celebrity from one essay, _Popular
+Ignorance_, had a diseased feeling against growing old, which seems to
+us to be very prevalent. He was sorry to lose every parting hour. "I
+have seen a fearful sight to-day," he would say--"I have seen a
+buttercup." To others the sight would only give visions of the coming
+Spring and future Summer; to him it told of the past year, the last
+Christmas, the days which would never come again--the so many days
+nearer the grave. Thackeray continually expressed the same feeling. He
+reverts to the merry old time when George the Third was king. He looks
+back with a regretful mind to his own youth. The black Care constantly
+rides, behind his chariot. "Ah, my friends," he says, "how beautiful was
+youth! We are growing old. Spring-time and Summer are past. We near the
+Winter of our days. We shall never feel as we have felt. We approach the
+inevitable grave." Few men, indeed, know how to grow old gracefully, as
+Madame de Stael very truly observed. There is an unmanly sadness at
+leaving off the old follies and the old games. We all hate fogyism. Dr.
+Johnson, great and good as he was, had a touch of this regret, and we
+may pardon him for the feeling. A youth spent in poverty and neglect, a
+manhood consumed in unceasing struggle, are not preparatives to growing
+old in peace. We fancy that, after a stormy morning and a lowering day,
+the evening should have a sunset glow, and, when the night sets in, look
+back with regret at the "gusty, babbling, and remorseless day;" but, if
+we do so, we miss the supporting faith of the Christian and the manly
+cheerfulness of the heathen. To grow old is quite natural; being
+natural, it is beautiful; and if we grumble at it, we miss the lesson,
+and lose all the beauty.
+
+Half of our life is spent in vain regrets. When we are boys we ardently
+wish to be men; when men we wish as ardently to be boys. We sing sad
+songs of the lapse of time. We talk of "auld lang syne," of the days
+when we were young, of gathering shells on the sea-shore and throwing
+them carelessly away. We never cease to be sentimental upon past youth
+and lost manhood and beauty. Yet there are no regrets so false, and few
+half so silly. Perhaps the saddest sight in the world is to see an old
+lady, wrinkled and withered, dressing, talking, and acting like a very
+young one, and forgetting all the time, as she clings to the feeble
+remnant of the past, that there is no sham so transparent as her own,
+and that people, instead of feeling with her, are laughing at her. Old
+boys disguise their foibles a little better; but they are equally
+ridiculous. The feeble protests which they make against the flying
+chariot of Time are equally futile. The great Mower enters the field,
+and all must come down. To stay him would be impossible; We might as
+well try with a finger to stop Ixion's wheel, or to dam up the current
+of the Thames with a child's foot.
+
+Since the matter is inevitable, we may as well sit down and reason it
+out. Is it so dreadful to grow old? Does old age need its apologies and
+its defenders? Is it a benefit or a calamity? Why should it be odious
+and ridiculous? An old tree is picturesque, an old castle venerable, an
+old cathedral inspires awe--why should man be worse than his works?
+
+Let us, in the first place, see what youth is. Is it so blessed and
+happy and flourishing as it seems to us? Schoolboys do not think so.
+They always wish to be older. You cannot insult one of them more than by
+telling him that he is a year or two younger than he is. He fires up at
+once: "Twelve, did you say, sir? No, I'm fourteen." But men and women
+who have reached twenty-eight do not thus add to their years. Amongst
+schoolboys, notwithstanding the general tenor of those romancists who
+see that every thing young bears a rose-colored blush, misery is
+prevalent enough. Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, were each and all
+unhappy boys. They all had their rebuffs, and bitter, bitter troubles;
+all the more bitter because their sensitiveness was so acute. Suicide is
+not unknown amongst the young; fears prey upon them and terrify them;
+ignorances and follies surround them. Arriving at manhood, we are little
+better off. If we are poor, we mark the difference between the rich and
+us; we see position gains all the day. If we are as clever as Hamlet, we
+grow just as philosophically disappointed. If we love, we can only be
+sure of a brief pleasure--an April day. Love has its bitterness. "It
+is," says Ovid, an adept in the matter, "full of anxious fear." We fret
+and fume at the authority of the wise heads; we have an intense idea of
+our own talent. We believe calves of our own age to be as big and as
+valuable as full-grown bulls; we envy whilst we jest at the old. We cry,
+with the puffed-up hero of the _Patrician's Daughter_:
+
+           "It may be by the calendar of years
+    You are the elder man; but 'tis the sun
+    Of knowledge on the mind's dial shining bright,
+    And chronicling deeds and thoughts, that makes true time."
+
+And yet withal life is very unhappy, whether we live amongst the
+grumbling captains of the clubs, who are ever seeking and not finding
+promotion; amongst the struggling authors and rising artists who never
+rise; or among the young men who are full of riches, titles, places, and
+honor, who have every wish fulfilled, and are miserable because they
+have nothing to wish for. Thus the young Romans killed themselves after
+the death of their emperor, not for grief, not for affection, not even
+for the fashion of suicide, which grew afterwards prevalent enough, but
+from the simple weariness of doing every thing over and over again. Old
+age has passed such stages as these, landed on a safer shore, and
+matriculated in a higher college, in a purer air. We sigh not for
+impossibilities; we cry not:
+
+    "Bring these anew, and set me once again
+       In the delusion of life's infancy;
+    I was not happy, but I knew not then
+       That happy I was never doom'd to be."
+
+We know that we are not happy. We know that life, perhaps, was not given
+us to be continuously comfortable and happy. We have been behind the
+scenes, and know all the illusions; but when we are old we are far too
+wise to throw life away for mere _ennui_. With Dandolo, refusing a crown
+at ninety-six, winning battles at ninety-four; with Wellington, planning
+and superintending fortifications at eighty; with Bacon and Humboldt,
+students to the last gasp; with wise old Montaigne, shrewd in his
+grey-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of gout
+and colic--Age knows far too much to act like a sulky child. It knows
+too well the results and the value of things to care about them; that
+the ache will subside, the pain be lulled, the estate we coveted be
+worth little; the titles, ribbons, gewgaws, honors, be all more or less
+worthless. "Who has honor? He that died o' Wednesday!" Such a one passed
+us in the race, and gained it but to fall. We are still up and doing; we
+may be frosty and shrewd, but kindly. We can wish all men well; like
+them, too, so far as they may be liked, and smile at the fuss, bother,
+hurry, and turmoil, which they make about matters which to us are
+worthless dross. The greatest prize in the whole market--in any and in
+every market--success, is to the old man nothing. He little cares who is
+up and who is down; the present he lives in and delights in. Thus, in
+one of those admirable comedies in which Robson acted, we find the son a
+wanderer, the mother's heart nearly broken, the father torn and broken
+by a suspicion of his son's dishonesty, but the grandfather all the
+while concerned only about his gruel and his handkerchief. Even the
+pains and troubles incident to his state visit the old man lightly.
+Because Southey sat for months in his library, unable to read or touch
+the books he loved, we are not to infer that he was unhappy. If the
+stage darkens as the curtain falls, certain it also is that the senses
+grow duller and more blunted. "Don't cry for me, my dear," said an old
+lady undergoing an operation; "I do not feel it."
+
+It seems to us, therefore, that a great deal of unnecessary pity has
+been thrown away upon old age. We begin at school reading Cicero's
+treatise, hearing Cato talk with Scipio and Laelius; we hear much about
+poor old men; we are taught to admire the vigor, quickness, and capacity
+of youth and manhood. We lose sight of the wisdom which age brings even
+to the most foolish. We think that a circumscribed sphere must
+necessarily be an unhappy one. It is not always so. What one abandons in
+growing old is, perhaps, after all not worth having. The chief part of
+youth is but excitement; often both unwise and unhealthy. The same pen
+which has written, with a morbid feeling, that "there is a class of
+beings who do not grow old in their youth and die ere middle age," tells
+us also that "the best of life is but intoxication." That passes away.
+The man who has grown old does not care about it. The author at that
+period has no feverish excitement about seeing himself in print; he does
+not hunt newspapers for reviews and notices. He is content to wait; he
+knows what fame is worth. The obscure man of science, who has been
+wishing to make the world better and wiser; the struggling curate, the
+poor and hard-tried man of God; the enthusiastic reformer, who has
+watched the sadly slow dawning of progress and liberty; the artist,
+whose dream of beauty slowly fades before his dim eyes--all lay down
+their feverish wishes as they advance in life, forget the bright ideal
+which they can not reach, and embrace the more imperfect real. We speak
+not here of the assured Christian. He, from the noblest pinnacle of
+faith, beholds a promised land, and is eager to reach it; he prays "to
+be delivered from the body of this death;" but we write of those
+humbler, perhaps more human souls, with whom increasing age each day
+treads down an illusion. All feverish wishes, raw and inconclusive
+desires, have died down, and a calm beauty and peace survive; passions
+are dead, temptations weakened or conquered; experience has been won;
+selfish interests are widened into universal ones; vain, idle hopes,
+have merged into a firmer faith or a complete knowledge; and more light
+has broken in upon the soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
+"through chinks which Time has made."
+
+Again, old men are valuable, not only as relics of the past, but as
+guides and prophets for the future. They know the pattern of every turn
+of life's kaleidoscope. The colors merely fall into new shapes; the
+ground-work is just the same. The good which a calm, kind, and cheerful
+old man can do is incalculable. And whilst he does good to others, he
+enjoys himself. He looks not unnaturally to that which should accompany
+old age--honor, love, obedience, troops of friends; and he plays his
+part in the comedy or tragedy of life with as much gusto as any one
+else. Old Montague, or Capulet, and old Polonius, that wise maxim-man,
+enjoy themselves quite as well as the moody Hamlet, the perturbed
+Laertes, or even gallant Mercutio or love-sick Romeo. Friar Lawrence,
+who is a good old man, is perhaps the happiest of all in the _dramatis
+personae_--unless we take the gossiping, garrulous old nurse, with her
+sunny recollections of maturity and youth. The great thing is to have
+the mind well employed, to work whilst it is yet day. The precise Duke
+of Wellington, answering every letter with "F.M. presents his
+compliments;" the wondrous worker Humboldt with his orders of
+knighthood, stars, and ribbons, lying dusty in his drawer, still
+contemplating _Cosmos_, and answering his thirty letters a day--were
+both men in exceedingly enviable, happy positions; they had reached the
+top of the hill, and could look back quietly over the rough road which
+they had traveled. We are not all Humboldts or Wellingtons; but we can
+all be busy and good. Experience must teach us all a great deal; and if
+it only teaches us not to fear the future, not to cast a maundering
+regret over the past, we can be as happy in old age--ay, and far more
+so--than we were in youth. We are no longer the fools of time and error.
+We are leaving by slow degrees the old world; we stand upon the
+threshold of the new; not without hope, but without fear, in an
+exceedingly natural position, with nothing strange or dreadful about it;
+with our domain drawn within a narrow circle, but equal to our power.
+Muscular strength, organic instincts, are all gone; but what then? We do
+not want them; we are getting ready for the great change, one which is
+just as necessary as it was to be born; and to a little child perhaps
+one is not a whit more painful--perhaps not so painful as the other. The
+wheels of Time have brought us to the goal; we are about to rest while
+others labor, to stay at home while others wander. We touch at last the
+mysterious door--are we to be pitied or to be envied?
+
+    The desert of the life behind,
+    Has almost faded from my mind,
+    It has so many fair oases
+    Which unto me are holy places.
+
+    It seems like consecrated ground,
+    Where silence counts for more than sound,
+    That way of all my past endeavor
+    Which I shall tread no more forever.
+
+    And God I was too blind to see,
+    I now, somewhat from blindness free,
+    Discern as ever-present glory,
+    Who holds all past and future story.
+
+    Eternity is all in all;
+    Time, birth and death, ephemeral--
+    Point where a little bird alighted,
+    Then fled lest it should be benighted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+RHYMES AND CHIMES
+
+(ALL BRAND NEW)
+
+SUITABLE FOR AUTOGRAPH ALBUMS.
+
+
+    As free as fancy and reason,
+    And writ for many a season;
+    In neither spirit nor letter
+    To aught but beauty a debtor.
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+      The reader knows
+      His woes.
+    How oft "someone has blundered!"
+      How oft a thought
+      Is caught,
+    And rhyme and reason sundered!
+      With line and hook,
+      Just look!
+    And see a swimming hundred--
+      A school of rhymes
+      And chimes
+    As free as summer air.
+      So, if you wish
+      To fish,
+    Please angle anywhere.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+      Thou pet of modern art,
+    Since I the spell have broken,
+      Now on thy journey start,
+    And gather many a token
+      From many an honest heart,
+    The best or thought or spoken.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+      Go forth, thou little book,
+    And seek that wondrous treasure,
+      Affection's word and look,
+    Which only heaven can measure.
+
+
+III.
+
+
+    This Album comes a-tapping
+      At many a friendly door;
+    Yea, gently, gently rapping--
+      "Hast aught for me in store?
+    Dear Love and Truth I show,
+      To point a life's endeavor--
+    Thanks for thy heart! I go
+      And bear it on forever."
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+    "Whose name was writ in water!"
+      It was not so of Keats.
+    How many a son and daughter
+      His gentle name repeats!
+    And Friendship and Affection
+      Will keep thy name as bright,
+    If Beauty give protection
+      And wed thee to the Right.
+
+
+V.
+
+
+    So you desire my heart!
+    Well, take it--and depart.
+    It is not cold and heavy,
+        It is not light,
+        Seeks to be right,
+    And answers Beauty's levy.
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+    Be it a fable or rumor,
+      Or an old device,
+    'Tis true; gentle wit and humor
+      Are as good as cold advice.
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+    This dainty little Album thine
+    Is of a quality so fine
+    That happy Laughter here may write,
+    And all the pages still be white.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+      There is no open mart
+      In which to sell a heart,
+        For none the price can pay;
+        So mine I give away,
+      Since I with it must part--
+        'Tis thine, my friend, for aye.
+      "Do I not feel the lack.
+        And want to get it back?"
+      No, no! for kindly Heaven
+      A better one has given.
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+        There is a cup, I know,
+        Which, full to overflow,
+        Has yet the space to hold
+        Its measure many fold;
+        And when from it I drink,
+        It is so sweet to think--
+        _What it retains is more
+        Than all it held before_.
+        If you my riddle guess,
+        You surely will confess
+        The greater in the less,
+        Which is our blessedness.
+
+
+X.
+
+
+      Dost give away thy heart,
+        With all its sweet perfume?
+      Angels dwell where thou art,
+        The more, the greater room.
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+        A life lost in a life--
+        True husband or true wife--
+        A life come back again
+        As with a shining train.
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+        A cheery maiden's love
+      As large as heaven and earth--
+        That were a gift to prove
+      How much this life is worth.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+        Fast by Eternal Truth,
+      And on a sunny mountain,
+      Springs that perennial fountain
+        Which gives immortal youth;
+      And all who bathe therein
+      Are washed from every sin.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+      It is to _do_ the best,
+        Unmindful of reward,
+      Which brings the sweetest rest
+        And nearness to the Lord;
+      And this has been thy aim,
+        And will be to the end,
+      Knows she who writes her name
+        As thy unchanging friend.
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+    Words--words--and pen and ink,
+    But not a thought to think!
+    And yet, perhaps, perchance,
+    Who knows his ignorance
+    Is not the greatest fool,
+    Although long out of school.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+    Our greatest glory, friend,
+      Is chiefly found herein--
+    That when we fall, offend,
+      We quickly rise from sin,
+    And make the very shame,
+    Which gathered round our name
+    Like many scorpion rings,
+    The stairs to better things
+    In that high citadel
+    Which has a warning bell.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+    Whence honor, wealth, or fame,
+      Which God delights to see?
+    Out of a blameless name,
+      Born of Eternity.
+      And these are prizes
+      At God's assizes,
+      Reported day by day,
+      Which no man takes away.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+    Life is movement, action,
+    Joy, and benefaction.
+    Rest is bravely doing,
+    While the past reviewing,
+    Still the years forecasting
+    With the Everlasting.
+    Such be days of thine,
+    Such thy rest divine.
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+    The brook's joy
+    Does not cloy.
+    Too much sun,
+    Too much rain;
+    Work is done
+    Not in vain.
+    Sun receives
+    And cloud leaves
+    Just enough.
+    Skies are black
+    And winds rough,
+    Yet no lack
+    Of good will;
+    For 'tis still
+    Understood
+    God is good.
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+      The brook's rest
+        Is rest indeed;
+      The brook's quest
+        Is daily need.
+    Thoughts of to-morrow
+    They bring no sorrow;
+    And so it babbles away,
+    And does the work of to-day.
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+    The brook knows the joy
+    Down in the heart of a boy,
+    And the swallow kens the whirl
+    Up in the head of a girl.
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+    How many a psalm is heard
+    From yon rejoicing bird,
+    That finds its daily food
+    And feels that God is good!
+    That little life's employ
+    Is toil and song and joy.
+    Hast music in thy heart,
+     O toiler day by day,
+     Along life's rugged way?
+    Then what thou hast thou art.
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+    True, Good, and Beautiful!
+     A perfect line
+    Of love and sainthood full--
+     And it is thine.
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+    Thou doest well, dear friend,
+     Thy labor is not lost.
+    As notes in music blend,
+     So here Affection's host.
+    Their names thy book within,
+     Their thoughts of love and truth,
+    Are worth the cost to win--
+     First trophies of thy youth.
+    This little Album thine
+     Suggests to Book Divine--
+    The Book of Life, God's own.
+     What names are written there!
+    What names are there unknown!
+     Hast thou no thought or care?
+    I do thee wrong to ask--
+    God speed the nobler task
+    Until thy labor prove
+    Indeed a work of love!
+
+
+XXV.
+
+
+     True friends
+     Are through friends
+     To the next world--
+     That unvexed world.
+    What will friends be good for
+    When the witness is needless they stood for?
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+    Wouldst have another gem
+    In Friendship's diadem?
+    Then take this name of mine;
+    Thy light will make it shine.
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+    Thou comest beauty-laden,
+    Thou sprightly little maiden,
+    And dancing everywhere
+    Like sunbeams in the air;
+    And for thy cheery laugh
+    Here is my autograph.
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+
+    Something for nothing? No!
+     A false device.
+    For all things here below
+     We pay the price.
+    For even grace we pay,
+     Which is so free;
+    And I have earned to-day
+     A smile from thee.
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+
+    Friend, make good use of time!
+    Eternity sublime
+    Is cradled in its use,
+    And Time allows no truce.
+    The past, with shadowy pall,
+    Is gone beyond recall;
+    To-morrow is not thine;
+     'To-day is all thou hast,
+     Which will not always last:
+    Make thou to-day divine!
+
+
+XXX.
+
+
+     Every hour a duty
+    Brings thee from the courts on high.
+     Every hour a beauty
+    Waits her transit to the sky;
+    Waits till thou adorn her
+      With the glory of thy heart,
+    Or until thou scorn her--
+      Shall she with thy sin depart?
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+
+    If you seek in life success,
+      Own yourself the instrument
+    Which the Lord alone can bless,
+      And the world as helper meant;
+    Perseverance as your friend
+      And experience your eyes,
+    Onward press to reach your end,
+      Resting not with any prize;
+    Counting it a joy to lend
+      Unto Him who sanctifies.
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+
+    That day is lost forever,
+      Whose golden sun
+    Beholds through thine endeavor
+      No goodness done.
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+
+    Count not thy life by heart-throbs;
+      He thinks and lives the most
+    Who with the noblest actions
+      Adorns his chosen post.
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+
+    The secret of the world,
+    Although in light impearled,
+    No one can e'er discover,
+    No one--except a lover.
+    To him are given new eyes
+    In self's true sacrifice.
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+
+    If Love is blind
+      And overlooks small things,
+    He has a mind
+      To apprehend all things.
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+
+    As Love sails down life's river
+    He from his gleaming quiver
+      Shoots into every heart
+      A strange and nameless smart.
+    How is thy heart protected?
+    The wound is unsuspected!
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+
+    Dost thou truly love?
+    Nothing hard can prove,
+    All the stress and rigor
+    Doth thy heart transfigure.
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+
+    Love is the key of joy
+    Which keeps the man a boy
+    When outward things decay
+    And all his locks are gray.
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+
+    Of Heaven below
+      Which is so sweet to know,
+    And Heaven above,
+      The title-deed is love.
+
+
+XL.
+
+
+    Who is bravest
+      Of my four friends?
+    Thou that slavest,
+      And self all spends;
+    Thou that savest,
+      And usest never;
+    Thou that cravest,
+      With no endeav-or,
+    Thou that gavest,
+      And hast forever?
+
+
+XLI.
+
+
+      _Numen
+      Lumen,_
+    I can do without praise,
+      I can do without money:
+    I have found other honey
+     To sweeten my days;
+    And the Kaiser may wear his gold crown
+    While I on his splendor look down.
+
+
+XLII.
+
+
+     God thy Light!
+     Then is Right
+    Life's own polar star;
+    All thy fortunes are
+     Gifts that come from Him,
+     Filling to the brim
+    Life's great golden cup,
+    And thy heart looks up!
+
+XLIII.
+
+
+    A debtor to hate,
+     A debtor to money,
+    Forever may wait
+     And never have honey.
+    A debtor to love
+     And sweet benefaction,
+    Hath treasures above,
+     A heart's satisfaction.
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+
+    God is a liberal lender
+     To those who use,
+     But not abuse,
+    And daily statements render;
+    And here's the beauty of it--
+    He lends again the profit!
+
+
+XLV.
+
+
+    Days of heroic will
+    Which God and duty fill,
+    Are evermore sublime
+    Memorials of Time.
+    That such thy days may be
+    Is my best wish for thee.
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+
+    Self-sacrifice
+    Finds Paradise;
+    Hearts that rebel
+    Are gates of Hell.
+    Goals of all races
+    Are these two places.
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+
+    The blushes of roses
+    And all that reposes
+    Sublime in a hero
+    Affixed by his zero--
+    Ah, _you_ will complete him,
+    As soon as you meet him.
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+
+    Maidens passing into naught,
+    What a work by them is wrought!
+     Not prefixes,
+     But affixes
+    On the better side of men--
+    See! they multiply by ten.
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+
+    The golden key of life,
+    True maiden crowned a wife.
+    What then are toil and trouble,
+    With strength to meet them, double?
+
+
+L.
+
+
+    True Heaven begins on earth
+    Around a common hearth,
+    Or in a humble heart--
+    Thy faith means what thou art,
+    And that which thou wouldst be;
+    Thou makest it, it thee.
+
+
+LI.
+
+
+    No Heaven in Truth and Love?
+    Then do not look above.
+
+     Yet Truth and Love have wings,
+     Although the highest things;
+    Therewith to mount, dear friend,
+     Is life that has no end.
+
+
+LII.
+
+
+    Art thou a mourner here?
+    But One can give thee cheer:
+    Affliction turns to grace
+    Before the Master's face.
+
+
+LIII.
+
+
+    My friend, my troubled friend,
+     If true, Love has not found you,
+    Then I can comprehend
+     That Duty has not bound you.
+
+
+LIV.
+
+
+    Love is the source of duty,
+     The parent of all life,
+    Which Heaven pronounces beauty,
+     The crown of man and wife,
+    Beginning and the end
+    To hero, saint, and friend;
+    An inspiration which
+    Is so abundant, rich,
+    That from the finger-tips
+    And from the blooming lips,
+    Yea, from the voiceful eyes,
+    In questions and replies--
+    From every simple action
+    And hourly benefaction
+    It pours itself away,
+    A gladness day by day,
+    Exhaustless as the sun,
+    Work done and never done.
+    And I have painted _you_,
+    O maiden fair and true!
+
+
+LV.
+
+
+    The voice of God is love,
+    As all who listen prove.
+    Be thou assured of this,
+    Or life's chief comfort miss.
+
+
+LVI.
+
+
+    "O is not love a marvel
+    Which one can not unravel?
+    Behold its _bitter_ fruit!
+    Ah, _that_ kind does not suit."
+    My friend, I'm not uncivil--
+    _Self_ makes of love a _devil_,
+    And it is love no more;
+    _His_ guise love never wore,
+    But Satan steals the guise
+    Of love for foolish eyes--
+    Therein the danger lies,
+    But do not be too wise.
+    Dost wait for perfect good
+    In man or womanhood?
+    Then thou must onward press
+    In single blessedness,
+    And find, perhaps too late,
+    _Love dies without a mate_--
+    Perhaps this better fate
+    When love a banquet makes
+    Which all the world partakes,
+    Proved never out of date.
+
+
+LVII.
+
+
+    Prove all things--even love
+    Thou must needs prove.
+    But let the touch be fine
+    That tests a thing divine.
+    Yea, let the touch be tender;
+    True love will answer render.
+
+
+LVIII.
+
+
+    'Tis Give-and-take,
+     Not Take-and-give,
+    That seeks to make
+     Folk blessed live.
+    Where is he now?
+     Invisible.
+    Yet on thy brow
+     His name I spell.
+
+
+LIX.
+
+
+    Bear-and-forbear,
+      To make folk blest,
+    Seeks everywhere
+      To be a guest.
+    Angelic one,
+      Who art so near,
+    Thy will be done,
+      Both now and here.
+
+
+LX.
+
+
+    Comes knowledge
+    At college;
+    Wisdom comes later,
+    And is the greater.
+    Art thou of both possessed?
+    Then art thou richly blest.
+
+
+LXI.
+
+
+    What can I wish thee better
+    Than that through all thy days,
+    _The spirit, not the letter_,
+    Invite thy blame or praise?
+    Seek ever to unroll
+    The substance or the soul;
+    If that be fair and pure,
+    It will, and must endure;
+    And lo! the homely dress
+    Grows into loveliness.
+
+
+LXII.
+
+
+    Into the heart of man
+    The things that bless or ban;
+    Out of the life he lives,
+    The boon or curse he gives.
+    Guard well thy open heart,
+    What enters must depart.
+
+
+LXIII.
+
+
+    Is this--is _this_ thine album?
+    'Tis nothing but a sign
+    Of something more divine.
+    _Thou_ art the real album,
+    And on its wondrous pages
+    Is writ thy daily wages.
+    Thou canst not blot a word,
+    Much less tear out a leaf.
+    But all thy prayers are heard,
+    And every pain and grief
+    May be to thee as stairs
+    To better things, until
+    Thou reachest, unawares,
+    The Master's mind and will.
+
+
+LXIV.
+
+
+    Seek thou for true friends,
+    Aim thou at true ends,
+    With God above them all;
+    Then, as the shadows lengthen,
+    Will thy endurance strengthen,
+    With heaven thy coronal.
+
+
+LXV.
+
+
+    Ten thousand eyes of night,
+    One Sovereign Eye above;
+    Ten thousand rays of light,
+    One central fire of Love.
+    No eyes of night appear,
+    God's Eye is never closed;
+    No rays of light to cheer,
+    For _self_ hath interposed.
+    Yet Love's great fire is bright
+    By day as well as night.
+
+
+LXVI.
+
+
+    O we remember
+      In leafy June,
+    And white December
+      Love's gentle tune;
+    For nevermore,
+    On any shore,
+    Is life the same
+    As ere love came.
+
+
+LXVII.
+
+
+     And this is the day
+    My child came down from heaven,
+     And this is the way
+    The sweetest kiss is given.
+
+
+LXVIII.
+
+
+    Thy natal day, my dear!
+    Good heart, good words for cheer,
+    And kisses now and here,
+    With love through many a year!
+
+
+LXIX.
+
+
+    Earthly duty,
+    Heavenly beauty.
+
+
+LXX.
+
+
+    Truth! her story
+    Is God's glory;
+    Her triumph on the earth,
+    Man's heavenly birth.
+
+
+LXXI.
+
+
+    What's in a name?
+     A symbol of reality,
+    All human fame,
+     And God's originality.
+
+
+LXXII.
+
+
+    Thou art so neat and trim,
+     So modest and so wise,
+     Such gladness in thine eyes,
+    Thou art a prize--for him,
+    And for the world, I think;
+    So here thy health I drink,
+    O mother Eve's fair daughter,
+    In this good cup of water.
+
+
+LXXIII.
+
+
+     All, all thou art
+     Is in thy heart;
+    Thy mind is but a feeder,
+    Thy heart alone the leader,
+
+
+LXXIV.
+
+
+    If you want a fellow.
+    Not too ripe and mellow,
+    Just a little green,
+    Courteous, never mean,
+    One who has a will
+    For the steepest hill,
+    And can rule a wife,
+    Love her as his life,
+    And from fortune's frown
+    Weave a blessed crown,
+    Then you want the best;
+    Win him, and be blest.
+
+
+LXXV.
+
+
+    If you wish a dandy,
+    Moustache curled and sandy,
+    Just the thing for parties,
+    Who, so trim and handy,
+    Knows not where his heart is,
+    Whether with your banker,
+    Or for you it hanker,
+    Why, then take the dude;
+    Naught is void of good.
+
+
+LXXVI.
+
+
+    His faults are many--
+    Hast thou not any?
+    But how will the bundles mix?
+    Is a question for Doctor Dix,
+    For both were picked up at Ann Arbor.
+
+
+LXXVII.
+
+
+    I can not wish thee better
+    In a world of many a sorrow,
+    Than that thou be a debtor
+    To only love and to-morrow.
+    Then pain has little anguish,
+    And life no time to languish,
+    When debts are paid to Heaven,
+    And grace sufficient for thee
+    Thy daily strength has given;
+    For all is bright before thee.
+
+
+LXXVIII.
+
+
+
+    Seek not for happiness,
+      But just to do thy duty;
+    And then will blessedness
+      Impart her heavenly beauty.
+
+
+LXXIX.
+
+
+    Indulge no selfish ease,
+      Each golden hour employ,
+    Seek only God to please,
+      And thou shalt life enjoy;
+    Yea, thou shalt then please all,
+    And blessings on thee fall.
+
+
+LXXX.
+
+
+    To use thy time discreetly,
+    To show forbearance sweetly,
+    To do thy duty neatly,
+    To trust in God completely,
+    Is good advice to give,
+    And best of all to live.
+
+
+LXXXI.
+
+
+    If words are light as cloud foam,
+      So too is mountain air;
+    If in the air is beauty,
+      So too may words be fair.
+    If in the air contagion,
+      Distemper words may bear.
+    Our words are real things,
+      And full of good or ill;
+    The tongue that heals or stings,
+      So needs the Master's will!
+
+
+LXXXII.
+
+
+    The world has many a fool,
+    The schemer many a tool;
+      A mirror shows them,
+      The wise man knows them.
+      Ten thousand disguises,
+      Ten thousand surprises.
+    In wisdom is detection,
+    In righteousness protection.
+
+
+LXXXIII.
+
+
+    To do good to another
+      Is thy self to well serve;
+    And to succor thy brother
+      For thyself is fresh nerve
+    And new strength for the battle,
+    In the dash and the rattle,
+    When thy foes press thee hard,
+    And thy all thou must guard.
+
+
+LXXXIV.
+
+
+    Canst show a finer touch,
+      A grain of purer lore--
+    "I could not love thee, dear, so much,
+      Loved I not honor more?"
+
+
+LXXXV.
+
+
+    Frittered away,
+      Grace to begin
+    Duty to-day--
+      Wages of sin!
+    Truth out of sight,
+      Falsehood crept in,
+    Wrong put for right--
+      Wages of sin.
+    Self become god,
+      Eager to win
+    All at its nod--
+      Wages of sin.
+    Scorn of the seer,
+      Vanity's grin,
+    Darkness grown dear--
+      Wages of sin.
+    Trouble without,
+      Canker within,
+    Fear, hate, and doubt--
+      Wages of sin.
+    What is to be,
+      All that has been,
+    Shadows that flee--
+      Wages of sin.
+    Loss of the soul,
+      Wrangle and din,
+    Tragedy's dole--
+      Wages of sin.
+    Warning enough!
+      (Mortals are kin)
+    Ragged and rough
+      Wages of sin!
+
+
+LXXXVI.
+
+
+    Words great to express Him,
+      Revealer
+      And Healer,
+    By these ye confess Him.
+    Enough, this beginning?
+      Before ye
+      The glory
+    Known only in winning.
+    In deed-bearing Duty
+      Behold Him,
+      Enfold Him,
+    The King in his Beauty;
+    Until ye discover
+      How meetly,
+      How sweetly
+    He rules as a Lover!
+    And then will confession,
+      O new men,
+      Now true men,
+    Be one with possession.
+
+
+LXXXVII.
+
+
+    O wouldst thou know
+      The rarity
+      Of Charity?
+    Thyself forego!
+    Then will the field,
+      To God inviting,
+      To man requiting,
+    Sweet harvest yield.
+
+
+LXXXVIII.
+
+
+    In consecration
+      To single-hearted toil
+    Is animation,
+      Yea, life's true wine and oil;
+    And that vocation
+      Which heart and mind secures
+    Hath consolation
+      That verily endures.
+
+
+LXXXIX.
+
+
+    To fast and pray
+    The live-long day
+      Is preparation--
+    O doubt it not!
+    For some high lot,
+    But in thy deed,
+    Not in thy creed,
+      Is consummation.
+
+
+XC.
+
+
+    It is the cheerful heart
+      That finds the key of gold,
+    The bravely-acted part
+      Which gets the grip and hold.
+    And opens wide the door
+      Where treasures are unrolled
+    Thine eager eyes before.
+    Then life is evermore
+    A strife for wealth untold.
+    God keep thee true and bold!
+
+
+XCI.
+
+
+    Sometimes our failures here
+      Are God's successes;
+    And things that seemed so drear
+      His sweet caresses.
+    It is our Father's hand
+      That gives our wages,
+    Before us many a land
+      And all the ages.
+    And shall we forfeit hope
+     Because the fountains
+    Are up the mighty slope
+     Of yonder mountains?
+
+
+XCII.
+
+
+    The storm is raging.
+     The sun is shining,
+    And both presaging
+     Some true refining;
+    Through them are passing
+     The hosts forever,
+    All wealth amassing
+     Through brave endeavor.
+
+
+XCIII.
+
+
+    O trees, rejoicing trees,
+     Along my path to-day
+    I hear your quiet melodies,
+     And care all charmed away,
+      I catch your mood,
+      Dear forest brotherhood.
+
+    O trees, rejoicing trees,
+     Arrayed in springtide dress,
+    How full ye are of prophecies
+     Of everlastingness!
+      I find a balm
+      In your rejoicing psalm.
+
+    O trees, rejoicing trees,
+     In living green so grand,
+    Like saints with grateful memories,
+     Ye bless the Father's hand;
+      Which stripped you bare
+      To make you now so fair.
+
+    O trees, rejoicing trees,
+     Who have another birth,
+    Through you my bounding spirit sees
+     The day beyond the earth,
+      Eternity
+      So calm, so fair, so free.
+
+    O trees, rejoicing trees,
+     Dear children of the Lord,
+    I thank you for the ministries
+     Which ye to me accord;
+      New life and light
+      Burst from my wintry night!
+
+    O friend, rejoicing friend,
+     A better poem thou
+    To hint the joys that have no end
+     Through gladness here and now.
+      Be thou to me
+      Perpetual prophecy!
+
+
+XCIV.
+
+
+    The battle is set,
+     The field to be won;
+    What foes have you met,
+     What work have you done?
+    To courage alone
+     Does victory come;
+    To coward and drone
+     Nor country nor home!
+
+
+XCV.
+
+
+    For thee, of blessed name,
+    I ask not wealth or fame,
+    Nor that thy path may be
+    From toil and trouble free;
+    For toil is everywhere,
+    Some trouble all must bear,
+    And wealth and fame are naught,
+    With better stuff unwrought--
+    I crave for thy dear heart
+    Eternal Duty's part.
+    For then indeed I know
+    Thy pathway here below
+    Will bloom with roses fair,
+    And beauty everywhere;
+    And this will be enough
+    When winds are wild and rough,
+    To keep thy heart in peace.
+
+
+XCVI
+
+
+    All things to-day have voices,
+    To tell the joy of heaven,
+    Which unto earth is given;
+    This Winter flower rejoices,
+    This snowy hellebore
+    Which blooms for evermore
+    On merry Christmas Day,
+    Reminding us of One
+    Here born a Virgin's Son,
+    To take our sins away.
+    The death its leaves within
+    Is but the death of sin;
+    Which death to die was born
+    The pure and guiltless Child
+    Who Justice reconciled
+    And oped the gates of morn,
+    What time a crimson flame
+    Throughout a word of shame
+    Did purge away the dross,
+    And leave the blood-red gold,
+    Whose worth can not be told,
+    He purchased on the cross!
+    And thus a prophecy
+    Of Him on Calvary,
+    Who takes our sins away,
+    Is this fair snow-white flower
+    Which has of death the power,
+    And blooms on Christmas Day.
+
+
+XCVII.
+
+
+    True friendship writes thee here
+      A birthday souvenir:
+    All blessings on thee, dear,
+      For this and many a year!
+
+
+XCVIII.
+
+
+    A myth that grew within the brain
+      Relates that Eden's bowers
+    Did not, 'mid all their wealth, contain
+      The glory of the flowers;
+
+    Because there were no opened eyes
+      To take that glory in,
+    The sweet and innocent surprise
+      Which looks rebuke to sin;
+
+    For Love, and Innocence, and Truth
+      There made their dwelling-place,
+    Than which fair three immortal Youth
+      Required no other grace.
+
+    But when through sin the happy seat
+      Was lost to wretched man,
+    Our Lord, redeeming love to meet,
+      Redeeming work began:
+
+    The flowers, which have a language now,
+      Shall deck the weary earth,
+    And, while men 'neath their burdens bow,
+      Remind them of their birth;
+
+    And, with their vernal beauty rife,
+      To all the Gospel preach,
+    The Resurrection and the Life,
+      In sweet, persuasive speech.
+
+
+XCIX.
+
+
+    Reader! if thou hast found
+    Thy life to reach and sound,
+    Some thought among these rhymes,
+    My school of rhymes and chimes,
+    _Then this, I pray thee, con:_
+    Somewhat to feed upon
+    It has--a kind of lunch,
+    Served with Olympian punch,
+    To brace thee every night,
+    And make thy mornings bright--
+    Complines at even-song
+    To make thee brave and strong:
+
+
+SUNDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    Thou, Father, givest sleep
+    So calm, so sweet, so deep;
+    And all Thy children share
+    Thy goodness everywhere,
+    And to Thy likeness grow
+    Who love to others show.
+    Grant me more love, I pray,
+    Than I have shown to-day.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+MONDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    Before I go to sleep,
+    That I in joy may reap,
+    Lord, take the tares away
+    Which I have sown to-day,
+    Productive make the wheat,
+    For Thine own garner meet,
+    And give me grace to-morrow
+    To sow no seeds of sorrow.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+TUESDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    While I am wrapped in sleep,
+    And others watch and weep,
+    Dear Lord, remember them,
+    Their flood of sorrow stem,
+    Take all their grief away,
+    Turn Thou their night to day,
+    Until in Thee they rest
+    Who art of friends the best.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+WEDNESDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    Night is for prayer and sleep!
+    Behind the western steep
+    Now has the sun gone down
+    With his great golden crown.
+    O Sun of Righteousness,
+    Arise! Thy children bless;
+    With healing in thy wings
+    Cure all our evil things.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+THURSDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    While I am safe asleep,
+    Good Shepherd of the sheep,
+    If some poor lamb of Thine
+    Stray from the Fold Divine
+    Into the desert night,
+    In the sweet morning light,
+    Choose me to bring it thence
+    Through Thy dear providence.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+FRIDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    That I may sweetly sleep,
+    Thy child, O Father, keep
+    To wake and love thee more
+    Than I have done before.
+    And do Thou prosper all
+    Who on Thy goodness call,
+    And take their sins away
+    Who have not learned to pray.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+SATURDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+    If death upon me creep
+    While I in darkness sleep,
+    Dear Lord! whose time is best,
+    Be Thou my bed and rest!
+    Then at Thy smile of light
+    Will my dark cell grow bright,
+    And angel-sentinels
+    Ring the sweet morning bells.
+    O Father, Son, and Dove,
+    Dear Trinity of Love,
+    Hear Thou my even-song
+    And keep me brave and strong.
+
+
+C.
+
+
+    There is no bitterness
+     Without some lump of sweet;
+    Without some blessedness
+     There is no sad defeat.
+
+    And there is no confusion
+     Without some order fair,
+    No infinite diffusion
+     But unity is there.
+
+    The goodness of the Lord
+     Is round about us here;
+    Beholding it reward
+     To fill the heart with cheer.
+
+    All things are ever tending
+     To some divine event,
+    The sweet and bitter blending
+     With some divine intent.
+
+    All things are ever tending
+     To some divine event,
+    The sweet to have no ending--
+     Avaunt! O Discontent.
+
+    Brave men and women all,
+     How are we comforted
+    With honey out of gall,
+     Served with our daily bread!
+
+FINIS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Footnote 1: The way of the cross the way of light.
+
+Footnote 2: O Liberty! how they have counterfeited thee!
+
+It is generally understood, however, that her last words were: _O
+Liberte! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!_ (O Liberty! what crimes
+are committed in thy name!)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Brave Men and Women, by O.E. Fuller
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