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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Without a Country and Other Tales
+by Edward E. Hale
+
+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: The Man Without a Country and Other Tales
+
+Author: Edward E. Hale
+
+Release Date: May 20, 2005 [EBook #15868]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, Joshua
+Hutchinson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
+
+AND
+
+OTHER TALES.
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD E. HALE,
+
+AUTHOR OF "IN HIS NAME," "TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN," "HOW TO DO IT," "WHAT
+CAREER," ETC., ETC.
+
+BOSTON:
+
+ROBERTS BROTHERS.
+
+1891.
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
+
+TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
+
+THE LAST OF THE FLORIDA
+
+A PIECE OF POSSIBLE HISTORY
+
+THE SOUTH AMERICAN EDITOR
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW, FACE TO FACE
+
+THE DOT AND LINE ALPHABET
+
+THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE
+
+MY DOUBLE, AND HOW HE UNDID ME
+
+THE CHILDREN OF THE PUBLIC
+
+THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET
+
+CHRISTMAS WAITS IN BOSTON
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.
+
+
+This story was written in the summer of 1863, as a contribution, however
+humble, towards the formation of a just and true national sentiment, or
+sentiment of love to the nation. It was at the time when Mr.
+Vallandigham had been sent across the border. It was my wish, indeed,
+that the story might be printed before the autumn elections of that
+year,--as my "testimony" regarding the principles involved in them,--but
+circumstances delayed its publication till the December number of the
+Atlantic appeared.
+
+It is wholly a fiction, "founded on fact." The facts on which it is
+founded are these,--that Aaron Burr sailed down the Mississippi River in
+1805, again in 1806, and was tried for treason in 1807. The rest, with
+one exception to be noticed, is all fictitious.
+
+It was my intention that the story should have been published with no
+author's name, other than that of Captain Frederic Ingham, U.S.N.
+Whether writing under his name or my own, I have taken no liberties with
+history other than such as every writer of fiction is privileged to
+take,--indeed, must take, if fiction is to be written at all.
+
+The story having been once published, it passed out of my hands. From
+that moment it has gradually acquired different accessories, for which I
+am not responsible. Thus I have heard it said, that at one bureau of the
+Navy Department they say that Nolan was pardoned, in fact, and returned
+home to die. At another bureau, I am told, the answer to questions is,
+that, though it is true that an officer was kept abroad all his life,
+his name was not Nolan. A venerable friend of mine in Boston, who
+discredits all tradition, still recollects this "Nolan court-martial."
+One of the most accurate of my younger friends had noticed Nolan's death
+in the newspaper, but recollected "that it was in September, and not in
+August." A lady in Baltimore writes me, I believe in good faith, that
+Nolan has two widowed sisters residing in that neighborhood. A
+correspondent of the Philadelphia Despatch believed "the article untrue,
+as the United States corvette 'Levant' was lost at sea nearly three
+years since, between San Francisco and San Juan." I may remark that this
+uncertainty as to the place of her loss rather adds to the probability
+of her turning up after three years in Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° W. A
+writer in the New Orleans Picayune, in a careful historical paper,
+explained at length that I had been mistaken all through; that Philip
+Nolan never went to sea, but to Texas; that there he was shot in battle,
+March 21, 1801, and by orders from Spain every fifth man of his party
+was to be shot, had they not died in prison. Fortunately, however, he
+left his papers and maps, which fell into the hands of a friend of the
+Picayune's correspondent. This friend proposes to publish them,--and the
+public will then have, it is to be hoped, the true history of Philip
+Nolan, the man without a country.
+
+With all these continuations, however, I have nothing to do. I can only
+repeat that my Philip Nolan is pure fiction. I cannot send his
+scrap-book to my friend who asks for it, because I have it not to send.
+
+I remembered, when I was collecting material for my story, that in
+General Wilkinson's galimatias, which he calls his "Memoirs," is
+frequent reference to a business partner of his, of the name of Nolan,
+who, in the very beginning of this century, was killed in Texas.
+Whenever Wilkinson found himself in rather a deeper bog than usual, he
+used to justify himself by saying that he could not explain such or such
+a charge because "the papers referring to it were lost when _Mr. Nolan_
+was imprisoned in Texas." Finding this mythical character in the
+mythical legends of a mythical time, I took the liberty to give him a
+cousin, rather more mythical, whose adventures should be on the seas. I
+had the impression that Wilkinson's friend was named Stephen,--and as
+such I spoke of him in the early editions of this story. But long after
+this was printed, I found that the New Orleans paper was right in saying
+that the Texan hero was named Philip Nolan.
+
+If I had forgotten him and his name, I can only say that Mr. Jefferson,
+who did not forget him, abandoned him and his,--when the Spanish
+Government murdered him and imprisoned his associates for life. I have
+done my best to repair my fault, and to recall to memory a brave man, by
+telling the story of his fate, in a book called "Philip Nolan's
+Friends." To the historical statements in that book the reader is
+referred. That the Texan Philip Nolan played an important, though
+forgotten, part in our national history, the reader will
+understand,--when I say that the terror of the Spanish Government,
+excited by his adventures, governed all their policy regarding Texas and
+Louisiana also, till the last territory was no longer their own.
+
+If any reader considers the invention of a cousin too great a liberty to
+take in fiction, I venture to remind him that "'Tis sixty years since";
+and that I should have the highest authority in literature even for much
+greater liberties taken with annals so far removed from our time.
+
+A Boston paper, in noticing the story of "My Double," contained in
+another part of this collection, said it was highly _improbable_. I have
+always agreed with that critic. I confess I have the same opinion of
+this story of Philip Nolan. It passes on ships which had no existence,
+is vouched for by officers who never lived. Its hero is in two or three
+places at the same time, under a process wholly impossible under any
+conceivable administration of affairs. When my friend, Mr. W.H. Reed,
+sent me from City Point, in Virginia, the record of the death of PHILIP
+NOLAN, a negro from Louisiana, who died in the cause of his country in
+service in a colored regiment, I felt that he had done something to
+atone for the imagined guilt of the imagined namesake of his unfortunate
+god-father.
+
+  E.E.H.
+
+  ROXBURY, MASS., March 20, 1886.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I supposed that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August
+18th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the
+announcement,--
+
+    "NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long.
+    131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."
+
+I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old
+Mission-House in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did
+not choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the
+current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
+marriages in the Herald. My memory for names and people is good, and the
+reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember
+Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at
+that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had
+chosen to make it thus:--"Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."
+For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had
+generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some
+fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare
+say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in
+a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or
+whether the poor wretch had any name at all.
+
+There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.
+Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's
+administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
+honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in
+successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
+corps_ of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to
+the press this man's story has been wholly unknown,--and, I think, to
+the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some
+investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the
+Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was
+burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the
+Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end
+of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
+Washington to one of the Crowninshields,--who was in the Navy Department
+when he came home,--he found that the Department ignored the whole
+business. Whether they really knew nothing about it or whether it was a
+"_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know.
+But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval
+officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
+
+But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor
+creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his
+story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be A
+MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of
+the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
+Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
+1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
+Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some
+dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
+took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short,
+fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor
+Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man
+had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the
+poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in
+reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at
+him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician
+the time which they devoted to Monongahela, hazard, and high-low-jack.
+Bourbon, euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his
+revenge. This time Burr came down the river, not as an attorney seeking
+a place for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated I
+know not how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I know not how
+many public dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how many Weekly
+Arguses, and it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire
+before him. It was a great day--his arrival--to poor Nolan. Burr had not
+been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked
+Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a
+cotton-wood tree, as he said,--really to seduce him; and by the time the
+sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though
+he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none
+of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and
+Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on
+the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the
+great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
+Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is
+to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and, to
+while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
+_spectacles_, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
+another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the
+list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence
+enough,--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false
+to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any
+one who would follow him had the order been signed, "By command of His
+Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,--rightly
+for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I
+would never have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of
+the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to
+show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried
+out, in a fit of frenzy,--
+
+"D----n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States
+again!"
+
+I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who
+was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served
+through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had
+been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his
+madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the
+midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been
+educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer
+or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had
+been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he
+told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a
+winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older
+brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States"
+was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all
+the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a
+Christian to be true to "United States." It was "United States" which
+gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor
+Nolan, it was only because "United States" had picked you out first as
+one of her own confidential men of honor that "A. Burr" cared for you a
+straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do
+not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his
+country, and wished he might never hear her name again.
+
+He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
+23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
+again. For that half-century and more he was a man without a country.
+
+Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared
+George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, "God save King
+George," Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into his
+private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet,
+to say,--
+
+"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court! The Court decides, subject to
+the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the
+United States again."
+
+Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
+the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
+his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added,--
+
+"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver
+him to the naval commander there."
+
+The Marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.
+
+"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
+United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
+Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
+shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
+ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here
+this evening. The court is adjourned without day."
+
+I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings
+of the court to Washington City, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson.
+Certain it is that the President approved them,--certain, that is, if I
+may believe the men who say they have seen his signature. Before the
+Nautilus got round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with
+the prisoner on board the sentence had been approved, and he was a man
+without a country.
+
+The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
+followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of
+sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the
+Navy--it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do
+not remember--was requested to put Nolan on board a government vessel
+bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far
+confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the
+country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of
+favor; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I have
+explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But the
+commander to whom he was intrusted,--perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw,
+though I think it was one of the younger men,--we are all old enough
+now,--regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and
+according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan
+died.
+
+When I was second officer of the "Intrepid," some thirty years after, I
+saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever since
+that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in this
+way:--
+
+    "WASHINGTON (with a date, which have been late in 1807).
+
+    "SIR,--You will receive from Lieutenant Neale the person of Philip
+    Nolan, late a Lieutenant in the United States Army.
+
+    "This person on his trial by court-martial expressed with an oath
+    the wish that he might 'never hear of the United States again.'
+
+    "The Court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled.
+
+    "For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by the
+    President to this Department.
+
+    "You will take the prisoner on board your ship, and keep him there
+    with such precautions as shall prevent his escape.
+
+    "You will provide him with such quarters, rations, and clothing as
+    would be proper for an officer of his late rank, if he were a
+    passenger on your vessel on the business of his Government.
+
+    "The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable to
+    themselves regarding his society. He is to be exposed to no
+    indignity of any kind, nor is he ever unnecessarily to be reminded
+    that he is a prisoner.
+
+    "But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or
+    to see any information regarding it, and you will specially
+    caution all the officers under your command to take care, that, in
+    the various indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in which
+    his punishment is involved, shall not be broken.
+
+    "It is the intention of the Government that he shall never again
+    see the country which he has disowned. Before the end of your
+    cruise you will receive orders which will give effect to this
+    intention.
+
+    "Respectfully yours,
+
+    "W. SOUTHARD, for the Secretary of the Navy."
+
+If I had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no break
+in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, if it
+were he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to his, and I
+suppose the commander of the Levant has it to-day as his authority for
+keeping this man in this mild custody.
+
+The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met "the man without
+a country" was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No mess liked
+to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all talk of home
+or of the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of peace or of
+war,--cut off more than half the talk men liked to have at sea. But it
+was always thought too hard that he should never meet the rest of us,
+except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. He was not
+permitted to talk with the men, unless an officer was by. With officers
+he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and he chose. But he
+grew shy, though he had favorites: I was one. Then the captain always
+asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess in succession took up the
+invitation in its turn. According to the size of the ship, you had him
+at your mess more or less often at dinner. His breakfast he ate in his
+own state-room,--he always had a state-room,--which was where a sentinel
+or somebody on the watch could see the door. And whatever else he ate or
+drank, he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the marines or sailors had
+any special jollification, they were permitted to invite
+"Plain-Buttons," as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with some
+officer, and the men were forbidden to speak of home while he was
+there. I believe the theory that the sight of his punishment did them
+good. They called him "Plain-Buttons," because, while he always chose to
+wear a regulation army-uniform, he was not permitted to wear the
+army-button, for the reason that it bore either the initials or the
+insignia of the country he had disowned.
+
+I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I was on shore with some of
+the older officers from our ship and from the Brandywine, which we had
+met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and
+the Pyramids. As we jogged along (you went on donkeys then), some of the
+gentlemen (we boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long since
+changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the system which
+was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As he was
+almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay in
+port for months, his time at the best hung heavy; and everybody was
+permitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and
+made no allusion to it. These were common enough in the old days, when
+people in the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as
+we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign papers that came into
+the ship, sooner or later; only somebody must go over them first, and
+cut out any advertisement or stray paragraph that alluded to America.
+This was a little cruel sometimes, when the back of what was cut out
+might be as innocent as Hesiod. Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's
+battles, or one of Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would find a great
+hole, because on the back of the page of that paper there had been an
+advertisement of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the President's
+message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which
+afterwards I had enough and more than enough to do with. I remember it,
+because poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion to
+reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the Cape
+of Good Hope on Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I ever
+knew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the
+civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving
+for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
+English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these,
+was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay
+of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which
+most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published
+long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything national
+in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the "Tempest" from
+Shakespeare before he let Nolan have it, because he said "the Bermudas
+ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day." So Nolan was
+permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on
+deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things so often
+now, but when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well,
+so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the
+others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a
+line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten
+thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto,
+stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without a thought
+of what was coming,--
+
+    "Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
+    Who never to himself hath said,"--
+
+It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
+time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
+still unconsciously or mechanically,--
+
+    "This is my own, my native land!"
+
+Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through,
+I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,--
+
+    "Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
+    As home his footsteps he hath turned
+      From wandering on a foreign strand?--
+    If such there breathe, go, mark him well,"--
+
+By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any
+way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
+mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,--
+
+    "For him no minstrel raptures swell;
+    High though his titles, proud his name,
+    Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
+    Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
+    The wretch, concentred all in self,"--
+
+and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung
+the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "And by Jove," said
+Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up
+some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his
+Walter Scott to him."
+
+That story shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must have
+broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered
+his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all
+that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he
+never was the same man again. He never read aloud again, unless it was
+the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it was
+not that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly as
+a companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew him,--very
+seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few friends. He
+lighted up occasionally,--I remember late in his life hearing him fairly
+eloquent on something which had been suggested to him by one of
+Fléchier's sermons,--but generally he had the nervous, tired look of a
+heart-wounded man.
+
+When Captain Shaw was coming home,--if, as I say, it was Shaw,--rather
+to the surprise of every body they made one of the Windward Islands,
+and lay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were
+sick of salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came home.
+But after several days the Warren came to the same rendezvous; they
+exchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward-bound men
+letters and papers, and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps to the
+Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat back to try
+his second cruise. He looked very blank when he was told to get ready to
+join her. He had known enough of the signs of the sky to know that till
+that moment he was going "home." But this was a distinct evidence of
+something he had not thought of, perhaps,--that there was no going home
+for him, even to a prison. And this was the first of some twenty such
+transfers, which brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels,
+but which kept him all his life at least some hundred miles from the
+country he had hoped he might never hear of again.
+
+It may have been on that second cruise,--it was once when he was up the
+Mediterranean,--that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of those
+days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the Bay of
+Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet, and
+there had been great festivities, and our men thought they must give a
+great ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on board the "Warren"
+I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the "Warren," or perhaps
+ladies did not take up so much room as they do now. They wanted to use
+Nolan's state-room for something, and they hated to do it without asking
+him to the ball; so the captain said they might ask him, if they would
+be responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people, "who would
+give him intelligence." So the dance went on, the finest party that had
+ever been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball that
+was not. For ladies they had the family of the American consul, one or
+two travellers who had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of English
+girls and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.
+
+Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talking
+with Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to
+him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellows
+who took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any _contretemps_.
+Only when some English lady--Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps--called
+for a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody then
+danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to
+what "American dances" were, and started off with a "Virginia Reel,"
+which they followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those days,
+should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as Dick, the
+leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say,
+in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen, gentlemen and ladies!" as he
+had said "'Virginny Reel,' if you please!" and "'Money-Musk,' if you
+please!" the captain's boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to him,
+and he did not announce the name of the dance; he merely bowed, began on
+the air, and they all fell to,--the officers teaching the English girls
+the figure, but not telling them why it had no name.
+
+But that is not the story I started to tell.--As the dancing went on,
+Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said,--so much so, that it
+seemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, and
+say,--
+
+"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the honor
+of dancing?"
+
+He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was by him, could not hinder
+him. She laughed and said,--
+
+"I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all the
+same," just nodded to Fellows, as if to say he must leave Mr. Nolan to
+her, and led him off to the place where the dance was forming.
+
+Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,
+and at other places had met her, and this was a Godsend. You could not
+talk in contra-dances, as you do in cotillons, or even in the pauses of
+waltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as for
+eyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius,
+and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had that long
+talking-time at the bottom of the set, he said, boldly,--a little pale,
+she said, as she told me the story, years after,--
+
+"And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?"
+
+And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must have
+looked through him!
+
+"Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to hear
+of home again!"--and she walked directly up the deck to her husband, and
+left poor Nolan alone, as he always was.--He did not dance again.
+
+I cannot give any history of him in order; nobody can now; and, indeed,
+I am not trying to. These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I
+believe them, from the myths which have been told about this man for
+forty years. The lies that have been told about him are legion. The
+fellows used to say he was the "Iron Mask"; and poor George Pons went to
+his grave in the belief that this was the author of "Junius," who was
+being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was
+not very strong in the historical line. A happier story than either of
+these I have told is of the War. That came along soon after. I have
+heard this affair told in three or four ways,--and, indeed, it may have
+happened more than once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell.
+However, in one, at least, of the great frigate-duels with the English,
+in which the navy was really baptized, it happened that a round-shot
+from the enemy entered one of our ports square, and took right down the
+officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun's crew. Now
+you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing
+to see. But, as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and as
+they and the surgeon's people were carrying off the bodies, there
+appeared Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and,
+just as if he had been the officer, told them off with authority,--who
+should go to the cockpit with the wounded men, who should stay with
+him,--perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all
+is right and is going to be right. And he finished loading the gun with
+his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed,
+captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy
+struck,--sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he
+was exposed all the time,--showing them easier ways to handle heavy
+shot,--making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders,--and when the
+gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any
+other gun on the ship. The captain walked forward by way of encouraging
+the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said,--
+
+"I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, sir."
+
+And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree; and the
+Commodore said,--
+
+"I see you do, and I thank you, sir; and I shall never forget this day,
+sir, and you never shall, sir."
+
+And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman's sword,
+in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said,--
+
+"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here."
+
+And when Nolan came, the captain said,--
+
+"Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
+to-day; you will be named in the despatches."
+
+And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to
+Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan
+cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that
+infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards on occasions of
+ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the Commodore's.
+
+The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
+asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
+Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about
+the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington,
+and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was
+nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
+
+I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of
+the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his
+father, Essex Porter,--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As
+an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more
+about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that,
+than any of them did; and he worked with a right good-will in fixing
+that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did
+not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all
+the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and
+at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our
+French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would
+have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of
+course, flung all that away.
+
+All that was near fifty year ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must have
+been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty. But he
+never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his life,
+from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every sea,
+and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way, more
+officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me once, with
+a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a life as
+he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how busy he
+was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the time,
+more than to do anything else all the time; but that he read just five
+hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, writing in them
+at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include in
+these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had six or
+eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural
+Science, one which he called "Odds and Ends." But they were not merely
+books of extracts from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons,
+shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught
+the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew
+admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the
+most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have
+Nolan's scrap-books.
+
+Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
+they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
+said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
+Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The
+men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
+satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
+was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
+the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
+they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can
+get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike
+them,--why Linnĉus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did.
+These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of
+the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a
+great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he
+was ill. If any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the
+world; and he knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was
+sick or died, or if the captain wanted him to, on any other occasion, he
+was always ready to read prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.
+
+My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
+War, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in
+the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning House,
+which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of
+sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle
+Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South
+Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought
+Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain,--a chaplain with a blue coat. I never
+asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was
+green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a
+"Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a
+week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said
+about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet
+Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there were
+a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I first
+came to understand anything about "the man without a country" one day
+when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on board.
+An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few minutes, he
+sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him who could
+speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail when the message
+came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain asked Who
+spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers did; and just as the captain
+was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out
+and said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain wished, as he
+understood the language. The captain thanked him, fitted out another
+boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.
+
+When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want
+to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the
+nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of
+making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had
+their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience'
+sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The
+negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the
+dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him
+in every dialect, and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to
+the Parisian of Beledeljereed.
+
+As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had
+mounted in desperation, and said:--
+
+"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand
+something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked
+that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I
+talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they
+understood that as well as they understood the English."
+
+Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking
+Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked
+for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.
+
+"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these
+rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."
+
+Nolan "put that into Spanish,"--that is, he explained it in such
+Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of
+the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of
+delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's
+feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous
+worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.
+
+"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to
+Cape Palmas."
+
+This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the
+homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they
+would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as
+we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non Palmas_" and began to
+propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was
+rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan
+eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead,
+as he hushed the men down, and said:--
+
+"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own
+country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
+our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother who will die if
+they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick, and
+paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them,
+and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and
+that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one says,"
+choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in six
+months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."
+
+Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through
+this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion
+involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent
+heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes
+themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's
+almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he
+said:--
+
+"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of
+the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White
+Desert, they shall go home!"
+
+And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing
+him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.
+
+But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go
+back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the
+stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me: "Youngster, let that
+show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without
+a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing
+that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your
+country, pray God in his mercy to take you that instant home to his own
+heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do
+everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk
+about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you
+have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that
+poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words
+rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship,
+"never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the
+service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to
+you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another
+flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag.
+Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind
+officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself,
+your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own
+mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those
+devils there had got hold of her to-day!"
+
+I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion, but I blundered
+out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of
+doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in
+a whisper, say: "O, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your
+age!"
+
+I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I
+never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends.
+He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night, to
+walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great
+deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He
+lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so
+directly to his story again; but from one and another officer I have
+learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in
+St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can
+tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when
+I thought I had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth
+to have him discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison.
+They pretended there was no such man, and never was such a man. They
+will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not
+be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to
+know nothing!
+
+There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a
+party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I
+believe to be a lie; or, rather, it is a myth, _ben trovato_, involving
+a tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,--asking him how he
+liked to be "without a country." But it is clear from Burr's life, that
+nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an
+illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least
+mystery at bottom.
+
+So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more
+dreadful; it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day
+to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her
+ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to
+which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.
+The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his
+punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was
+precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's
+oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's.
+I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have
+done all that in them lay that they might have no country,--that all the
+honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country"
+might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I
+know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left
+of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they
+are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the
+agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will
+see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,
+like him.
+
+For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,
+submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to
+the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold.
+Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.
+Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a
+careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of
+Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,--from the map of
+the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
+the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to
+do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as
+Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was
+from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table,
+when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington
+corvette, on the South American station. We were lying in the La Plata,
+and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined
+again, were entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in
+riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was
+in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble
+reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild
+horses in Texas with his adventurous cousin, at a time when he must have
+been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal of spirit,--so much
+so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the
+table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked
+perfectly unconsciously:--
+
+"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their
+independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very
+fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy
+of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near
+twenty years."
+
+There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never
+heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out
+of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he
+read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of
+California,--this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so
+far, and, I believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and
+Williams, the two Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not
+to laugh. Edward Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in
+the chain of the captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a
+convulsion of sneezing. Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he
+did not know what. And I, as master of the feast, had to say,--
+
+"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back's
+curious account of Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome?"
+
+After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice
+a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but
+he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years
+he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the
+same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as
+best he could his self-appointed punishment,--rather less social,
+perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious,
+apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of
+whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow
+is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print
+it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of
+to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from
+Danforth, who is on board the Levant, a letter which gives an account
+of Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this
+story.
+
+To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader
+should remember that after 1817, the position of every officer who had
+Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The government had
+failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?
+Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the
+Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,
+then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action
+for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him
+in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have reason to
+think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always
+said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special
+orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means,
+"If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be
+disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do
+not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence
+of the very revelation I am making.
+
+Here is the letter:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"LEVANT, 2° 2' S. @ 131° W.
+
+"DEAR FRED:--I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is all
+over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage more than
+I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in which you used
+to speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, but
+I had no idea the end was so near. The doctor has been watching him very
+carefully, and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was
+not so well, and had not left his state-room,--a thing I never remember
+before. He had let the doctor come and see him as he lay there,--the
+first time the doctor had been in the state-room,--and he said he should
+like to see me. O dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to
+invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and
+there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly
+as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a
+glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the
+box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and
+around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle,
+with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the
+whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my
+glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!'
+And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before
+a great map of the United States, as he had drawn it from memory, and
+which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old names were
+on it, in large letters: 'Indiana Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,'
+and 'Louisiana Territory,' as I suppose our fathers learned such
+things: but the old fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his
+western boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had
+defined nothing.
+
+"'O Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely
+you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not speak till I say
+what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is
+not in America,--God bless her!--a more loyal man than I. There cannot
+be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or prays for it as I do, or
+hopes for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I
+thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has
+never been one taken away: I thank God for that. I know by that that
+there has never been any successful Burr. O Danforth, Danforth,' he
+sighed out, 'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal
+fame or of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after
+such a life as mine! But tell me,--tell me something,--tell me
+everything, Danforth, before I die!'
+
+"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not told
+him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no delicacy, who
+was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this
+dear, sainted old man, who had years ago expiated, in his whole
+manhood's life, the madness of a boy's treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I
+will tell you every thing you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?'
+
+"O the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he pressed my
+hand and said, 'God bless you' 'Tell me their names,' he said, and he
+pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know is Ohio. My father
+lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and
+Mississippi,--that was where Fort Adams is,--they make twenty. But where
+are your other fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I
+hope?'
+
+"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names in as good
+order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and draw
+them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about
+Texas, told me how his cousin died there; he had marked a gold cross
+near where he supposed his grave was; and he had guessed at Texas. Then
+he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon;--that, he said, he had
+suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on that
+shore, though the ships were there so much. 'And the men,' said he,
+laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went
+back--heavens, how far!--to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done
+to Barron for surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever
+tried again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.
+But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am
+sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me the true
+story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,--asked about
+dear old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more
+quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of
+fifty years.
+
+"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
+as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
+the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
+him all I could think of about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and
+Texas, and his own old Kentucky. And do you think, he asked who was in
+command of the 'Legion of the West.' I told him it was a very gallant
+officer named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to
+establish his head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I
+worked that out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less,
+above his old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must he a ruin now.
+'It must be at old Vick's plantation,' at Walnut Hills, said he: 'well,
+that is a change!'
+
+"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
+a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I
+told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of steamboats, and
+railroads, and telegraphs,--of inventions, and books, and
+literature,--of the colleges, and West Point, and the Naval School,--but
+with the queerest interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was
+Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated questions of fifty-six
+years!
+
+"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I
+told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He
+said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at
+some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like
+himself, but I could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from
+the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have
+brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those
+regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my
+visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
+Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition;
+I told him about the Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and
+Crawford's Liberty, and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him
+everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country
+and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word
+about this infernal Rebellion!
+
+"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more
+and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a
+glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away.
+Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,'
+which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the right
+place,--and so it did. There was his double red mark down the page; and
+I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me, 'For ourselves and our
+country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, notwithstanding our
+manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy
+marvellous kindness,'--and so to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he
+turned to the end of the same book, and I read the words more familiar
+to me: 'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless
+Thy servant, the President of the United States, and all others in
+authority,'--and the rest of the Episcopal collect. 'Danforth,' said he,
+'I have repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five
+years.' And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over him
+and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I am
+gone.' And I went away.
+
+"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would
+sleep. I knew he was happy and I wanted him to be alone.
+
+"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently he found Nolan had
+breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to
+his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of the Cincinnati.
+
+"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the place
+where he had marked the text:--
+
+"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed
+to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.'
+
+"On this slip of paper he had written:--
+
+"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
+some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
+my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:--
+
+    "'_In Memory of_
+
+    PHILIP NOLAN,
+
+    _Lieutenant in the Army of the United States_, He loved his
+    country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at
+    her hands.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST OF THE FLORIDA.
+
+FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.
+
+
+[The Florida, Anglo-Rebel pirate, after inflicting horrible injuries on
+the commerce of America and the good name of England, was cut out by
+Captain Collins, from the bay of Bahia, by one of those fortunate
+mistakes in international law which endear brave men to the nations in
+whose interest they are committed. When she arrived here the government
+was obliged to disavow the act. The question then was, as we had her by
+mistake, what we should do with her. At that moment the National
+Sailors' Fair was in full blast at Boston, and I offered my suggestion
+in answer in the following article, which was published November 19,
+1864, in the "Boatswain's Whistle," a little paper issued at the fair.
+
+The government did not take the suggestion. Very unfortunately, before
+the Florida was got ready for sea, she was accidentally sunk in a
+collision with a tug off Fort Monroe, and the heirs of the Confederate
+government or the English bond-holders must look there for her, if the
+Brazilian government will give them permission.
+
+For the benefit of the New York Observer I will state that a despatch
+sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200 times, would
+not really arrive at its destination four years before it started. It is
+only a joke which suggests it.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPECIAL DESPATCH.
+
+LETTER FROM CAPTAIN INGHAM, IN COMMAND OF THE FLORIDA.
+
+[Received four years in advance of the mail by a lightning express,
+which has gained that time by running round the world 1,200 times in a
+spiral direction westward on its way from Brazil to our
+publication-office. Mrs. Ingham's address not being known, the letter is
+printed for her information.]
+
+No. 29.
+
+BAHIA, BRAZIL, April 1, 1868.
+
+MY DEAR WIFE:--We are here at last, thank fortune; and I shall surrender
+the old pirate to-day to the officers of government. We have been
+saluted, are to be fêted, and perhaps I shall be made a Knight Commander
+of the Golden Goose. I never was so glad as when I saw the lights on the
+San Esperitu head-land, which makes the south point of this Bahia or
+bay.
+
+You will not have received my No. 28 from Loando, and may have missed 26
+and 24, which I gave to _outward_ bound whalemen. I always doubted
+whether you got 1, 7, 9, and 11. And for me I have no word of you since
+you waved your handkerchief from the window in Springfield Street on the
+morning of the 1st of June, 1865, nearly four years. My dear child, you
+will not know me.
+
+Let me then repeat, very briefly, the outline of this strange cruise;
+and when the letters come, you can fill in the blanks.
+
+The government had determined that the Florida must be returned to the
+neutral harbor whence she came. They had put her in complete repair, and
+six months of diplomacy had made the proper apologies to the Brazilian
+government. Meanwhile Collins, who had captured her by mistake, had, by
+another mistake, been made an admiral, and was commanding a squadron;
+and to insure her safe and respectful delivery, I, who had been waiting
+service, was un shelved, and, as you know, bidden to take command.
+
+She was in apple-pie order. The engines had been cleaned up; and I
+thought we could make a quick thing of it. I was a little dashed when I
+found the crew was small; but I have been glad enough since that we had
+no more mouths. No one but myself knew our destination. The men thought
+we were to take despatches to the Gulf squadron.
+
+You remember I had had only verbal orders to take command, and after we
+got outside the bay I opened my sealed despatches. The gist of them was
+in these words:--
+
+"You will understand that the honor of this government is pledged for
+the _safe_ delivery of the Florida to the government of Brazil. You will
+therefore hazard nothing to gain speed. The quantity of your coal has
+been adjusted with the view to give your vessel her best trim, and the
+supply is not large. You will husband it with care,--taking every
+precaution to arrive in Bahia _safely_ with your charge, in such time as
+_your best discretion_ may suggest to you."
+
+"_Your best discretion_" was underscored.
+
+I called Prendergast, and showed him the letter. Then we called the
+engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the bunkers, but
+went and returned with his face white, through the black grime, to
+report "not four days' consumption." By some cursed accident, he said,
+the bunkers had been filled with barrels of salt-pork and flour!
+
+On this, I ordered a light and went below. There had been some fatal
+misunderstanding somewhere. The vessel was fitted out as for an arctic
+voyage. Everywhere hard-bread, flour, pork, beef, vinegar, sour-krout;
+but, clearly enough, not, at the very best, five days of coal!
+
+And I was to get to Brazil with this old pirate transformed into a
+provision ship, "at my best discretion."
+
+"Prendergast," said I, "we will take it easy. Were you ever in Bahia?"
+
+"Took flour there in '55, and lay waiting for India-rubber from July to
+October. Lost six men by yellow-jack."
+
+Prendergast was from the merchant marine. I had known him since we were
+children. "Ethan," said I, "in my best discretion it would be bad to
+arrive there before the end of October. Where would you go?"
+
+I cannot say he took the responsibility. He would not take it. You know,
+my dear, of course, that it was I who suggested Upernavik. From the days
+of the old marbled paper Northern Regions,--through the quarto Ross and
+Parry and Back and the nephew Ross and Kane and McClure and McClintock,
+you know, my dear, what my one passion has been,--to see those floes
+and icebergs for myself. Surely you forgive me, or at least excuse me.
+Do not you? Here was this fast steamer under me. I ought not to be in
+Bahia before October 25. It was June 1. Of course we went to Upernavik.
+
+I will not say I regret it now. Yet I will say that on that decision,
+cautiously made, though it was "on my discretion," all our subsequent
+misfortunes hang. The Danes were kind to us,--the Governor especially,
+though I had to carry the poor fellow bad news about the Duchies and the
+Danish war, which was all fresh then. He got up a dance for us, I
+remember, and there I wrote No. 1 to you. I could not of course
+help--when we left him--running her up a few degrees to the north, just
+to see whether there is or is not that passage between Igloolik and
+Prince Rupert's Headland (and by the way there _is_). After we passed
+Igloolik, there was such splendid weather, that I just used up a little
+coal to drive her along the coast of King William's Land; and there, as
+we waited for little duck-shooting on the edge of a floe one day, as our
+luck ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them with
+hard-tack crumbs and whale-oil. They fell to dancing, and we to
+laughing,--they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest woman
+tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash right on the
+little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened binnacle and
+compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and such a mess
+together as I remember now. We had to apologize, the doctor set her
+head as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread from the cabin, to
+console them, and got them off without a fight. But the next morning
+when I cast off from the floe, it proved the beggars had stolen the
+compass card, needle and all.
+
+My dear Mary, there was not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship.
+The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind
+for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only
+the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which
+knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of
+more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the
+stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle was not
+quite poetry.
+
+As you shall see, if I ever get through. (Since I began, I have seen the
+Consul,--and heard the glorious news from home,--and am to be presented
+to the port authorities to-morrow.) It was the most open summer, Mary,
+ever known there. If I had not had to be here in October, I would have
+driven right through Lancaster Sound, by Baring's Island, and come out
+into the Pacific. But here was the honor of the country, and we merely
+stole back through the Straits. It was well enough there,--all daylight,
+you know. But after we passed Cape Farewell, we worked her into such
+fogs, child, as you never saw out of Hyde Park. Did not I long for that
+compass-card! We sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed. For thirty-seven
+days I did not get an observation, nor speak a ship! October! It was
+October before we were warm. At noon we used to sail where we thought it
+was lightest. At night I used to keep two men up for a lookout, lash the
+wheel, and let her drift like a Dutchman. One way as good as another.
+Mary, when I saw the sun at last, enough to get any kind of observation,
+we were wellnigh three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of fogs
+to me!
+
+Well, I set her south again, but how long can you know if you are
+sailing south, in those places where the northeast winds and Scotch
+mists come from! Thank Heaven, we got south, or we should have frozen to
+death. We got into November, and we got into December. We were as far
+south as 37° 29'; and were in 31° 17' west on New Year's Day, 1866, when
+the second officer wished me a happy new year, congratulated me on the
+fine weather, said we should get a good observation, and asked me for
+the new nautical almanac! You know they are only calculated for five
+years. We had two Greenwich ones on board, and they ran out December 31,
+1865. But the government had been as stingy in almanacs as in coal and
+compasses. They did not mean to keep the Confederacy in almanacs.
+
+That was the beginning of our troubles. I had to take the old almanac,
+with Prendergast, and we figured like Cocker, and always kept ahead with
+a month's tables. But somehow,--I feel sure we were right,--but
+something was wrong; and after a few weeks the lunars used to come out
+in the most beastly way, and we always proved to be on the top of the
+Andes or in the Marquesas Islands, or anywhere but in the Atlantic
+Ocean. Well then, by good luck, we spoke the Winged Batavian; could not
+speak a word of Dutch, nor he a word of English; but he let Ethan copy
+his tables, and so we ran for St. Sacrament. I posted 8, 9, and 10
+there; I gave the Dutchman 7, which I hope you got, but fear.
+
+Well, this story is running long; but at St. Sacrament we started again,
+but, as ill-luck would have it, without a clean bill of health. At that
+time I could have run into Bahia with coal--of which I had bought
+some--in a week. But there was fever on shore,--and bad,--and I knew we
+must make pratique when we came into the outer harbor here; so, rather
+than do that, we stretched down the coast, and met that cyclone I wrote
+you about, and had to put into Loando. Understand, this was the first
+time we went into Loando. I have learned that wretched hole well enough
+since. And it was as we were running out of Loando, that, in reversing
+the engine too suddenly, lest we should smash up an old Portuguese
+woman's bum-boat, that the slides or supports of the piston-rod just
+shot out of the grooves they run in on the top, came cleverly down on
+the outside of the carriage, gave that odious _g-r-r-r_, which I can
+hear now, and then, _dump_,--down came the whole weight of the
+walking-beam, bent rod and carriages all into three figure 8's, and
+there we were! I had as lief run the boat with a clothes-wringer as with
+that engine, any day, from then to now.
+
+Well, we tinkered, and the Portuguese dock-yard people tinkered. We took
+out this, and they took out that. It was growing sickly, and I got
+frightened, and finally I shipped the propeller and took it on board,
+and started under such canvas as we had left,--not much after the
+cyclone,--for the North and the South together had rather rotted the
+original duck.
+
+Then,--as I wrote you in No. 11,--it was too late to get to Bahia before
+that summer's sickly season, and I stretched off to cooler regions
+again, "in my best discretion." That was the time when we had the fever
+so horribly on board; and but for Wilder the surgeon, and the Falkland
+Islands, we should be dead, every man of us, now. But we touched in
+Queen's Bay just in time. The Governor (who is his own only subject) was
+very cordial and jolly and kind. We all went ashore, and pitched tents,
+and ate ducks and penguins till the men grew strong. I scraped her,
+nearly down to the bends, for the grass floated by our side like a
+mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the once swift Florida would not make
+four knots an hour on the wind;--and this was the ship I was to get into
+Bahia in good order, at my best discretion!
+
+Meanwhile none of these people had any news from America. The last
+paper at the Falkland Islands was a London Times of 1864, abusing the
+Yankees. As for the Portuguese, they were like the people Logan saw at
+Vicksburg. "They don't know anything good!" said he; "they don't know
+anything at all!" It was really more for news than for water I put into
+Sta. Lucia,--and a pretty mess I made of it there. We looked so like
+pirates (as at bottom the old tub is), that they took all of us who
+landed to the guard-house. None of us could speak Sta. Lucia, whatever
+that tongue may be, nor understand it. And it was not till Ethan fired a
+shell from the 100-pound Parrott over the town that they let us go. I
+hope the dogs sent you my letters. I suppose there was another
+infringement of neutrality. But if the Brazilian government sends this
+ship to Sta. Lucia, I shall not command her, that's all!
+
+Well! what happened at Loando the second time, Valencia, and Puntos
+Pimos, and Nueva Salamanca, and Loando this last time, you know and will
+know, and why we loitered so. At last, thank fortune, here we are.
+Actually, Mary, this ship logged on the average only thirty-two knots a
+day for the last week before we got her into port.
+
+Now think of the ingratitude of men! I have brought her in here,
+"according to my best discretion," and do you believe, these hidalgos,
+or dons, or senores, or whatever they are, had forgotten she existed.
+And when I showed them to her, they said in good Portugal that I was a
+liar. Fortunately the Consul is our old friend Kingsley. He was
+delighted to see me; thought I was at the bottom of the sea. From him we
+learned that the Confederacy was blown sky-high long ago. And from all I
+can learn, I may have the Florida back again for my own private yacht or
+peculium, unless she goes to Sta. Lucia.
+
+Not I, my friends! Scrape her, and mend her, and give her to the
+marines,--and tell them her story; but do not intrust her again to my
+own Polly's own
+
+FREDERIC INGHAM
+
+
+
+
+A PIECE OF POSSIBLE HISTORY.
+
+
+[This essay was first published in the Monthly Religious Magazine,
+Boston, for October, 1851. One or another professor of chronology has
+since taken pains to tell me that it is impossible. But until they
+satisfy themselves whether Homer ever lived at all, I shall hold to the
+note which I wrote to Miss Dryasdust's cousin, which I printed
+originally at the end of the article, and which will be found there in
+this collection. The difficulties in the geography are perhaps worse
+than those of chronology.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A summer bivouac had collected together a little troop of soldiers from
+Joppa, under the shelter of a grove, where they had spread their
+sheep-skins, tethered their horses, and pitched a single tent. With the
+carelessness of soldiers, they were chatting away the time till sleep
+might come, and help them to to-morrow with its chances; perhaps of
+fight, perhaps of another day of this camp indolence. Below the garden
+slope where they were lounging, the rapid torrent of Kishon ran brawling
+along. A full moon was rising above the rough edge of the Eastern hills,
+and the whole scene was alive with the loveliness of an Eastern
+landscape.
+
+As they talked together, the strains of a harp came borne down the
+stream by the wind, mingling with the rippling of the brook.
+
+"The boys were right," said the captain of the little company. "They
+asked leave to go up the stream to spend their evening with the
+Carmel-men; and said that they had there a harper, who would sing and
+play for them."
+
+"Singing at night, and fighting in the morning! It is the true soldier's
+life," said another.
+
+"Who have they there?" asked a third.
+
+"One of those Ziklag-men," replied the chief. "He came into camp a few
+days ago, seems to be an old favorite of the king's, and is posted with
+his men, by the old tomb on the edge of the hill. If you cross the
+brook, he is not far from the Carmel post; and some of his young men
+have made acquaintance there."
+
+"One is not a soldier for nothing. If we make enemies at sight, we make
+friends at sight too."
+
+"Echish here says that the harper is a Jew."
+
+"What!--a deserter?"
+
+"I do not know that; that is the king's lookout. Their company came up a
+week ago, were reviewed the day I was on guard at the outposts, and they
+had this post I tell you of assigned to them. So the king is satisfied;
+and, if he is, I am."
+
+"Jew or Gentile, Jehovah's man or Dagon's man," said one of the younger
+soldiers, with a half-irreverent tone, "I wish we had him here to sing
+to us."
+
+"And to keep us awake," yawned another.
+
+"Or to keep us from thinking of to-morrow," said a third.
+
+"Can nobody sing here, or play, or tell an old-time story?"
+
+There was nobody. The only two soldiers of the post, who affected
+musical skill, were the two who had gone up to the Carmelites' bivouac;
+and the little company of Joppa--catching louder notes and louder, as
+the bard's inspiration carried him farther and farther away--crept as
+far up the stream as the limits of their station would permit; and lay,
+without noise, to catch, as they best could, the rich tones of the music
+as it swept down the valley.
+
+Soothed by the sound, and by the moonlight, and by the summer breeze,
+they were just in mood to welcome the first interruption which broke the
+quiet of the night. It was the approach of one of their company, who had
+been detached to Accho a day or two before; and who came hurrying in to
+announce the speedy arrival of companions, for whom he bespoke a
+welcome. Just as they were to leave Accho, he said, that day, on their
+return to camp, an Ionian trading-vessel had entered port. He and his
+fellow-soldiers had waited to help her moor, and had been chatting with
+her seamen. They had told them of the chance of battle to which they
+were returning; and two or three of the younger Ionians, enchanted at
+the relief from the sea's imprisonment, had begged them to let them
+volunteer in company with them. These men had come up into the country
+with the soldiers, therefore; and he who had broken the silence of the
+listeners to the distant serenade had hurried on to tell his comrades
+that such visitors were on their way.
+
+They soon appeared on foot, but hardly burdened by the light packs they
+bore.
+
+A soldier's welcome soon made the Ionian sailors as much at home with
+the men of the bivouac, as they had been through the day with the
+detachment from the sea-board. A few minutes were enough to draw out
+sheep-skins for them to lie upon, a skin of wine for their thirst, a
+bunch of raisins and some oat-cakes for their hunger; a few minutes more
+had told the news which each party asked from the other; and then these
+sons of the sea and these war-bronzed Philistines were as much at ease
+with each other as if they had served under the same sky for years.
+
+"We were listening to music," said the old chief, "when you came up.
+Some of our young men have gone up, indeed, to the picket yonder, to
+hear the harper sing, whose voice you catch sometimes, when we are not
+speaking."
+
+"You find the Muses in the midst of arms, then," said one of the young
+Ionians.
+
+"Muses?" said the old Philistine, laughing. "That sounds like you
+Greeks. Ah! sir, in our rocks here we have few enough Muses, but those
+who carry these lances, or teach us how to trade with the islands for
+tin."
+
+"That's not quite fair," cried another. "The youngsters who are gone
+sing well; and one of them has a harp I should be glad you should see.
+He made it himself from a gnarled olive-root." And he turned to look for
+it.
+
+"You'll not find it in the tent: the boy took it with him. They hoped
+the Ziklag minstrel might ask them to sing, I suppose."
+
+"A harp of olive-wood," said the Ionian, "seems Muse-born and
+Pallas-blessed."
+
+And, as he spoke, one of the new-comers of the Philistines leaned over,
+and whispered to the chief: "He is a bard himself, and we made him
+promise to sing to us. I brought his harp with me that he might cheer up
+our bivouac. Pray, do you ask him."
+
+The old chief needed no persuasion; and the eyes of the whole force
+brightened as they found they had a minstrel "of their own" now, when
+the old man pressed the young Ionian courteously to let them hear him:
+"I told you, sir, that we had no Muses of our own; but we welcome all
+the more those who come to us from over seas."
+
+Homer smiled; for it was Homer whom he spoke to,--Homer still in the
+freshness of his unblinded youth. He took the harp which the young
+Philistine handed to him, thrummed upon its chords, and as he tuned them
+said: "I have no harp of olive-wood; we cut this out, it was years ago,
+from an old oleander in the marshes behind Colophon. What will you hear,
+gentlemen?"
+
+"The poet chooses for himself," said the courtly old captain.
+
+"Let me sing you, then, of _the Olive Harp_"; and he struck the chords
+in a gentle, quieting harmony, which attuned itself to his own spirit,
+pleased as he was to find music and harmony and the olive of peace in
+the midst of the rough bivouac, where he had come up to look for war.
+But he was destined to be disappointed. Just as his prelude closed, one
+of the young soldiers turned upon his elbow, and whispered
+contemptuously to his neighbor: "Always _olives_, always _peace_: that's
+all your music's good for!"
+
+The boy spoke too loud, and Homer caught the discontented tone and words
+with an ear quicker than the speaker had given him credit for. He ended
+the prelude with a sudden crash on the strings, and said shortly, "And
+what is better to sing of than the olive?"
+
+The more courteous Philistines looked sternly on the young soldier; but
+he had gone too far to be frightened, and he flashed back: "War is
+better. My broadsword is better. If I could sing, I would sing to your
+Ares; we call him Mars!"
+
+Homer smiled gravely. "Let it be so," said he; and, in a lower tone, to
+the captain, who was troubled at the breach of courtesy, he added, "Let
+the boy see what war and Mars are for."
+
+He struck another prelude and began. Then was it that Homer composed his
+"Hymn to Mars." In wild measure, and impetuous, he swept along through
+the list of Mars's titles and attributes; then his key changed, and his
+hearers listened more intently, more solemnly, as in a graver strain,
+with slower music, and an almost awed dignity of voice, the bard went
+on.--
+
+            "Helper of mortals, hear!
+             As thy fires give
+        The present boldnesses that strive
+             In youth for honor;
+    So would I likewise wish to have the power
+      To keep off from my head thy bitter hour,
+    And quench the false fire of my soul's low kind,
+    By the fit ruling of my highest mind I
+          Control that sting of wealth
+    That stirs me on still to the horrid scath
+          Of hideous battle!
+
+    "Do thou, O ever blessed! give me still
+    Presence of mind to put in act my will,
+          Whate'er the occasion be;
+    And so to live, unforced by any fear,
+    Beneath those laws of peace, that never are
+    Affected with pollutions popular
+          Of unjust injury,
+    As to bear safe the burden of hard fates,
+    Of foes inflexive, and inhuman hates!"
+
+The tones died away; the company was hushed for a moment; and the old
+chief then said gravely to his petulant follower, "That is what _men_
+fight for, boy." But the boy did not need the counsel. Homer's manner,
+his voice, the music itself, the spirit of the song, as much as the
+words, had overcome him; and the boasting soldier was covering his tears
+with his hands.
+
+Homer felt at once (the prince of gentlemen he) that the little
+outbreak, and the rebuke of it, had jarred the ease of their unexpected
+meeting. How blessed is the presence of mind with which the musician of
+real genius passes from song to song, "whate'er the occasion be!" With
+the ease of genius he changed the tone of his melody again, and sang his
+own hymn, "To Earth, the Mother of all."
+
+The triumphant strain is one which harmonizes with every sentiment; and
+he commanded instantly the rapt attention of the circle. So engrossed
+was he, that he did not seem to observe, as he sang, an addition to
+their company of some soldiers from above in the valley, just _as_ he
+entered on the passage:--
+
+             "Happy, then, are they
+        Whom thou, O great in reverence!
+    Are bent to honor. They shall all things find
+    In all abundance! All their pastures yield
+    Herds in all plenty. All their roofs are filled
+               With rich possessions.
+      High happiness and wealth attend them,
+      While, with laws well-ordered, they
+      Cities of happy households sway;
+    And their sons exult in the pleasure of youth,
+    And their daughters dance with the flower-decked girls,
+    Who play among the flowers of summer!
+    Such are the honors thy full hands divide;
+    Mother of Gods and starry Heaven's bride!"[A]
+
+A buzz of pleasure and a smile ran round the circle, in which the
+new-comers joined. They were the soldiers who had been to hear and join
+the music at the Carmel-men's post. The tones of Homer's harp had
+tempted them to return; and they had brought with them the Hebrew
+minstrel, to whom they had been listening. It was the outlaw David, of
+Bethlehem Ephrata.
+
+David had listened to Homer more intently than any one; and, as the
+pleased applause subsided, the eyes of the circle gathered upon him, and
+the manner of all showed that they expected him, in minstrel-fashion, to
+take up the same strain.
+
+He accepted the implied invitation, played a short prelude, and taking
+Homer's suggestion of topic, sang in parallel with it:--
+
+    "I will sing a new song unto thee, O God!
+    Upon psaltery and harp will I sing praise to thee.
+    Thou art He that giveth salvation to kings,
+    That delivereth David, thy servant, from the sword.
+    Rid me and save me from those who speak vanity,
+    Whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood,--
+    That our sons may be as plants in fresh youth;
+    That our daughters may be as corner-stones,--
+    The polished stones of our palaces;
+    That our garners may be full with all manner of store;
+    That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in the
+        way;
+    That there may be no cry nor complaint in our streets
+    Happy is the people that is in such a case;
+    Yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord!"
+
+The melody was triumphant; and the enthusiastic manner yet more so. The
+Philistines listened delighted,--too careless of religion, they, indeed
+not to be catholic in presence of religious enthusiasm; and Homer wore
+the exalted expression which his face seldom wore. For the first time
+since his childhood, Homer felt that he was not alone in the world!
+
+Who shall venture to tell what passed between the two minstrels, when
+Homer, leaving his couch, crossed the circle at once, flung himself on
+the ground by David's side, gave him his hand; when they looked each
+other in the face, and sank down into the rapid murmuring of talk, which
+constant gesture illustrated, but did not fully explain to the rough men
+around them? They respected the poets' colloquy for a while; but then,
+eager again to hear one harp or the other, they persuaded one of the
+Ionian sailors to ask Homer again to sing to them.
+
+It was hard to persuade Homer. He shook his head, and turned back to the
+soldier-poet.
+
+"What should _I_ sing?" he said.
+
+They did not enter into his notion: hearers will not always. And so,
+taking his question literally, they replied, "Sing? Sing us of the
+snow-storm, the storm of stones, of which you sang at noon."
+
+Poor Homer! It was easier to do it than to be pressed to do it; and he
+struck his harp again:--
+
+    "It was as when, some wintry day, to men
+      Jove would, in might, his sharp artillery show;
+    He wills his winds to sleep, and over plain
+      And mountains pours, in countless flakes, his snow,
+    Deep it conceals the rocky cliffs and hills,
+      Then covers all the blooming meadows o'er,
+    All the rich monuments of mortals' skill,
+      All ports and rocks that break the ocean-shore
+    Rock, haven, plain, are buried by its fall;
+    But the near wave, unchanging, drinks it all.
+    So while these stony tempests veil the skies,
+    While this on Greeks, and that on Trojans flies,
+    The walls unchanged above the clamor rise."[B]
+
+The men looked round upon David, whose expression, as he returned the
+glance, showed that he had enjoyed the fragment as well as they. But
+when they still looked expectant, he did not decline the unspoken
+invitation; but, taking Homer's harp, sang, as if the words were
+familiar to him:--
+
+    "He giveth snow like wool;
+    He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes;
+    He casteth forth his ice like morsels;
+    Who can stand before his cold?
+    He sendeth forth his word, and melteth them;
+    He causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow."
+
+"Always this '_He_,'" said one of the young soldiers to another.
+
+"Yes," he replied; "and it was so in the beginning of the evening, when
+we were above there."
+
+"There is a strange difference between the two men, though the one plays
+as well as the other, and the Greek speaks with quite as little foreign
+accent as the Jew, and their subjects are the same."
+
+"Yes," said the young Philistine harper; "if the Greek should sing one
+of the Hebrew's songs, you would know he had borrowed it, in a moment."
+
+"And so, if it were the other way."
+
+"Of course," said their old captain, joining in this conversation.
+"Homer, if you call him so, sings the thing made: David sings the maker.
+Or, rather, Homer thinks of the thing made: David thinks of the maker,
+whatever they sing."
+
+"I was going to say that Homer would sing of cities; and David, of the
+life in them."
+
+"It is not what they say so much, as the way they look at it. The Greek
+sees the outside,--the beauty of the thing; the Hebrew--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+For David and his new friend had been talking too. Homer had told him of
+the storm at sea they met a few days before; and David, I think, had
+spoken of a mountain-tornado, as he met it years before. In the
+excitement of his narrative he struck the harp, which was still in his
+hand, and sung:--
+
+    "Then the earth shook and trembled,
+    The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken,
+        Because He was wroth;
+    There went up a smoke out of his nostrils,
+    And fire out of his mouth devoured;
+        It burned with living coal.
+      He bowed the heavens also, and came down,
+    And darkness was under his feet;
+    He rode upon a cherub and did fly,
+    Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.
+    He made darkness his resting-place,
+    His pavilion were dark waters and clouds of the skies;
+    At the brightness before him his clouds passed by,
+      Hail-stones and coals of fire.
+    The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
+    And the highest gave his voice;
+      Hail-stones and coals of fire.
+    Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them,
+    And he shot out his lightnings, and discomfited them.
+      Then the channels of waters were seen,
+      And the foundations of the world were made known,
+        At thy rebuke, O Lord!
+      At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.
+        He sent from above, he took me,
+        He drew me out of many waters."
+
+"Mine were but a few verses," said Homer. "I am more than repaid by
+yours. Imagine Neptune, our sea-god, looking on a battle:--
+
+    "There he sat high, retired from the seas;
+    There looked with pity on his Grecians beaten;
+    There burned with rage at the god-king who slew them.
+    Then he rushed forward from the rugged mountains,
+         Quickly descending;
+    He bent the forests also as he came down,
+    And the high cliffs shook under his feet.
+       Three times he trod upon them,
+    And with his fourth step reached the home he sought for.
+
+    "There was his palace, in the deep waters of the seas,
+    Shining with gold, and builded forever.
+    There he yoked him his swift-footed horses;
+    Their hoofs are brazen, and their manes are golden.
+       He binds them with golden thongs,
+       He seizes his golden goad,
+    He mounts upon his chariot, and doth fly:
+    Yes! he drives them forth into the waves!
+    And the whales rise under him from the depths,
+        For they know he is their king;
+    And the glad sea is divided into parts,
+    That his steeds may fly along quickly;
+    And his brazen axle passes dry between the waves,
+    So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians."[C]
+
+And the poets sank again into talk.
+
+"You see it," said the old Philistine. "He paints the picture. David
+sings the life of the picture."
+
+"Yes: Homer sees what he sings; David feels his song."
+
+"Homer's is perfect in its description."
+
+"Yes; but for life, for the soul of the description, you need the
+Hebrew."
+
+"Homer might be blind; and, with that fancy and word-painting power of
+his, and his study of everything new, he would paint pictures as he
+sang, though unseen."
+
+"Yes," said another; "but David--" And he paused.
+
+"But David?" asked the chief.
+
+"I was going to say that he might be blind, deaf, imprisoned, exiled,
+sick, or all alone, and that yet he would never know he was alone;
+feeling as he does, as he must to sing so, of the presence of this Lord
+of his!"
+
+"He does not think of a snow-flake, but as sent from him."
+
+"While the snow-flake is reminding Homer of that hard, worrying,
+slinging work of battle. He must have seen fight himself."
+
+They were hushed again. For, though they no longer dared ask the poets
+to sing to them,--so engrossed were they in each other's society,--the
+soldiers were hardly losers from this modest courtesy. For the poets
+were constantly arousing each other to strike a chord, or to sing some
+snatch of remembered song. And so it was that Homer, _àpropos_ of I do
+not know what, sang in a sad tone:--
+
+    "Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
+    Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
+    Another race the following spring supplies;
+    They fall successive, and successive rise.
+    So generations in their course decay,
+    So flourish these, when those have passed away."[D]
+
+David waited for a change in the strain; but Homer stopped. The young
+Hebrew asked him to go on; but Homer said that the passage which
+followed was mere narrative, from a long narrative poem. David looked
+surprised that his new friend had not pointed a moral as he sang; and
+said simply, "We sing that thus:--
+
+    "As for man, his days are as grass;
+    As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth;
+    For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone,
+    And the place thereof shall know it no more.
+         But the mercy of the Lord
+         Is from everlasting to everlasting
+            Of them that fear him;
+    And his righteousness
+        Unto children's children,
+          To such as keep his covenant,
+    As remember his commandments to do them!"
+
+Homer's face flashed delighted. "I, like you, 'keep his covenant,'" he
+cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands, he
+sang, in clear tone:--
+
+    "Thou bid'st me birds obey;--I scorn their flight,
+    If on the left they rise, or on the right!
+    Heed them who may, the will of Jove I own,
+    Who mortals and immortals rules alone!"[E]
+
+"That is more in David's key," said the young Philistine harper, seeing
+that the poets had fallen to talk together again. "But how would it
+sound in one of the hymns on one of our feast-days?"
+
+    "Who mortals and immortals rules alone."
+
+"How, indeed?" cried one of his young companions. "There would be more
+sense in what the priests say and sing, if each were not quarrelling for
+his own,--Dagon against Astarte, and Astarte against Dagon."
+
+The old captain bent over, that the poets might not hear him, and
+whispered: "There it is that the Hebrews have so much more heart than we
+in such things. Miserable fellows though they are, so many of them, yet,
+when I have gone through their whole land with the caravans, the chances
+have been that any serious-minded man spoke of no God but this '_He_'
+of David's."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"They do not know themselves, I believe."
+
+"Well, as I said an hour ago, God's man or Dagon's man,--for those are
+good names enough for me,--I care little; but I should like to sing as
+that young fellow does."
+
+"My boy," said the old man, "have not you heard him enough to see that
+it is not _he_ that sings, near as much as this love of his for a Spirit
+he does not name? It is that spirited heart of his that sings."
+
+"_You_ sing like him? Find his life, boy; and perhaps it may sing for
+you."
+
+"We should be more manly men, if he sang to us every night."
+
+"Or if the other did," said an Ionian sailor.
+
+"Yes," said the chief. "And yet, I think, if your countryman sang every
+night to me, he would make me want the other. Whether David's singing
+would send me to his, I do not feel sure. But how silly to compare them!
+As well compare the temple in Accho with the roar of a whirlwind--"
+
+"Or the point of my lance with the flight of an eagle. The men are in
+two worlds."
+
+"O, no! that is saying too much. You said that one could paint
+pictures--"
+
+"--Into which the other puts life. Yes, I did say so. We are fortunate
+that we have them together."
+
+"For this man sings of men quite as well as the other does; and to have
+the other sing of God--'
+
+"--Why, it completes the song. Between them they bring the two worlds
+together."
+
+"He bows the heavens, and comes down," said the boy of the olive-harp,
+trying to hum David's air.
+
+"Let us ask them--"
+
+And just then there rang along the valley the sound of a distant
+conch-shell. The soldiers groaned, roused up, and each looked for his
+own side-arms and his own skin.
+
+But the poets talked on unheeding.
+
+The old chief knocked down a stack of lances; but the crash did not
+rouse them. He was obliged himself to interrupt their eager converse.
+
+"I am sorry to break in; but the night-horn has sounded to rest, and the
+guard will be round to inspect the posts. I am sorry to hurry you away,
+sir," he said to David.
+
+David thanked him courteously.
+
+"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest," said Homer, with a smile.
+
+"We will all meet to-morrow. And may to-night's dreams be good omens!"
+
+"If we dream at all," said Homer again:--
+
+    "Without a sign his sword the brave man draws,
+    And asks no omen but his country's cause."
+
+They were all standing together, as he made this careless reply to the
+captain; and one of the young men drew him aside, and whispered that
+David was in arms against his country.
+
+Homer was troubled that he had spoken as he did, But the young Jew
+looked little as if he needed sympathy. He saw the doubt and regret
+which hung over their kindly faces; told them not to fear for him;
+singing, as he bade them good night, and with one of the Carmel-men
+walked home to his own outpost:--
+
+    "The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion,
+    The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the bear,
+      He will deliver me."
+
+And he smiled to think how his Carmelite companion would start, if he
+knew when first he used those words.
+
+So they parted, as men who should meet on the morrow.
+
+But God disposes.
+
+David had left to-morrow's dangers for to-morrow to care for. It seemed
+to promise him that he must be in arms against Saul. But, unlike us in
+our eagerness to anticipate our conflicts of duty, David _waited_.
+
+And the Lord delivered him. While they were singing by the brookside,
+the proud noblemen of the Philistine army had forced an interview with
+their king; and, in true native Philistine arrogance, insisted that
+"this Hebrew" and his men should be sent away.
+
+With the light of morning the king sent for the minstrel, and
+courteously dismissed him, because "the princes of the Philistines have
+said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.'"
+
+So David marched his men to Ziklag.
+
+And David and Homer never met on earth again.
+
+    NOTE.--This will be a proper place to print the following note,
+    which I was obliged to write to a second cousin of Miss Dryasdust
+    after she had read the MS. of the article above:--
+
+    "DEAR MADAM:--I thank you for your kind suggestion, in returning
+    my paper, that it involves a piece of impossible history. You
+    inform me, that, according to the nomenclatured formulas and
+    homophonic analogies of Professor Gouraud, of
+    never-to-be-forgotten memory, "A NEEDLE is less useful for curing
+    a DEAF HEAD, than for putting ear-rings into a _Miss's
+    lily-ears_"; and that this shows that the second king of Judah,
+    named David (or Deaf-head) began to reign in 1055 B.C., and died
+    1040 B.C.'; and further, that, according to the same authority,
+    '_Homer flourished_ when the Greeks were fond of his POETRY';
+    which, being interpreted, signifies that he flourished in 914
+    B.C., and, consequently, could have had no more to do with David
+    than to plant ivy over his grave, in some of his voyages to
+    Phoenicia.
+
+    "I thank you for the suggestion. I knew the unforgetting
+    professor; and I do not doubt that he remembered David and Homer
+    as his near friends. But, of course, to such a memory, a century
+    or two might easily slip aside.
+
+    "Now, did you look up Clement? And did you not forget the
+    Arundelian Marbles? For, if you will take the long estimates, you
+    will find that some folks think Homer lived as long ago as the
+    year 1150, and some that it was as 'short ago' as 850. And some
+    set David as long ago as 1170, and some bring him down to a
+    hundred and fifty years later. These are the long measures and the
+    short measures. So the long and short of it is, that you can keep
+    the two poets 320 years apart, while I have rather more than a
+    century which I can select any night of, for a bivouac scene, in
+    which to bring them together. Believe me, my dear Miss D., always
+    yours, &c.
+
+    "Confess that you forgot the Arundelian Marbles!"
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUTH AMERICAN EDITOR
+
+
+[I am tempted to include this little burlesque in this collection simply
+in memory of the Boston Miscellany, the magazine in which it was
+published, which won for itself a brilliant reputation in its short
+career. There was not a large staff of writers for the Miscellany, but
+many of the names then unknown have since won distinction. To quote them
+in the accidental order in which I find them in the table of contents,
+where they are arranged by the alphabetical order of the several papers,
+the Miscellany contributors were Edward Everett, George Lunt, Nathan
+Hale, Jr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, N.P. Willis, W.W. Story, J.R. Lowell,
+C.N. Emerson, Alexander H. Everett, Sarah P. Hale, W.A. Jones, Cornelius
+Matthews, Mrs. Kirkland, J.W. Ingraham, H.T. Tuckerman, Evart A.
+Duyckinck, Francis A. Durivage, Mrs. J. Webb, Charles F. Powell, Charles
+W. Storey, Lucretia P. Hale, Charles F. Briggs, William E. Channing,
+Charles Lanman, G.H. Hastings, and Elizabeth B. Barrett, now Mrs.
+Browning, some of whose earliest poems were published in this magazine.
+These are all the contributors whose names appear, excepting the writers
+of a few verses. They furnished nine tenths of the contents of the
+magazine. The two Everetts, Powell, William Story, and my brother, who
+was the editor, were the principal contributors. And I am tempted to say
+that I think they all put some of their best work upon this magazine.
+
+The misfortune of the Miscellany, I suppose, was that its publishers had
+no capital. They had to resort to the claptraps of fashion-plates and
+other engravings, in the hope of forcing an immediate sale upon persons
+who, caring for fashion-plates, did not care for the literary character
+of the enterprise. It gave a very happy escape-pipe, however, for the
+high spirits of some of us who had just left college, and, through my
+brother's kindness, I was sometimes permitted to contribute to the
+journal. In memory of those early days of authorship, I select "The
+South American Editor" to publish here. For the benefit of the New York
+Observer, I will state that the story is not true. And lest any should
+complain that it advocates elopements, I beg to observe, in the
+seriousness of mature life, that the proposed elopement did not succeed,
+and that the parties who proposed it are represented as having no
+guardians or keepers but themselves. The article was first published in
+1842.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is now more than six years since I received the following letter from
+an old classmate of mine, Harry Barry, who had been studying divinity,
+and was then a settled minister. It was an answer to a communication I
+had sent him the week before.
+
+    "TOPSHAM, R.I. January 22, 1836.
+
+    "To say the truth, my dear George, your letter startled me a
+    little. To think that I, scarcely six months settled in the
+    profession, should be admitted so far into the romance of it as to
+    unite forever two young runaways like yourself and Miss Julia
+    What's-her-name is at least curious. But, to give you your due,
+    you have made a strong case of it, and as Miss ---- (what is her
+    name, I have not yours at hand) is not under any real
+    guardianship, I do not see but I am perfectly justified in
+    complying with your rather odd request. You see I make a
+    conscientious matter of it.
+
+    "Write me word when it shall be, and I will be sure to be ready.
+    Jane is of course in my counsels, and she will make your little
+    wife feel as much at home as in her father's parlor. Trust us for
+    secrecy.
+
+    "I met her last week--"
+
+But the rest of the letter has nothing to do with the story.
+
+The elopement alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so
+high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly
+necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a
+pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long
+yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and
+which he was sometimes disposed to abuse. He had declared in the most
+ingenuous manner that she should never marry with his consent any man of
+less fortune than her own would be; and on his consent rested the
+prospect of her inheriting his property.
+
+Julia and I, however, care little for money now, we cared still less
+then; and her own little property and my own little salary made us
+esteem ourselves entirely independent of the old gentleman and his will.
+
+His intention respecting the poor girl's marriage was thundered in her
+ears at least once a week, so that we both knew that I had no need to
+make court to him, indeed, I had never seen him, always having met her
+in walking, or in the evening at party, spectacle, concert, or lecture.
+He had lately been more domineering than usual, and I had but little
+difficulty in persuading the dear girl to let me write to Harry Barry,
+to make the arrangement to which he assented in the letter which I have
+copied above. The reasoning which I pressed upon her is obvious. We
+loved each other,--the old gentleman could not help that; and as he
+managed to make us very uncomfortable in Boston, in the existing state
+of affairs, we naturally came to the conclusion that the sooner we
+changed that state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we
+supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it
+would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of
+maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's part, we
+outvoted him.
+
+I have said that I had no fortune to enable me to come near the old
+gentleman's _beau ideal_ of a grandson-in-law. I was then living on my
+salary as a South American editor. Does the reader know what that is?
+The South American editor of a newspaper has the uncontrolled charge of
+its South American news. Read any important commercial paper for a
+month, and at the end of it tell me if you have any clear conception of
+the condition of the various republics (!) of South America. If you
+have, it is because that journal employs an individual for the sole
+purpose of setting them in the clearest order before you, and that
+individual is its South American editor. The general-news editor of the
+paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all
+the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he
+does, he fails. It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons,
+that any American news office which has a strong regard for the
+consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ
+some person competent to take the charge which I held in the
+establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I am
+speaking. Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its "South
+American man"; this being my only employment, excepting that by a
+special agreement, in consideration of an addition to my salary, I was
+engaged to attend to the news from St. Domingo, Guatemala, and
+Mexico.[F]
+
+Monday afternoon, just a fortnight after I received Harry Barry's
+letter, in taking my afternoon walk round the Common, I happened to meet
+Julia. I always walked in the same direction when I was alone. Julia
+always preferred to go the other way; it was the only thing in which we
+differed. When we were together I always went her way of course, and
+liked it best.
+
+I had told her, long before, all about Harry's letter, and the dear girl
+in this walk, after a little blushing and sighing, and half faltering
+and half hesitating and feeling uncertain, yielded to my last and
+warmest persuasions, and agreed to go to Mrs. Pollexfen's ball that
+evening, ready to leave it with me in my buggy sleigh, for a three
+hours' ride to Topsham, where we both knew Harry would be waiting for
+us. I do not know how she managed to get through tea that evening with
+her lion of a grandfather, for she could not then cover her tearful eyes
+with a veil as she did through the last half of our walk together. I
+know that I got through my tea and such like ordinary affairs by
+skipping them. I made all my arrangements, bade Gage and Streeter be
+ready with the sleigh at my lodgings (fortunately only two doors from
+Mrs. Pollexfen's) at half-past nine o'clock, and was the highest
+spirited of men when, on returning to those lodgings myself at eight
+o'clock, I found the following missives from the Argus office, which had
+been accumulating through the afternoon.
+
+    No. 1.
+
+    "4 o'clock, P.M.
+
+    "DEAR SIR:--The southern mail, just in, brings Buenos Ayres papers
+    six days later, by the Medora, at Baltimore.
+
+    "In haste, J.C."
+
+(Mr. C. was the gentleman who opened the newspapers, and arranged the
+deaths and marriages; he always kindly sent for me when I was out of the
+way.)
+
+    No. 2.
+
+    "5 o'clock, P.M.
+
+    "DEAR SIR:--The U.S. ship Preble is in at Portsmouth; latest from
+    Valparaiso. The mail is not sorted.
+
+    "Yours, J.D."
+
+(Mr. D. arranged the ship news for the Argus.)
+
+    No. 3.
+
+    "6 o'clock, p.m.
+
+    "DEAR SIR:--I boarded, this morning, off Cape Cod, the
+    Blunderhead, from Carthagena, and have a week's later papers.
+
+    "Truly yours, J.E."
+
+(Mr. E. was the enterprising commodore of our news-boats.)
+
+    No. 4.
+
+    "6-1/4 o'clock, P.M.
+
+    "DEAR SIR:--I have just opened accidentally the enclosed letter,
+    from our correspondent at Panama. You will see that it bears a New
+    Orleans post-mark. I hope it may prove exclusive.
+
+    "Yours, J.F."
+
+(Mr. F. was general editor of the Argus.)
+
+    No. 5.
+
+    "6-1/2 o'clock, P.M.
+
+    "DEAR SIR:--A seaman, who appears to be an intelligent man, has
+    arrived this morning at New Bedford, and says he has later news of
+    the rebellion in Ecuador than any published. The Rosina (his
+    vessel) brought no papers. I bade him call at your room at eight
+    o'clock, which he promised to do.
+
+    "Truly yours, J.G."
+
+(Mr. G. was clerk in the Argus counting-room.)
+
+    No 6.
+
+    "7-1/2 o'clock, P.M.
+
+    "Dear Sir:--The papers by the Ville de Lyon, from Havre, which I
+    have just received, mention the reported escape of M. Bonpland
+    from Paraguay, the presumed death of Dr. Francia, the probable
+    overthrow of the government, the possible establishment of a
+    republic, and a great deal more than I understand in the least.
+
+    "These papers had not come to hand when I wrote you this
+    afternoon. I have left them on your desk at the office.
+
+    "In haste, J.F."
+
+I was taken all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had
+spent the afternoon in drilling Singelton, the kindest of friends, as to
+what he should do in any probable contingency of news of the next
+forty-eight hours, for I did not intend to be absent on a wedding tour
+even longer than that time; but I felt that Singleton was entirely
+unequal to such a storm of intelligence as this; and, as I hurried down
+to the office, my chief sensation was that of gratitude that the cloud
+had broken before I was out of the way; for I knew I could do a great
+deal in an hour, and I had faith that I might slur over my digest as
+quickly as possible, and be at Mrs. Pollexfen's within the time
+arranged.
+
+I rushed into the office in that state of zeal in which a man may do
+anything in almost no time. But first, I had to go into the
+conversation-room, and get the oral news from my sailor; then Mr. H.;
+from one of the little news-boats, came to me in high glee, with some
+Venezuela Gazettes, which he had just extorted from a skipper, who, with
+great plausibility, told him that he knew his vessel had brought no
+news, for she never had before. (N.B. In this instance she was the only
+vessel to sail, after a three months' blockade.) And then I had handed
+to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from
+Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full
+materials, I sprang to work--read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder;
+guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble,
+scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which
+followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat
+around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, and
+the police and municipal reporters immediately after him, screwed out
+their lamps and went home; then the editor himself, then the legislative
+reporters, then the commercial editors, then the ship-news conductor,
+and left me alone.
+
+I envied them that they got through so much earlier than usual, but
+scratched on, only interrupted by the compositors coming in for the
+pages of my copy as I finished them; and finally, having made my last
+translation from the last _Boletin Extraordinario_, sprang up, shouting,
+"Now for Mrs. P.'s," and looked at my watch. It was half past one![G] I
+thought of course it had stopped,--no; and my last manuscript page was
+numbered twenty-eight! Had I been writing there five hours? Yes!
+
+Reader, when you are an editor, with a continent's explosions to
+describe, you will understand how one may be unconscious of the passage
+of time.
+
+I walked home, sad at heart. There was no light in all Mr. Wentworth's
+house; there was none in any of Mrs. Pollexfen's windows;[H] and the
+last carriage of her last relation had left her door. I stumbled up
+stairs in the dark, and threw myself on my bed. What should I say, what
+could I say, to Julia? Thus pondering, I fell asleep.
+
+If I were writing a novel, I should say that, at a late hour the next
+day, I listlessly drew aside the azure curtains of my couch, and
+languidly rang a silver bell which stood on my dressing-table, and
+received from a page dressed in an Oriental costume the notes and
+letters which had been left for me since morning, and the newspapers of
+the day.
+
+I am not writing a novel.
+
+The next morning, about ten o'clock, I arose and went down to
+breakfast. As I sat at the littered table which every one else had left,
+dreading to attack my cold coffee and toast, I caught sight of the
+morning papers, and received some little consolation from them. There
+was the Argus with its three columns and a half of "Important from South
+America," while none of the other papers had a square of any
+intelligibility excepting what they had copied from the Argus the day
+before. I felt a grim smile creeping over my face as I observed this
+signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to take a sip of the black
+broth as I glanced down my own article to see if there were any glaring
+misprints in it. Before I took the second sip, however, a loud peal at
+the door-bell announced a stranger, and, immediately after, a note was
+brought in for me which I knew was in Julia's hand-writing.
+
+    "DEAR GEORGE:--Don't be angry; it was not my fault, really it was
+    not. Grandfather came home just as I was leaving last night, and
+    was so angry, and said I should not go to the party, and I had to
+    sit with him all the evening. Do write to me or let me see you; do
+    something--"
+
+What a load that note took off my mind! And yet, what must the poor girl
+have suffered! Could the old man suspect? Singleton was true to me as
+steel, I knew. He could not have whispered,--nor Barry; out that Jane,
+Barry's wife. O woman! woman! what newsmongers they are! Here were Julia
+and I, made miserable for life, perhaps, merely that Jane Barry might
+have a good story to tell. What right had Barry to a wife? Not four
+years out of college, and hardly settled in his parish. To think that I
+had been fool enough to trust even him with the particulars of my
+all-important secret! But here I was again interrupted, coffee-cup still
+full, toast still untasted, by another missive.
+
+    "Tuesday morning.
+
+    "SIR:--I wish to see you this morning. Will you call upon me, or
+    appoint a time and place where I may meet you?
+
+    "Yours, JEDEDIAH WENTWORTH."
+
+    "Send word by the bearer."
+
+"Tell Mr. Wentworth I will call at his house at eleven o'clock."
+
+The cat was certainly out; Mrs. Barry had told, or some one else had,
+who I did not know and hardly cared. The scene was to come now, and I
+was almost glad of it. Poor Julia! what a time she must have had with
+the old bear!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At eleven o'clock I was ushered into Mr. Wentworth's sitting-room. Julia
+was there, but before I had even spoken to her the old gentleman came
+bustling across the room, with his "Mr. Hackmatack, I suppose"; and
+then followed a formal introduction between me and her, which both of us
+bore with the most praiseworthy fortitude and composure, neither
+evincing, even by a glance, that we had ever seen or heard of each other
+before. Here was another weight off my mind and Julia's. I had wronged
+poor Mrs. Barry. The secret was not out--what could he want? It very
+soon appeared.
+
+After a minute's discussion of the weather, the snow, and the
+thermometer, the old gentleman drew up his chair to mine, with "I think,
+sir, you are connected with the Argus office?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I am its South American editor.'
+
+"Yes!" roared the old man, in a sudden rage. "Sir, I wish South America
+was sunk in the depths of the sea!"
+
+"I am sure I do, sir," replied I, glancing at Julia, who did not,
+however, understand me. I had not fully passed out of my last night's
+distress.
+
+My sympathizing zeal soothed the old gentleman a little, and he said
+more coolly, in an undertone: "Well, sir, you are well informed, no
+doubt; tell me, in strict secrecy, sir, between you and me, do you--do
+you place full credit--entire confidence in the intelligence in this
+morning's paper?"
+
+"Excuse me, sir; what paper do you allude to? Ah! the Argus, I see.
+Certainly, sir; I have not the least doubt that it is perfectly
+correct."
+
+"No doubt, sir! Do you mean to insult me?--Julia, I told you so; he
+says there is no doubt it is true. Tell me again there is some mistake,
+will you?" The poor girl had been trying to soothe him with the constant
+remark of uninformed people, that the newspapers are always in the
+wrong. He turned from her, and rose from his chair in a positive rage.
+She was half crying. I never saw her more distressed. What did all this
+mean? Were one, two, or all of us crazy?
+
+It soon appeared. After pacing the length of the room once or twice,
+Wentworth came up to me again, and, attempting to appear cool, said
+between his closed lips: "Do you say you have no doubt that Rio Janeiro
+is strictly blockaded?"
+
+"Not the slightest in the world," said I, trying to seem unconcerned.
+
+"Not the slightest, sir? What are you so impudent and cool about it for?
+Do you think you are talking of the opening of a rose-bud or the death
+of a mosquito? Have you no sympathy with the sufferings of a
+fellow-creature? Why, sir!" and the old man's teeth chattered as he
+spoke, "I have five cargoes of flour on their way to Rio, and their
+captains will--Damn it, sir, I shall lose the whole venture."
+
+The secret was out. The old fool had been sending flour to Rio, knowing
+as little of the state of affairs there as a child.
+
+"And do you really mean, sir," continued the old man, "that there is an
+embargo in force in Monte Video?"
+
+"Certainly, sir; but I'm very sorry for it."
+
+"Sorry for it! of course you are;--and that all foreigners are sent out
+of Buenos Ayres?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir. I wish--"
+
+"Who does not wish so? Why, sir, my corresponding friends there are half
+across the sea by this time. I wish Rosas was in--and that the Indians
+have risen near Maranham?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir."
+
+"Undoubtedly! I tell you, sir, I have two vessels waiting for cargoes of
+India-rubbers there, under a blunder-headed captain, who will do nothing
+he has not been bidden to,--obey his orders if he breaks his owners. You
+smile, sir? Why, I should have made thirty thousand dollars this winter,
+sir, by my India-rubbers, if we had not had this devilish mild, open
+weather, you and Miss Julia there have been praising so. But next winter
+must be a severe one, and with those India-rubbers I should have
+made--But now those Indians,--pshaw! And a revolution in Chili?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"No trade there! And in Venezuela?"
+
+"Yes, sir"
+
+"Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir! Sir, I am ruined. Say 'Yes,
+sir,' to that. I have thirteen vessels at this moment in the South
+American trade, sir; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Half of them will be
+taken by the piratical scoundrels; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Their
+insurance will not cover them; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. The other half
+will forfeit their cargoes, or sell them for next to nothing; say 'Yes,
+sir,' to that. I tell you I am a ruined man, and I wish the South
+America, and your daily Argus, and you--"
+
+Here the old gentleman's old-school breeding got the better of his rage,
+and he sank down in his arm-chair, and, bursting into tears, said:
+"Excuse me, sir,--excuse me, sir,--I am too warm."
+
+We all sat for a few moments in silence, but then I took my share of the
+conversation. I wish you could have seen the old man's face light up
+little by little, as I showed him that to a person who understood the
+politics and condition of the mercurial country with which he had
+ignorantly attempted to trade, his condition was not near so bad as he
+thought it; that though one port was blockaded, another was opened; that
+though one revolution thwarted him, a few weeks would show another which
+would favor him; that the goods which, as he saw, would be worthless at
+the port to which he had sent them, would be valuable elsewhere; that
+the vessels which would fail in securing the cargoes he had ordered
+could secure others; that the very revolutions and wars which troubled
+him would require in some instances large government purchases, perhaps
+large contracts for freight, possibly even for passage,--his vessels
+might be used for transports; that the very excitement of some
+districts might be made to turn to our advantage; that, in short, there
+were a thousand chances open to him which skilful agents could readily
+improve. I reminded him that a quick run in a clipper schooner could
+carry directions to half these skippers of his, to whom, with an
+infatuation which I could not and cannot conceive, he had left no
+discretion, and who indeed were to be pardoned if they could use none,
+seeing the tumult as they did with only half an eye. I talked to him for
+half an hour, and went into details to show that my plans were not
+impracticable. The old gentleman grew brighter and brighter, and Julia,
+as I saw, whenever I stole a glance across the room, felt happier and
+happier. The poor girl had had a hard time since he had first heard this
+news whispered the evening before.
+
+His difficulties were not over, however; for when I talked to him of the
+necessity of sending out one or two skilful agents immediately to take
+the personal superintendence of his complicated affairs, the old man
+sighed, and said he had no skilful agents to send.
+
+With his customary suspicion, he had no partners, and had never
+intrusted his clerks with any general insight into his business.
+Besides, he considered them all, like his captains, blunder-headed to
+the last degree. I believe it was an idea of Julia's, communicated to me
+in an eager, entreating glance, which induced me to propose myself as
+one of these confidential agents, and to be responsible for the other.
+I thought, as I spoke, of Singleton, to whom I knew I could explain my
+plans in full, and whose mercantile experience would make him a valuable
+coadjutor. The old gentleman accepted my offer eagerly. I told him that
+twenty-four hours were all I wanted to prepare myself. He immediately
+took measures for the charter of two little clipper schooners which lay
+in port then; and before two days were past, Singleton and I were on our
+voyage to South America. Imagine, if you can, how these two days were
+spent. Then, as now, I could prepare for any journey in twenty minutes,
+and of course I had no little time at my disposal for last words with
+Mr. and--Miss Wentworth. How I won on the old gentleman's heart in those
+two days! How he praised me to Julia, and then, in as natural affection,
+how he praised her to me! And how Julia and I smiled through our tears,
+when, in the last good-bys, he said he was too old to write or read any
+but business letters, and charged me and her to keep up a close
+correspondence, which on one side should tell all that I saw and did,
+and on the other hand remind me of all at home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have neither time nor room to give the details of that South American
+expedition. I have no right to. There were revolutions accomplished in
+those days without any object in the world's eyes; and, even in mine,
+only serving to sell certain cargoes of long cloths and flour. The
+details of those outbreaks now told would make some patriotic presidents
+tremble in their seats; and I have no right to betray confidence at
+whatever rate I purchased it. Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's
+were only obtaining the best information and communicating the most
+speedy instructions to Mr. Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move
+from port to port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none
+besides us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I
+travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first
+white man who ever passed through the mountain path of Xamaulipas, now
+so famous in all the Chilian picturesque annuals. I was carrying
+directions for some vessels which had gone round the Cape; and what a
+time Burrows and Wheatland and I had a week after, when we rode into the
+public square of Valparaiso shouting, "Muera la Constitucion,--Viva
+Libertad!" by our own unassisted lungs actually raising a rebellion,
+and, which was of more importance, a prohibition on foreign flour, while
+Bahamarra and his army were within a hundred miles of us. How those
+vessels came up the harbor, and how we unloaded them, knowing that at
+best our revolution could only last five days! But as I said, I must be
+careful, or I shall be telling other people's secrets.
+
+The result of that expedition was that those thirteen vessels all made
+good outward voyages, and all but one or two eventually made profitable
+home voyages. When I returned home, the old gentleman received me with
+open arms. I had rescued, as he said, a large share of that fortune
+which he valued so highly. To say the truth, I felt and feel that he had
+planned his voyages so blindly, that, without some wiser head than his,
+they would never have resulted in anything. They were his last, as they
+were almost his first, South American ventures. He returned to his old
+course of more methodical trading for the few remaining years of his
+life. They were, thank Heaven, the only taste of mercantile business
+which I ever had. Living as I did, in the very sunshine of Mr. Went
+worth's favor, I went through the amusing farce of paying my addresses
+to Julia in approved form, and in due time received the old gentleman's
+cordial assent to our union, and his blessing upon it. In six months
+after my return, we were married; the old man as happy as a king. He
+would have preferred a little that the ceremony should have been
+performed by Mr. B----, his friend and pastor, but readily assented to
+my wishes to call upon a dear and early friend of my own.
+
+Harry Barry came from Topsham and performed the ceremony, "assisted by
+Rev. Mr. B."
+
+G.H.
+
+ARGUS COTTAGE, April 1, 1842.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW, FACE TO FACE.
+
+A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH.
+
+
+[This essay was published in Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "A
+Thumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr.
+Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a few
+years earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life by
+Conybeare and Howson, now so well known, were made public. The
+chronology of my essay does not precisely agree with that of these
+distinguished scholars. But I make no attempt now either to recast the
+essay or to discuss the delicate and complicated questions which belong
+to the chronology of Paul's life or to that of Nero; for there is no
+question with regard to the leading facts. At the end of twenty years I
+may again express the wish that some master competent to the greatest
+themes might take the trial of Paul as the subject of a picture.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a Roman audience-chamber, the old civilization and the new
+civilization brought out, at the very birth of the new, their chosen
+champions.
+
+In that little scene, as in one of Rembrandt's thumb-nail studies for a
+great picture, the lights and shades are as distinct as they will ever
+be in the largest scene of history. The champions were perfect
+representatives of the parties. And any man, with the soul of a man,
+looking on, could have prophesied the issue of the great battle from the
+issue of that contest.
+
+The old civilization of the Roman Empire, just at that time, had reached
+a point which, in all those outward forms which strike the eye, would
+regard our times as mean indeed. It had palaces of marble, where even
+modern kings would build of brick with a marble front to catch the eye;
+it counted its armies by thousands, where we count ours by hundreds; it
+surmounted long colonnades with its exquisite statues, for which modern
+labor digs deep in ruined cities, because it cannot equal them from its
+own genius; it had roads, which are almost eternal, and which, for their
+purposes, show a luxury of wealth and labor that our boasted locomotion
+cannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enter
+the palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses which
+modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern times
+can only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled
+by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We
+have not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained this
+distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of
+power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And
+thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of
+the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into
+rest, after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had
+passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation
+arose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman
+subjects,--then the Empire was at its height of power, its
+centralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at the
+zenith of its success.
+
+At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first gray
+morning-light of the new civilization.
+
+At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber,
+contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long
+centuries.
+
+There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact
+representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with
+another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.
+
+Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates the
+old civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhood
+he has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under one
+head. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperor
+of the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of the
+world flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained in
+all elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful,
+luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the
+face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual
+countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine
+him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed
+in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression
+of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite
+licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman
+civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times
+will name as the lowest embodiment of meanness and cruelty! You are
+looking upon Nero!
+
+Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilization, its
+central power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this sketch
+of ours is the exact climax of the _moral_ results of the ancient
+civilization. We are to look at Nero just when he has returned to Rome
+from a Southern journey.[I] That journey had one object, which
+succeeded. To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. He
+has travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill his
+mother!
+
+We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero's
+mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all the
+beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is the
+Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty--and of lust. She is
+most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty of
+feature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whose
+daughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of sense alone, fit
+adornment of that external grandeur, of that old society.
+
+In the infancy of her son, this beautiful Agrippina consulted a troop of
+fortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he would live to
+be Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all the ecstasy of a
+mother's pride fused so strangely with all the excess of an ambitious
+woman's love of power, she cried in answer, "He may kill me, if only he
+rules Rome!"[J]
+
+She spoke her own fate in these words.
+
+Here is the account of it by Tacitus. Nero had made all the
+preparations; had arranged a barge, that of a sudden its deck might fall
+heavily upon those in the cabin, and crush them in an instant. He meant
+thus to give to the murder which he planned the aspect of an accident.
+To this fatal vessel he led Agrippina. He talked with her affectionately
+and gravely on the way; "and when they parted at the lakeside, with his
+old boyish familiarity he pressed her closely to his heart, either to
+conceal his purpose, or because the last sight of a mother, on the eve
+of death, touched even his cruel nature, and then bade her farewell."
+
+Just at the point upon the lake where he had directed, as the Empress
+sat in her cabin talking with her attendants, the treacherous deck was
+let fall upon them all. But the plot failed. She saw dead at her feet
+one of her favorites, crushed by the sudden blow. But she had escaped
+it. She saw that death awaited them all upon the vessel. The men around
+sprang forward, ready to do their master's bidding in a less clumsy and
+more certain way. But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprang
+from the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there,
+this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion,
+drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by
+crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those
+words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the
+Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated
+to the shore.
+
+Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could not
+stop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he sent a
+soldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was deserted
+even by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy, they put to
+death the daughter and the mother of a Cĉsar. And Nero only waits to
+look with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse, before he returns to
+resume his government at Rome.
+
+That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient civilization. It
+is complete in its centralizing power; it is complete in its external
+beauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden to the eye, with
+luxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all; but dust and ashes
+beneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head! It is corrupted at
+the heart! There is nothing firm!
+
+This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this very
+moment there is announced the first germ of the new civilization. In the
+very midst of this falsehood, there sounds one voice of truth; in the
+very arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to cleave him
+to the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He meets the
+congratulations of a senate, which thank him and the gods that he has
+murdered his own mother. With the agony of an undying conscience
+torturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turn
+the mob from despising him by the grandeur of their public
+entertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-of
+beasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actors
+rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, and
+that his people may forget him.
+
+At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform
+him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state
+trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the Emperor be
+there? May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lying
+courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress? If he chooses thus
+to postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other
+counsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy will
+be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The
+time comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by
+some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellors, and
+bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to
+these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment that
+we are to look upon him.
+
+He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with
+boyish debauchery; his young fore head worn with the premature sensual
+wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance.
+He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and
+forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in the
+prisoner.
+
+A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years.
+This soldier is a tried veteran of the Prĉtorian cohorts. He was
+selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for that
+purpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads that other
+through the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness which
+say he is no criminal to him. Long since, the criminal has been the
+guardian of his keeper. Long since, the keeper has cared for the
+prisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son's affection.
+
+They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye he
+glances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bade
+monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make
+the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The stately
+Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a
+subject's salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him. And when,
+then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the
+prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! You
+see Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero![K]
+
+Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In that
+judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we
+have also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, there
+stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his
+time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. We
+will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage
+had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world.
+This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when
+he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general
+administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was
+wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more
+to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young
+tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet
+Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality
+and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest
+of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their
+excellences, as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments.
+And yet all that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the
+baby-tyrant into the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a
+province he would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the
+murder of a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the
+ruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin
+of a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said
+he used all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of
+those men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time,
+he satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crime
+from public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared not
+order him to the right.
+
+But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained
+conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother,
+Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged him
+to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul had
+corresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero's
+presence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[L] When Paul
+arose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the new
+civilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there had
+been one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that that
+was a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that little
+hall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centuries
+would be acted out upon the larger stage.
+
+Faith on the one side, before expediency and cruelty on the other! Paul
+before Seneca and Nero! He was ready to address Nero, with the eloquence
+and vehemence which for years had been demanding utterance.
+
+He stood at length before the baby Cĉsar, to whose tribunal he had
+appealed from the provincial court of a doubting Festus and a trembling
+Agrippa.
+
+And who shall ask what words the vigorous Christian spoke to the dastard
+boy! Who that knows the eloquence which rung out on the ears of
+astonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense and the
+hecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the gabbling
+clamor of a wild mob at Jerusalem,--who will doubt the tone in which
+Paul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment before the man! The
+gilded dotard shrunk back from the home truths of the new, young,
+vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred legions was nothing before the
+God-commissioned prisoner.
+
+No; though at this audience all men forsook Paul, as he tells us; though
+not one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained at
+his side,--still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's minister.
+
+From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old in
+lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on this
+God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such
+uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of a
+dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive him
+forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Paul
+and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever.
+He does not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre of
+a mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity
+which Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the
+arena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the
+only captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of sturdy
+power!
+
+And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a great man
+who has detected his own meanness.
+
+We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and it
+is with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one or
+another pettiness. Seneca goes home to say: "This wild _Easterner_ has
+rebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him. He stood
+there, as I have wanted to stand, a man before a brute.
+
+"He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright,
+straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and
+as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am
+afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left
+undone. _What is the mystery of his power?_"
+
+Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The "Eastern mystery" was in
+presence before them, and they knew it not!
+
+What was the mystery of Paul's power?
+
+Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished the hope
+of long years. Those solemn words of his, "After that, I _must_ also see
+Rome," expressed the longing of years, whose object now, in part, at
+least, is gratified. He must see Rome!
+
+It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul has
+seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,--that he
+is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should pass
+first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. He knows
+that he is God's messenger to bear this mystery of life eternal from the
+one land to the other, and to unfold it there. And to-day has made real,
+in fact, this his inward confidence. To-day has put the seal of fact on
+that vision of his, years since, when he first left his Asiatic home. A
+prisoner in chains, still he has to-day seen the accomplishment of the
+vows, hopes, and resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famous
+from the night he spent there. There was another of these hours when God
+brings into one spot the acts which shall be the _argument_ of centuries
+of history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiatic
+journeys,--Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament, Eastern
+in his outward life, and Eastern in his faith,--to that narrow
+Hellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore madly
+up the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even love when it
+sought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs frowning eternal hate
+from shore to shore. Paul stood upon the Asian shore and looked across
+upon the Western. There were Macedonia and the hills of Greece, here
+Troas and the ruins of Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellespont
+has no voice but separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, it
+might be, on the tomb of Achilles, that night the "man of Macedonia"
+appears, and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt of
+Troy.
+
+"Come over _and help us._" Give us life, for we gave you death. Give us
+help for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly
+vision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon with the words of
+peace instead of war,--the Christian shepherd of the people, he carries
+to Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation instead of carnage, of
+charity instead of license. And he knows that to Europe it is the
+beginning of her new civilization, it in the dawn of her new warfare, of
+her new poetry, of her reign of heroes who are immortal.
+
+That _faith_ of his, now years old, has this day received its crowning
+victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may well
+stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and of license.
+
+And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved him
+in planning it and carrying it through, was the "Asian mystery." Ask
+what was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby Emperor, and
+abashed the baby Philosopher? What did he give the praise to, as he left
+that scene? What was the principle in action there, but faith in the new
+life, faith in the God who gave it!
+
+We do not wonder, as Seneca wondered, that such a man as Paul dared say
+anything to such a boy as Nero! The absolute courage of the new faith
+was the motive-power which forced it upon the world. Here were the
+sternest of morals driven forward with the most ultra bravery.
+
+Perfect faith gave perfect courage to the first witnesses. And there was
+the "mystery" of their victories.
+
+And so, in this case, when after a while Seneca again reminded Nero of
+his captive, poor Nero did not dare but meet him again. Yet, when he met
+him again in that same judgment-hall, he did not dare hear him long;
+and we may be sure that there were but few words before, with such
+affectation of dignity as he could summon, he bade them set the prisoner
+free.
+
+Paul free! The old had faced the new. Each had named its champion. And
+the new conquers!
+
+
+
+
+THE DOT AND LINE ALPHABET.
+
+
+[This sketch was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly for
+October, 1858, just at the time that the first Atlantic Cable, whose
+first prattle had been welcomed by the acclamations of a continent,
+gasped its last under the manipulations of De Sauty. It has since been
+copied by Mr. Prescott in his valuable hand-book of the electric
+telegraph.
+
+The war, which has taught us all so much, has given a brilliant
+illustration of the dot and line alphabet, wholly apart from the
+electric use of it, which will undoubtedly be often repeated. In the
+movements of our troops under General Foster in North Carolina, Dr. J.B.
+Upham of Boston, the distinguished medical director in that department,
+equally distinguished for the success with which he has led forward the
+musical education of New England, trained a corps of buglers to converse
+with each other by long and short bugle-notes, and thus to carry
+information with literal accuracy from point to point at any distance
+within which the tones of a bugle could be heard. It will readily be
+seen that there are many occasions in military affairs when such means
+of conversation might prove of inestimable value. Mr. Tuttle, the
+astronomer, on duty in the same campaign, made a similar arrangement
+with long and short flashes of light.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its name
+from the Atlantic Monthly, I read in the September number of that
+journal the revelations of an observer who was surprised to find that he
+had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations of the wire. I
+had the hope that he was about to explain to the public the more general
+use of this instrument,--which, with a stupid fatuity, the public has as
+yet failed to grasp. Because its signals have been first applied by
+means of electro-magnetism, and afterwards by means of the chemical
+power of electricity, the many-headed people refuses to avail itself, as
+it might do very easily, of the same signals for the simpler
+transmission of intelligence, whatever the power employed.
+
+The great invention of Mr. Morse is his register and alphabet. He
+himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception of
+the use of electricity as an errand-boy. Hundreds of people had thought
+of that and suggested it: but Morse was the first to give the errand-boy
+such a written message, that he could not lose it on the way, nor
+mistake it when he arrived. The public, eager to thank Morse, as he
+deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent. For this he
+probably cares very little; nor do I care more. But the public does not
+thank him for what he did originate,--this invaluable and simple
+alphabet. Now, as I use it myself in every detail of life, and see every
+hour how the public might use it, if it chose, I am really sorry for
+this negligence,--both on the score of his fame, and of general
+convenience.
+
+Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet
+reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the
+writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a
+space, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks .-- designate the
+letter A. The marks --... designate the letter B. All the other letters
+are designated in as simple a manner.
+
+Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life,
+(but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple
+alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. _Long_ and _short_
+make it all,--and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in
+marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be
+conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together. Only last
+night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at
+the Hammersmiths. To my amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play "The
+Fisher's Hornpipe," interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she
+could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin." Mrs.
+Wilberforce had never heard that opera,--indeed, had never heard of it.
+My angel-wife was surprised,--stood thrumming at the piano,--wondered
+she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant accord at all,--but
+checked herself in her effort, as soon as I observed that her long notes
+and short notes, in their tum-tee, tee,--tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant,
+"He's her brother." The conversation on her side turned from "The
+Butcher of Turin," and I had just time on the hint thus given me by Mrs.
+I. to pass a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs.
+Wilberforce, with all a sister's care, had rocked in his
+baby-cradle,--whom, but for my wife's long and short notes, I should
+have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of the day.
+
+You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the
+business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this Morse
+alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman. If our
+school committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before
+phonography or physiology, at school. I believe both these sciences now
+precede the old English alphabet.
+
+As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes
+dong, dong, dong,--dong, dong, dong, dong,--dong,--dong. Nobody has
+unlocked the church-door. I know that, for I am locked up in the vestry.
+The old tin sign, "In case of fire, the key will be found at the
+opposite house," has long since been taken down, and made into the nose
+of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes locked in. No one except
+me, and certainly I am not ringing the bell. No! But, thanks to Dr.
+Channing's Fire Alarm,[M] the bell is informing the South End that
+there is a fire in District Dong-dong-dong,--that is to say, District
+No. 3. Before I have explained to you so far, the "Eagle" engine, with a
+good deal of noise, has passed the house on its way to that fated
+district. An immense improvement this on the old system, when the
+engines radiated from their houses in every possible direction, and the
+fire was extinguished by the few machines whose lines of quest happened
+to cross each other at the particular place where the child had been
+building cob-houses out of lucifer-matches in a paper warehouse. Yes, it
+is a very great improvement. All those persons, like you and me, who
+have no property in District Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at
+ease;--and little need we think upon the mud above the knees of those
+who have property in that district and are running to look after it. But
+for them the improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot/or
+cold, or both, at the large District No. 3, to find that the
+lucifer-matches were half a mile away from your store,--and that your
+own private watchman, even, had not been waked by the working of the
+distant engines. Wet property holder, as you walk home, consider this.
+When you are next in the Common Council, vote an appropriation for
+applying Morse's alphabet of long and short to the bells. Then they can
+be made to sound intelligibly. Daung ding ding,--ding,--ding
+daung,--daung daung daung, and so on, will tell you as you wake in the
+night that it is Mr. B.'s store which is on fire, and not yours, or that
+it is yours and not his. This is not only a convenience to you and a
+relief to your wife and family, who will thus be spared your excursions
+to unavailable and unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated
+return,--it will be a great relief to the Fire Department. How placid
+the operations of a fire where none attend except on business! The
+various engines arrive, but no throng of distant citizens, men and boys,
+fearful of the destruction of their all. They have all roused on their
+pillows to learn that it is No. 530 Pearl Street which is in flames. All
+but the owner of No. 530 Pearl Street have dropped back to sleep. He
+alone has rapidly repaired to the scene. That is he, who stands in the
+uncrowded street with the Chief Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she
+plays away. His property destroyed, the engines retire,--he mentions the
+amount of his insurance to those persons who represent the daily press,
+they all retire to their homes,--and the whole is finished as simply,
+almost, as was his private entry in his day-book the afternoon
+before.[N]
+
+This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck _long_ and
+_short_, and we had all learned Morse's alphabet. Indeed, there is
+nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time
+enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But,
+without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and
+every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail
+Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should
+report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his
+country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak
+articulately, in language regarding which the dullest imagination need
+not be at loss,
+
+    "Turn again, Higginbottom,
+    Lord Mayor of Boston!"
+
+I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the
+primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own
+children,--and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head,
+against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it
+does;--an alphabet of two characters matched against one of
+twenty-six,--or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the phonotypists
+employ! On the Franklin-medal day I went to the Johnson-School
+examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl what was the capital
+of Brazil. The child looked tired and pale, and, for an instant,
+hesitated. But, before she had time to commit herself, all answering was
+rendered impossible by an awful turn of whooping-cough which one of my
+own sons was seized with,--who had gone to the examination with me.
+Hawm, hem hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem;--hawm, hem hem;--hem hem
+hem;--hem, hem,--barked the poor child, who was at the opposite extreme
+of the school-room. The spectators and the committee looked to see him
+fall dead with a broken blood-vessel. I confess that I felt no alarm,
+after I observed that some of his gasps were long and some very
+_staccato_;--nor did pretty little Mabel Warren. She recovered her
+color,--and, as soon as silence was in the least restored, answered,
+"_Rio_ is the capital of Brazil,"--as modestly and properly as if she
+had been taught it in her cradle. They are nothing but children, any of
+them,--but that afternoon, after they had done all the singing the city
+needed for its annual entertainment of the singers, I saw Bob and Mabel
+start for a long expedition into West Roxbury,--and when he came back, I
+know it was a long featherfew, from her prize school-bouquet, that he
+pressed in his Greene's "Analysis," with a short frond of maiden's hair.
+
+I hope nobody will write a letter to "The Atlantic," to say that these
+are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is never
+trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from mortification on
+examination-day, as it is to tell Mr. Fremont that he is not elected
+President. If, however, the reader is distressed, because these
+illustrations do not seem to his more benighted observation to belong to
+the big bow-wow strain of human life, let him consider the arrangement
+which ought to have been made years since, for lee shores, railroad
+collisions, and that curious class of maritime accidents where one
+steamer runs into mother under the impression that she is a light
+house. Imagine the Morse alphabet applied to a steam-whistle, which is
+often heard five miles. It needs only _long_ and _short_ again. "_Stop
+Comet_," for instance, when you send it down the railroad line, by the
+wire, is expressed thus:
+
+    ... -- . .  ....,...  . . -- ---  . --
+
+Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph station when
+it comes! But what if Cornel has gone by? Much good will your trumpery
+message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound your long and
+short on an engine-whistle, thus;--Scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre;
+scre scre scre scre scre; scre scre scre,--scre scre; screeeee screeeee;
+scre; screeeee;--why, then the whole neighborhood, for five miles
+around, will know that Comet must stop, if only they understand spoken
+language,--and among others, the engineman of Comet will understand it;
+and Comet will not run into that wreck of worlds which gives the
+order,--with the nucleus of hot iron and his tail of five hundred tons
+of coal.--So, of the signals which fog-bells can give, attached to
+light-houses. How excellent to have them proclaim through the darkness,
+"I am Wall "! Or of signals for steamship-engineers. When our friends
+were on board the "Arabia" the other day, and she and the "Europa"
+pitched into each other,--as if, on that happy week, all the continents
+were to kiss and join hands all round,--how great the relief to the
+passengers on each, if, through every night of their passage, collision
+had been prevented by this simple expedient! One boat would have
+screamed, "Europa, Europa, Europa," from night to morning,--and the
+other, "Arabia, Arabia, Arabia,"--and neither would have been mistaken,
+as one unfortunately was, for a light-house.
+
+The long and short of it is, that whoever can mark distinctions of time
+can use this alphabet of long-and-short, however he may mark them. It is
+therefore within the compass of all intelligent beings, except those who
+are no longer conscious of the passage of time, having exchanged its
+limitations for the wider sweep of eternity. The illimitable range of
+this alphabet, however, is not half disclosed when this has been said.
+Most articulate language addresses itself to one sense, or at most to
+two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the particular
+illustrations I have given are all of them confined to signals seen or
+signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its
+history, has already shown that it is not restricted to these two
+senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is
+heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the sounds of its
+ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he sees it As he
+lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the passing message without
+striking a light to see it But this is only what may be said of any
+written language. You can read this article to your wife, or she can
+read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether it shall address
+her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of Morse and his
+imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses whichever of the five
+senses the listener chooses. This fact is illustrated by a curious set
+of anecdotes,--never yet put in print, I think,--of that critical
+despatch which in one night announced General Taylor's death to this
+whole land. Most of the readers of these lines probably read that
+despatch in the morning's paper. The compositors and editors had read
+it. To them it was a despatch to the eye. But half the operators at the
+stations _heard_ it ticked out, by the register stroke, and knew it
+before they wrote it down for the press. To them it was a despatch to
+the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that resource. He had just
+been promised, by the General himself (under whom he served at Palo
+Alto), the office of Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Lines. He was
+returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a
+freight-train, when he heard of the President's danger. Langenzunge
+loved Old Rough and Ready,--and he felt badly about his own office, too.
+But his extempore train chose to stop at a forsaken shanty-village on
+the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at midnight. What does he do, but
+walk down the line into the darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a
+wire, and applied the two ends to his tongue, to _taste_, at the fatal
+moment, the words, "Died at half past ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly
+had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just
+fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk.
+This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric
+spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is
+noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk
+started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his
+spirit-lamp blew up,--as the dear things will. They were beside
+themselves in the lonely, dark office; but, while the men were fumbling
+for matches, which would not go, Cogs's sister, Nydia, a sweet blind
+girl, who had learned Bain's alphabet from Dr. Howe at South Boston,
+bent over the chemical paper, and _smelt_ out the prussiate of potash,
+as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story. Almost
+anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse
+messages with the finger,--and so this message was read at all the
+midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where the
+companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle of
+acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous instances, where
+the same message was seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. So
+universal is the dot-and-line alphabet,--for Bain's is on the same
+principle as Morse's.
+
+The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can be
+employed by any being who has command of any long and short symbols,--be
+they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe kept his accounts
+with, or long and short waves of electricity, such as these which
+Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland bay, so prophetically and
+appropriately named "The Bay of Bulls." Also, I hope the reader sees
+that the alphabet can be understood by any intelligent being who has any
+one of the five senses left him,--by all rational men, that is,
+excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and
+smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's telegraph is by no
+means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand
+electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the _Gymnotus
+electricus_ that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea
+can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the
+difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen,
+too. If they will only note the difference between long and short, the
+eel of Ocean's bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages
+of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on
+the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can
+discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if
+he have sense enough. Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel,
+or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired
+listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short
+ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery
+before the sermon is done. A dumb tobacconist may trade with his
+customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines. A beleaguered
+Sebastopol may explain its wants to the relieving army beyond the line
+of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its short Paixhans and its long
+twenty-fours.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE.
+
+
+[I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had, I
+believe, of examining the Resolute on her return from that weird voyage
+which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of the world.
+And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole of that voyage
+than this, which was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June
+11, 1856, I reprint it here. Readers should remember that the English
+government abandoned all claim on the vessel; that the American
+government then bought her of the salvors, refitted her completely, and
+sent her to England as a present to the Queen. The Queen visited the
+ship, and accepted the present in person. The Resolute has never since
+been to sea. I do not load the page with authorities; but I studied the
+original reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the
+paper, and I believe it to be accurate throughout.
+
+The voyage from New London to England, when she was thus returned, is
+strictly her last voyage. But when this article was printed its name was
+correct.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in early spring in 1852, early on the morning of the 21st of
+April, that the stout English discovery ship Resolute, manned by a large
+crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her moorings
+in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of London, was
+taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started as one of a fine
+English squadron in the great search of the nations for the lost Sir
+John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the 24th of December,
+that the same ship, weather-worn, scantily rigged, without her lighter
+masts, all in the trim of a vessel which has had a hard fight with wind,
+water, ice, and time, made the light-house of _New_ London,--waited for
+day and came round to anchor in the other river Thames, of _New_
+England. Not one man of the English crew was on board. The gallant
+Captain Kellett was not there; but in his place an American master, who
+had shown, in his way, equal gallantry. The sixty or seventy men with
+whom she sailed were all in their homes more than a year ago. The eleven
+men with whom she returned had had to double parts, and to work hard to
+make good the places of the sixty. And between the day when the
+Englishmen left her, and the day the Americans found her, she had spent
+fifteen months and more alone. She was girt in by the ice of the Arctic
+seas. No man knows where she went, what narrow scapes she passed
+through, how low her thermometers marked cold;--it is a bit of her
+history which was never written. Nor what befell her little tender, the
+"Intrepid," which was left in her neighborhood, "ready for occupation,"
+just as she was left. No man will ever tell of the nip that proved too
+much for her,--of the opening of her seams, and her disappearance
+beneath the ice. But here is the hardy Resolute, which, on the 15th of
+May, 1854, her brave commander left, as he was ordered, "ready for
+occupation,"--which the brave Captain Buddington found September 10,
+1855, more than a thousand miles from there, and pronounced still "ready
+for occupation";--and of what can be known of her history from Old
+London to New London, from Old England's Thames to New England's Thames,
+we will try to tell the story; as it is written in the letters of her
+old officers and told by the lips of her new rescuers.
+
+For Arctic work, if ships are to go into every nook and lane of ice that
+will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly
+indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore, and for
+discovery work, ships built of the _teak_ wood of Malabar and Java are
+considered most precisely fitted. Ships built of teak are said to be
+wholly indestructible by time. To this we owe the fact, which now
+becomes part of a strange coincidence, that one of the old Captain
+Cook's ships which went round the world with him has been, till within a
+few years, a whaling among the American whalers, revisiting, as a
+familiar thing, the shores which she was first to discover. The English
+admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic service a ship of the best build
+they could find, bought the two teak-built ships Baboo and Ptarmigan in
+1850,--sent them to their own dock-yards to be refitted, and the Baboo
+became the Assistance,--the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their
+squadrons of Arctic discovery.
+
+Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic shores the
+Ptarmigan is the bird most often found? It is the Arctic grouse or
+partridge,[O] and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island furnished
+sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the "Resolute," wholly
+unconscious that she had ever been their god-child, and had thrown off
+their name only to take that which she now wears.
+
+Early in May, 1850, just at the time we now know that brave Sir John
+Franklin and the remnant of his crew were dying of starvation at the
+mouth of Back's River, the "Resolute" sailed first for the Arctic seas,
+the flag-ship of Commodore Austin, with whose little squadron our own De
+Haven and his men had such pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island. In
+the course of that expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island,--and
+in autumn of the next year returned to England.
+
+Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England, unless in
+the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle
+invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the English way.
+And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his
+ships and men. There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of
+Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party. Yet more, there
+were two of the searching ships which had entered the Polar seas from
+Behring's Straits on the west, the "Enterprise" and "Investigator,"
+which might need relief before they came through or returned. Arctic
+search became a passion by this time, and at once a new squadron was
+fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852. This squadron
+consisted of the "Assistance" and "Resolute" again, which had been
+refitted since their return, of the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer," two
+steamships used as tenders to the "Assistance" and "Resolute"
+respectively, and of the "North Star," which had also been in those
+regions, and now went as a storeship to the rest of the squadron. To the
+command of the whole Sir Edward Belcher was appointed, an officer who
+had served in some of the earlier Arctic expeditions. Officers and men
+volunteered in full numbers for the service, and these five vessels
+therefore carried out a body of men who brought more experience of the
+Northern seas together than any expedition which had ever visited them.
+
+Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the "Resolute," and was
+second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the "Assistance" the
+flag-ship. It shows what sort of man he was, to say that for more than
+ten years he spent only part of one in England, and was the rest of the
+time in an antipodean hemisphere or a hyperborean zone. Before brave Sir
+John Franklin sailed, Captain Kellett was in the Pacific. Just as he was
+to return home, he was ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir
+John. Three years successively, in his ship the "Herald," he passed
+inside Behring's Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean. He discovered
+"Herald Island," the farthest land known there. He was one of the last
+men to see McClure in the "Investigator" before she entered the Polar
+seas from the northwest. He sent three of his men on board that ship to
+meet them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings. After
+more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to
+England, in May or June, 1851, and in the next winter volunteered to try
+the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our ship, the
+"Resolute." Some of his old officers sailed with him.
+
+We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches,
+and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary
+blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of
+his commander show. But these papers present the picture of a vigorous,
+hearty man, kind to his crew and a great favorite with them, brave in
+whatever trial, always considerate, generous to his officers, reposing
+confidence in their integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will
+be apt to hear more. His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the
+same standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself,
+not very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in
+short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic winters.
+With him, as we trace the "Resolute's" fortunes, we shall have much to
+do. Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all along till the day
+when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward Belcher, "ready for
+occupation."
+
+With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men, the "Resolute" cast off her
+moorings in the gray of the morning on the 21st of April, 1852, to go in
+search of Sir John Franklin. The brave Sir John had died two years
+before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it. The river steam-tug
+"Monkey" took her in tow, other steamers took the "Assistance" and the
+"North Star"; the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer" got up their own steam, and
+to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them
+off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the steamship "Desperate"
+took the "Resolute" in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal
+"Orkneys" as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in
+Stromness outer harbor. Here there was a little shifting of provisions
+and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on shore squandered their
+spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good
+by to British soil. And, though they have welcomed it again long since,
+she has not seen it from then till now.
+
+The "Desperate" steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to
+the "North Star," and for three days in this procession of so wild and
+weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,--a train
+which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with
+a fresh gale blowing all the time and "a nasty sea." On the fourth day
+all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds
+claimed their own, and the "Resolute" tried her own resources. The
+towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left
+to itself.
+
+We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on
+the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of
+her passage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one incident,
+which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On
+the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of
+whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic masses.
+Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the "Assistance" and the
+"Pioneer," the "Resolute" was, for the emergency, docked there, and, by
+the ice closing behind her, was, for a while, detained. Meanwhile the
+rest of the fleet, whalers and discovery ships, passed on by a little
+lane of water, the American whaler "McLellan" leading. This "McLellan"
+was one of the ships of the spirited New London merchants, Messrs.
+Perkins & Smith, another of whose vessels has now found the "Resolute"
+and befriended her in her need in those seas. The "McLellan" was their
+pioneer vessel there.
+
+The "North Star" of the English squadron followed the "McLellan." A
+long train stretched out behind. Whalers and government ships, as they
+happened to fall into line,--a long three quarters of a mile. It was
+lovely weather, and, though the long lane closed up so that they could
+neither go back nor forward,--nobody apprehended injury till it was
+announced on the morning of the 7th that the poor "McLellan" was nipped
+in the ice and her crew were deserting her. Sir Edward Belcher was then
+in condition to befriend her, sent his carpenters to examine her,--put a
+few charges of powder into the ice to relieve the pressure upon
+her,--and by the end of the day it was agreed that her injuries could be
+repaired, and her crew went on board again. But there is no saying what
+ice will do next. The next morning there was a fresh wind, the
+"McLellan" was caught again, and the water poured into her, a steady
+stream. She drifted about unmanageable, now into one ship, now into
+another, and the English whalemen began to pour on board, to help
+themselves to such plunder as they chose. At the Captain's request, Sir
+Edward Belcher put an end to this, sent sentries on board, and working
+parties, to clear her as far as might be, and keep account of what her
+stores were and where they went to. In a day or two more she sank to the
+water's edge and a friendly charge or two of powder put her out of the
+way of harm to the rest of the fleet. After such a week spent together
+it will easily be understood that the New London whalemen did not feel
+strangers on board one of Sir Edward's vessels when they found her
+"ready for occupation" three years and more afterwards.
+
+In this tussle with the ice, the "Resolute" was nipped once or twice,
+but she has known harder nips than that since. As July wore away, she
+made her way across Baffin's Bay, and on the 10th of August made Beechey
+Island,--known now as the head-quarters for years of the searching
+squadrons, because, as it happened, the place where the last traces of
+Franklin's ships were found,--the wintering place of his first winter.
+But Captain Kellett was on what is called the "western search," and he
+only stayed at Beechey Island to complete his provisions from the
+storeships, and in the few days which this took, to see for himself the
+sad memorials of Franklin's party,--and then the "Resolute" and
+"Intrepid" were away, through Barrow's Straits,--on the track which
+Parry ran along with such success thirty-three years before,--and which
+no one had followed with as good fortune as he, until now.
+
+On the 15th of August Captain Kellett was off; bade good by to the party
+at Beechey Island, and was to try his fortune in independent command. He
+had not the best of luck at starting. The reader must remember that one
+great object of these Arctic expeditions was to leave provisions for
+starving men. For such a purpose, and for travelling parties of his own
+over the ice, Captain Kellett was to leave a depot at Assistance Bay,
+some thirty miles only from Beechey Island. In nearing for that purpose
+the "Resolute" grounded, was left with but seven feet of water, the ice
+threw her over on her starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not
+quite lost, however, or we should not be telling her story. At midnight
+she was got off, leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain
+Kellett forged on in her,--left a depot here and another there,--and at
+the end of the short Arctic summer had come as far westward as Sir
+Edward Parry came. Here is the most westerly point the reader will find
+on most maps far north in America,--the Melville Island of Captain
+Parry. Captain Kellett's associate, Captain McClintock of the
+"Intrepid," had commanded the only party which had been here since
+Parry. In 1851 he came over from Austin's squadron with a sledge party.
+So confident is every one there that nobody has visited those parts
+unless he was sent, that McClintock encouraged his men one day by
+telling them that if they got on well, they should have an old cart
+Parry had left thirty-odd years before, to make a fire of. Sure enough;
+they came to the place, and there was the wreck of the cart just as
+Parry left it. They even found the ruts the old cart left in the ground
+as if they had not been left a week. Captain Kellett came into harbor,
+and with great spirit he and his officers began to prepare for the
+extended searching parties of the next spring. The "Resolute" and her
+tender came to anchor off Dealy Island, and there she spent the next
+eleven months of her life, with great news around her in that time.
+
+There is not much time for travelling in autumn. The days grow very
+short and very cold. But what, days there were were spent in sending out
+carts and sledges with depots of provisions, which the parties of the
+next spring could use. Different officers were already assigned to
+different lines of search in spring. On their journeys they would be
+gone three months and more, with a party of some eight men,--dragging a
+sled very like a Yankee wood-sled with their instruments and provisions,
+over ice and snow. To extend those searches as much as possible, and to
+prepare the men for that work when it should come, advanced depots were
+now sent forward in the autumn, under the charge of the gentlemen who
+would have to use them in the spring.
+
+One of these parties, the "South line of Melville Island" party, was
+under a spirited young officer Mr. Mecham, who had tried such service in
+the last expedition. He had two of "her Majesty's sledges," "The
+Discovery" and "The Fearless," a depot of twenty days' provision to be
+used in the spring, and enough for twenty-five days' present use. All
+the sledges had little flags, made by some young lady friends of Sir
+Edward Belcher's. Mr. Mecham's bore an armed hand and sword on a white
+ground, with the motto, "_Per mare, per terram, per glaciem_" Over mud,
+land, snow, and ice they carried their dépot, and were nearly back,
+when, on the 12th of October, 1852, Mr. Mecham made the great discovery
+of the expedition.
+
+On the shore of Melville Island, above Winter Harbor, is a great
+sandstone boulder, ten feet high, seven or eight broad, and twenty and
+more long, which is known to all those who have anything to do with
+those regions as "Parry's sandstone," for it stood near Parry's
+observatory the winter he spent here, and Mr. Fisher, his surgeon, cut
+on a flat face of it this inscription:--
+
+     HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S
+     SHIPS HECLA AND GRIPER,
+           COMMANDED BY
+    W.E. PARRY AND MR. LIDDON,
+     WINTERED IN THE ADJACENT
+         HARBOR 1819-20.
+                   A. FISHER, SCULPT.
+
+It was a sort of God Terminus put up to mark the end of that expedition,
+as the Danish gentlemen tell us our Dighton rock is the last point of
+Thorfinn's expedition to these parts. Nobody came to read Mr. Fisher's
+inscription for thirty years and more,--a little Arctic hare took up her
+home under the great rock, and saw the face of man for the first time
+when, on the 5th of June, 1851, Mr. McClintock, on his first expedition
+this way, had stopped to see whether possibly any of Franklin's men had
+ever visited it. He found no signs of them, had not so much time as Mr.
+Fisher for stone-cutting, but carved the figures 1851 on the stone, and
+left it and the hare. To this stone, on his way back to the "Resolute,"
+Mr. Mecham came again (as we said) on the 12th of October, one memorable
+Tuesday morning, having been bidden to leave a record there. He went on
+in advance of his party, meaning to cut 1852 on the stone. On top of it
+was a small cairn of stones built by Mr. McClintock the year before.
+Mecham examined this, and to his surprise a copper cylinder rolled out
+from under a spirit tin. "On opening it, I drew out a roll folded in a
+bladder, which, being frozen, broke and crumbled. From its dilapidated
+appearance, I thought at the moment it must be some record of Sir Edward
+Parry, and, fearing I might damage it, laid it down with the intention
+of lighting the fire to thaw it. My curiosity, however, overcame my
+prudence, and on opening it carefully with my knife, I came to a roll of
+cartridge paper with the impression fresh upon the seals. My
+astonishment may be conceived on finding it contained an account of the
+proceedings of H.M. ship 'Investigator' since parting company with the
+"Herald" [Captain Kellett's old ship] in August, 1850, in Behring's
+Straits. Also a chart which disclosed to view not only the long-sought
+Northwest Passage, but the completion of the survey of Banks and
+Wollaston lands. Opened and indorsed Commander McClintock's despatch;
+found it contained the following additions:--
+
+    "'Opened and copied by his old friend and messmate upon this date,
+    April 28, 1852. ROBERT McCLURE
+
+    "'Party all well and return to Investigator to-day.'"
+
+A great discovery indeed to flash across one in a minute. The
+"Investigator" had not been heard from for more than two years. Here was
+news of her not yet six months old. The Northwest Passage had been
+dreamed of for three centuries and more. Here was news of its
+discovery,--news that had been known to Captain McClure for two years.
+McClure and McClintock were lieutenants together in the "Enterprise"
+when she was sent after Sir John Franklin in 1848, and wintered together
+at Port Leopold the next winter. Now, from different hemispheres, they
+had come so near meeting at this old block of sandstone. Mr. Mecham bade
+his mate build a new cairn, to put the record of the story in, and
+hurried on to the "Resolute" with his great news,--news of almost
+everybody but Sir John Franklin. Strangely enough, the other expedition,
+Captain Collinson's, had had a party in that neighborhood, between the
+other two, under Mr. Parks; but it was his extreme point possible, and
+he could not reach the Sandstone, though he saw the ruts of McClure's
+sleigh. This was not known till long afterwards.
+
+The "Investigator," as it appeared from this despatch of Captain
+McClure's, had been frozen up in the Bay of Mercy of Banks Land: Banks
+Land having been for thirty years at once an Ultima Thule and Terra
+Incognita, put down on the maps where Captain Parry saw it across thirty
+miles of ice and water in 1819. Perhaps she was still in that same bay:
+these old friends wintering there, while the "Resolute" and "Intrepid"
+were lying under Dealy Island, and only one hundred and seventy miles
+between. It must have been tantalizing to all parties to wait the winter
+through, and not even get a message across. But until winter made it too
+cold and dark to travel, the ice in the strait was so broken up that it
+was impossible to attempt to traverse it, even with a light boat, for
+the lanes of water. So the different autumn parties came in, the last on
+the last of October, and the officers and men entered on their winter's
+work and play, to push off the winter days as quickly as they could.
+
+The winter was very severe; and it proved that, as the "Resolute" lay,
+they were a good deal exposed to the wind. But they kept themselves
+busy,--exercised freely,--found game quite abundant within reasonable
+distances on shore, whenever the light served,--kept schools for
+the men,--delivered scientific lectures to whoever would
+listen,--established the theatre for which the ship had been provided at
+home,--and gave juggler's exhibitions by way of variety. The recent
+system of travelling in the fall and spring cuts in materially to the
+length of the Arctic winters as Ross, Parry, and Back used to experience
+it, and it was only from the 1st of November to the 10th of March that
+they were left to their own resources. Late in October one of the
+"Resolute's" men died, and in December one of the "Intrepid's," but,
+excepting these cases, they had little sickness, for weeks no one on
+the sick-list; indeed, Captain Kellett says cheerfully that a
+sufficiency of good provisions, with plenty of work in the open air,
+will insure good health in that climate.
+
+As early in the spring as he dared risk a travelling party, namely, on
+the 10th of March, 1853, he sent what they all called a forlorn hope
+across to the Bay of Mercy, to find any traces of the "Investigator";
+for they scarcely ventured to hope that she was still there. This start
+was earlier by thirty-five days than the early parties had started on
+the preceding expedition. But it was every way essential that, if
+Captain McClure had wintered in the Bay of Mercy, the messenger should
+reach him before he sent off any or all his men, in travelling parties,
+in the spring. The little forlorn hope consisted of ten men under the
+command of Lieutenant Pirn, an officer who had been with Captain Kellett
+in the "Herald" on the Pacific side, had spent a winter in the "Plover"
+up Behring's Straits, and had been one of the last men whom the
+"Investigator" had seen before they put into the Arctic Ocean, to
+discover, as it proved, the Northwest Passage.
+
+Here we must stop a moment, to tell what one of these sledge parties is
+by whose efforts so much has been added to our knowledge of Arctic
+geography, in journeys which could never have been achieved in ships or
+boats. In the work of the "Resolute's" parties, in this spring of 1852,
+Commander McClintock travelled 1,325 miles with his sledge, and
+Lieutenant Mecham 1,163 miles with his, through regions before wholly
+unexplored. The sledge, as we have said, is in general contour not
+unlike a Yankee wood-sled, about eleven feet long. The runners are
+curved at each end. The sled is fitted with a light canvas trough, so
+adjusted that, in case of necessity, all the stores, &c., can be ferried
+over any narrow lane of water in the ice. There are packed on this sled
+a tent for eight or ten men, five or six pikes, one or more of which Is
+fitted as an ice-chisel; two large buffalo-skins, a water-tight
+floor-cloth, which contrives
+
+          "a double debt to pay,
+    A floor by night, the sledge's sail by day"
+
+(and it must be remembered that "day" and "night" in those regions are
+very equivocal terms). There are, besides, a cooking-apparatus, of which
+the fire is made in spirit or tallow lamps, one or two guns, a pick and
+shovel, instruments for observation, pannikins, spoons, and a little
+magazine of such necessaries, with the extra clothing of the party. Then
+the provision, the supply of which measures the length of the
+expedition, consists of about a pound of bread and a pound of pemmican
+per man per day, six ounces of pork, and a little preserved potato, rum,
+lime-juice, tea, chocolate, sugar, tobacco, or other such creature
+comforts. The sled is fitted with two drag-ropes, at which the men haul.
+The officer goes ahead to find the best way among hummocks of ice or
+masses of snow. Sometimes on a smooth floe, before the wind, the
+floor-cloth is set for a sail, and she runs off merrily, perhaps with
+several of the crew on board, and the rest running to keep up. But
+sometimes over broken ice it is a constant task to get her on at all.
+You hear, "One, two, three, _haul_" all day long, as she is worked out
+of one ice "cradle-hole" over a hummock into another. Different parties
+select different hours for travelling. Captain Kellett finally
+considered that the best division of time, when, as usual, they had
+constant daylight, was to start at four in the afternoon, travel till
+ten P.M., _breakfast_ then, tent and rest four hours; travel four more,
+tent, dine, and sleep nine hours. This secured sleep, when the sun was
+the highest and most trying to the eyes. The distances accomplished with
+this equipment are truly surprising. Each man, of course, is dressed as
+warmly as flannel, woollen cloth, leather, and seal-skin will dress him.
+For such long journeying, the study of boots becomes a science, and our
+authorities are full of discussions as to canvas or woollen, or carpet
+or leather boots, of strings and of buckles. When the time "to tent"
+comes, the pikes are fitted for tent-poles, and the tent set up, its
+door to leeward, on the ice or snow. The floor-cloth is laid for the
+carpet. At an hour fixed, all talking must stop. There is just room
+enough for the party to lie side by side on the floor-cloth. Each man
+gets into a long felt bag, made of heavy felting literally nearly half
+an inch thick. He brings this up wholly over his head, and buttons
+himself in. He has a little hole in it to breathe through. Over the
+felt is sometimes a brown holland bag, meant to keep out moisture. The
+officer lies farthest in the tent,--as being next the wind, the point of
+hardship and so of honor. The cook for the day lies next the doorway, as
+being first to be called. Side by side the others lie between. Over them
+all Mackintosh blankets with the buffalo-robes are drawn, by what power
+this deponent sayeth not, not knowing. No watch is kept, for there is
+little danger of intrusion. Once a whole party was startled by a white
+bear smelling at them, who waked one of their dogs, and a droll time
+they had of it, springing to their arms while enveloped in their sacks.
+But we remember no other instance where a sentinel was needed. And
+occasionally in the journals the officer notes that he overslept in the
+morning, and did not "call the cook" early enough. What a passion is
+sleep, to be sure, that one should oversleep with such comforts round
+him!
+
+Some thirty or forty parties, thus equipped, set out from the "Resolute"
+while she was under Captain Kellett's charge, on various expeditions. As
+the journey of Lieutenant Pim to the "Investigator" at Banks Land was
+that on which turned the great victory of her voyage, we will let that
+stand as a specimen of all. None of the others, however, were undertaken
+at so early a period of the year, and, on the other hand, several others
+were much longer,--some of them, as has been said, occupying three
+months and more.
+
+Lieutenant Pim had been appointed in the autumn to the "Banks Land
+search," and had carried out his depots of provisions when the other
+officers took theirs. Captain McClure's chart and despatch made it no
+longer necessary to have that coast surveyed, but made it all the more
+necessary to have some one go and see if he was still there. The chances
+were against this, as a whole summer had intervened since he was heard
+from. Lieutenant Pim proposed, however, to travel all round Banks Land,
+which is an island about the size and shape of Ireland, in search of
+him, Collinson, Franklin, or anybody. Captain Kellett, however, told him
+not to attempt this with his force, but to return to the ship by the
+route he went. First he was to go to the Bay of Mercy; if the
+"Investigator" was gone, he was to follow any traces of her, and, if
+possible, communicate with her or her consort, the "Enterprise."
+
+Lieutenant Pim started with a sledge and seven men, and a dog-sledge
+with two under Dr. Domville, the surgeon, who was to bring back the
+earliest news from the Bay of Mercy to the captain. There was a relief
+sledge to go part way and return. For the intense cold of this early
+season they had even more careful arrangements than those we have
+described. Their tent was doubled. They had extra Mackintoshes, and
+whatever else could be devised. They had bad luck at starting,--broke
+down one sledge and had to send back for another; had bad weather, and
+must encamp, once for three days. "Fortunately," says the lieutenant of
+this encampment, "the temperature arose from fifty-one below zero to
+thirty-six below, and there remained," while the drift accumulated to
+such a degree around the tents, that within them the thermometer was
+only twenty below, and, when they cooked, rose to zero. A pleasant time
+of it they must have had there on the ice, for those three days, in
+their bags smoking and sleeping! No wonder that on the fourth day they
+found they moved slowly, so cramped and benumbed were they. This morning
+a new sledge came to them from the ship; they got out of their bags,
+packed, and got under way again. They were still running along shore,
+but soon sent back the relief party which had brought the new sled, and
+in a few days more set out to cross the strait, some twenty-five to
+thirty miles wide, which, when it is open, as no man has ever seen it,
+is one of the Northwest Passages discovered by these expeditions.
+
+Horrible work it was! Foggy and dark, so they could not choose the road,
+and, as it happened, lit on the very worst mass of broken ice in the
+channel. Just as they entered on it, one black raven must needs appear.
+"Bad luck," said the men. And when Mr. Pim shot a musk-ox, their first,
+and the wounded creature got away, "So much for the raven," they croaked
+again. Only three miles the first day, four miles the second day, two
+and a half the third, and half a mile the fourth; this was all they
+gained by most laborious hauling over the broken ice, dragging one
+sledge at a time, and sometimes carrying forward the stores separately
+and going back for the sledges. Two days more gave them eight miles
+more, but on the seventh day on this narrow strait, the dragging being a
+little better, the great sledge slipped off a smooth hummock, broke one
+runner to smash, and "there they were."
+
+If the two officers had a little bit of a "tiff" out there on the ice,
+with the thermometer at eighteen below, only a little dog-sledge to get
+them anywhere, their ship a hundred miles off, fourteen days' travel as
+they had come, nobody ever knew it; they kept their secret from us, it
+is nobody's business, and it is not to be wondered at. Certainly they
+did not agree. The Doctor, whose sled, the "James Fitzjames," was still
+sound, thought they had best leave the stores and all go back; but the
+Lieutenant, who had the command, did not like to give it up, so he took
+the dogs and the "James Fitzjames" and its two men and went on, leaving
+the Doctor on the floe, but giving him directions to go back to land
+with the wounded sledge and wait for him to return. And the Doctor did
+it, like a spirited fellow, travelling back and forth for what he could
+not take in one journey, as the man did in the story who had a peck of
+corn, a goose, and a wolf to get across the river. Over ice, over
+hummock the Lieutenant went on his way with his dogs, not a bear nor a
+seal nor a hare nor a wolf to feed them with: preserved meats, which
+had been put up with dainty care for men and women, all he had for the
+ravenous, tasteless creatures, who would have been more pleased with
+blubber, came to Banks Land at last, but no game there; awful drifts;
+shut up in the tent for a whole day, and he himself so sick he could
+scarcely stand! There were but three of them in all; and the captain of
+the sledge not unnaturally asked poor Pim, when he was at the worst,
+"What shall I do, sir, if you die?" Not a very comforting question!
+
+He did not die. He got a few hours' sleep, felt better and started
+again, but had the discouragement of finding such tokens of an open
+strait the last year that he felt sure that the ship he was going to
+look for would be gone. One morning, he had been off for game for the
+dogs unsuccessfully, and, when he came back to his men, learned that
+they had seen seventeen deer. After them goes Pim; finds them to be
+_three hares_, magnified by fog and mirage, and their long ears
+answering for horns. This same day they got upon the Bay of Mercy. No
+ship in sight! Right across it goes the Lieutenant to look for records;
+when, at two in the afternoon, Robert Hoile sees something black up the
+bay. Through the glass the Lieutenant makes it out to be a ship. They
+change their direction at once. Over the ice towards her! He leaves the
+sledge at three and goes on. How far it seems! At four he can see people
+walking about, and a pile of stones and flag-staff on the beach. Keep
+on, Pim; shall one never get there? At five he is within a hundred
+yards of her, and no one has seen him. But just then the very persons
+see him who ought to! Pim beckons, waves his arms as the Esquimaux do in
+sign of friendship. Captain McClure and his lieutenant Haswell are
+"taking their exercise," the chief business of those winters, and at
+last see him! Pim is black as Erebus from the smoke of cooking in the
+little tent. McClure owns, not to surprise only, but to a twinge of
+dismay. "I paused in my advance," says he, "doubting who or what it
+could be, a denizen of this or the other world." But this only lasts a
+moment. Pim speaks. Brave man that he can. How his voice must have
+choked, as if he were in a dream. "I am Lieutenant Pim, late of
+'Herald.' Captain Kellett is at Melville Island." Well-chosen words,
+Pim, to be sent in advance over the hundred yards of floe! Nothing about
+the "Resolute,"--that would have confused them. But "Pim," "Herald," and
+"Kellett" were among the last signs of England they had seen,--all this
+was intelligible. An excellent little speech, which the brave man had
+been getting ready, perhaps, as one does a telegraphic despatch, for the
+hours that he had been walking over the floe to her. Then such shaking
+hands, such a greeting. Poor McClure could not speak at first. One of
+the men at work got the news on board; and up through the hatches poured
+everybody, sick and well, to see the black stranger, and to hear his
+news from England. It was nearly three years since they had seen any
+civilized man but themselves.
+
+The 28th of July, three years before, Commander McClure had sent his
+last despatch to the Admiralty. He had then prophesied just what in
+three years he had almost accomplished. In the winter of 1850 he had
+discovered the Northwest Passage. He had come round into one branch of
+it, Banks Straits, in the next summer; had gladly taken refuge on the
+Bay of Mercy in a gale; and his ship had never left it since. Let it be
+said, in passing, that most likely she is there now. In his last
+despatches he had told the Admiralty not to be anxious about him if he
+did not arrive home before the autumn of 1854. As it proved, that autumn
+he did come with all his men, except those whom he had sent home before,
+and those who had died. When Pim found them, all the crew but thirty
+were under orders for marching, some to Baffin's Bay, some to the
+Mackenzie River, on their return to England. McClure was going to stay
+with the rest, and come home with the ship, if they could; if not, by
+sledges to Port Leopold, and so by a steam-launch which he had seen left
+there for Franklin in 1849. But the arrival of Mr. Pim put an end to all
+these plans. We have his long despatch to the Admiralty explaining them,
+finished only the day before Pim arrived. It gives the history of his
+three years' exile from the world,--an exile crowded full of effective
+work,--in a record which gives a noble picture of the man. The Queen
+has made him Sir Robert Le Mesurier McClure since, in honor of his great
+discovery.
+
+Banks Land, or Baring Island, the two names belong to the same island,
+on the shores of which McClure and his men had spent most of these two
+years or more, is an island on which they were first of civilized men to
+land. For people who are not very particular, the measurement of it
+which we gave before, namely, that it is about the size and shape of
+Ireland, is precise enough. There is high land in the interior probably,
+as the winds from in shore are cold. The crew found coal and dwarf
+willow which they could burn; lemmings, ptarmigan, hares, reindeer, and
+musk-oxen, which they could eat.
+
+    "Farewell to the land where I often have wended
+    My way o'er its mountains and valleys of snow;
+      Farewell to the rocks and the hills I've ascended,
+    The bleak arctic homes of the buck and the doe;
+      Farewell to the deep glens where oft has resounded
+    The snow-bunting's song, as she carolled her lay
+      To hillside and plain, by the green sorrel bounded,
+    Till struck by the blast of a cold winter's day."
+
+There is a bit of description of Banks Land, from the anthology of that
+country, which, so far as we know, consists of two poems by a seaman
+named Nelson, one of Captain McClure's crew. The highest temperature
+ever observed on this "gem of the sea" was 53° in midsummer. The lowest
+was 65° below zero in January, 1853; that day the thermometer did not
+rise to 60° below, that month was never warmer than 16° below, and the
+average of the month was 43° below. A pleasant climate to spend three
+years in!
+
+One day for talk was all that could be allowed, after Mr. Pim's amazing
+appearance. On the 8th of April, he and his dogs, and Captain McClure
+and a party, were ready to return to our friend the "Resolute." They
+picked up Dr. Domville on the way; he had got the broken sledge mended,
+and killed five musk-oxen, against they came along. He went on in the
+dog-sledge to tell the news, but McClure and his men kept pace with
+them; and he and Dr. Domville had the telling of the news together.
+
+It was decided that the "Investigator" should be abandoned, and the
+"Intrepid" and "Resolute" made room for her men. Glad greeting they gave
+them too, as British seamen can give. More than half the crews were away
+when the "Investigator's" parties came in, but by July everybody had
+returned. They had found islands where the charts had guessed there was
+sea, and sea where they had guessed there was land; had changed
+peninsulas into islands and islands into peninsulas. Away off beyond the
+seventy eighth parallel, Mr. McClintock had christened the farthest dot
+of land "Ireland's Eye," as if his native island were peering off into
+the unknown there;--a great island, which will be our farthest now, for
+years to come, had been named "Prince Patrick's Land," in honor of the
+baby prince who was the youngest when they left home. Will he not be
+tempted, when he is a man, to take a crew, like another Madoc, and, as
+younger sons of queens should, go and settle upon this tempting
+god-child? They had heard from Sir Edward Belcher's part of the
+squadron; they had heard from England; had heard of everything but Sir
+John Franklin. They had even found an ale-bottle of Captain Collinson's
+expedition,--but not a stick nor straw to show where Franklin or his men
+had lived or died. Two officers of the "Investigator" were sent home to
+England this summer by a ship from Beechey Island, the head-quarters;
+and thus we heard, in October, 1853, of the discovery of the Northwest
+Passage.
+
+After their crews were on board again, and the "Investigator's" sixty
+stowed away also, the "Resolute" and "Intrepid" had a dreary summer of
+it. The ice would not break up. They had hunting-parties on shore and
+races on the floe; but the captain could not send the "Investigators"
+home as he wanted to, in his steam tender. All his plans were made, and
+made on a manly scale,--if only the ice would open. He built a
+storehouse on the island for Collinson's people, or for you, reader, and
+us, if we should happen there, and stored it well, and left this
+record:--
+
+    "This is a house which I have named the 'Sailor's Home,' under the
+    especial patronage of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.
+
+    "_Here_ royal sailors and marines are fed, clothed, and receive
+    double pay for inhabiting it."
+
+In that house is a little of everything, and a good deal of victuals and
+drink; but nobody has been there since the last of the "Resolute's" men
+came away.
+
+At last, the 17th of August, a day of foot-racing and jumping in bags
+and wrestling, all hands present, as at a sort of "Isthmian games,"
+ended with a gale, a cracking up of ice, and the "Investigators" thought
+they were on their way home, and Kellett thought he was to have a month
+of summer yet. But no; "there is nothing certain in this navigation from
+one hour to the next." The "Resolute" and "Intrepid" were never really
+free of ice all that autumn; drove and drifted to and fro in Barrow's
+Straits till the 12th of November; and then froze up, without anchoring,
+off Cape Cockburn, perhaps one hundred and forty miles from their harbor
+of the last winter. The log-book of that winter is a curious record; the
+ingenuity of the officer in charge was well tasked to make one day
+differ from another. Each day has the first entry for "ship's position"
+thus: "In the floe off Cape Cockburn." And the blank for the second
+entry, thus: "In the same position." Lectures, theatricals, schools,
+&c., whiled away the time; but there could be no autumn travelling
+parties, and not much hope for discovery in the summer.
+
+Spring came. The captain went over ice in his little dog-sled to
+Beechey Island, and received his directions to abandon his ships. It
+appears that he would rather have sent most of his men forward, and with
+a small crew brought the "Resolute" home that autumn or the next. But
+Sir Edward Belcher considered his orders peremptory "that the safety of
+the crews must preclude any idea of extricating the ships." Both ships
+were to be abandoned. Two distant travelling parties were away, one at
+the "Investigator," one looking for traces of Collinson, which they
+found. Word was left for them, at a proper point, not to seek the ship
+again, but to come on to Beechey Island. And at last, having fitted the
+"Intrepid's" engines so that she could be under steam in two hours,
+having stored both ships with equal proportions of provisions, and made
+both vessels "ready for occupation," the captain calked down the
+hatches, and with all the crew he had not sent on before,--forty-two
+persons in all,--left her Monday, the 15th of May, 1854, and started
+with the sledges for Beechey Island.
+
+Poor old "Resolute"! All this gay company is gone who have made her
+sides split with their laughter. Here is Harlequin's dress, lying in one
+of the wardrooms, but there is nobody to dance Harlequin's dances. "Here
+is a lovely clear day,--surely to-day they will come on deck and take a
+meridian!" No, nobody comes. The sun grows hot on the decks; but it is
+all one, nobody looks at the thermometer! "And so the poor ship was
+left all alone." Such gay times she has had with all these brave young
+men on board! Such merry winters, such a lightsome summer! So much fun,
+so much nonsense! So much science and wisdom, and now it is all so
+still! Is the poor "Resolute" conscious of the change? Does she miss the
+races on the ice, the scientific lecture every Tuesday, the occasional
+racket and bustle of the theatre, and the worship of every Sunday? Has
+not she shared the hope of Captain Kellett, of McClure, and of the crew,
+that she may _break out well!_ She sees the last sledge leave her. The
+captain drives off his six dogs,--vanishes over the ice, and they are
+all gone "Will they not come back again?" says the poor ship. And she
+looks wistfully across the ice to her little friend the steam tender
+"Intrepid," and she sees there is no one there. "Intrepid! Intrepid!
+have they really deserted us? We have served them so well, and have they
+really left us alone? A great many were away travelling last year, but
+they came home. Will not any of these come home now?" No, poor
+"Resolute"! Not one of them ever came back again! Not one of them meant
+to. Summer came. August came. No one can tell how soon, but some day or
+other this her icy prison broke up, and the good ship found herself on
+her own element again; shook herself proudly, we cannot doubt, nodded
+joyfully across to the "Intrepid," and was free. But alas! there was no
+master to take latitude and longitude, no helmsman at the wheel. In
+clear letters cast in brass over her helm there are these words,
+"England expects each man to do his duty." But here is no man to heed
+the warning, and the rudder flaps this way and that way, no longer
+directing her course, but stupidly swinging to and fro. And she drifts
+here and there,--drifts out of sight of her little consort,--strands on
+a bit of ice floe now, and then is swept off from it,--and finds
+herself, without even the "Intrepid's" company, alone on these blue seas
+with those white shores. But what utter loneliness! Poor "Resolute "!
+She longed for freedom,--but what is freedom where there is no law? What
+is freedom without a helmsman! And the "Resolute" looks back so sadly to
+the old days when she had a master. And the short bright summer passes.
+And again she sees the sun set from her decks. And now even her topmasts
+see it set. And now it does not rise to her deck. And the next day it
+does not rise to her topmast. Winter and night together! She has known
+them before! But now it is winter and night and loneliness all together.
+This horrid ice closes up round her again. And there is no one to bring
+her into harbor,--she is out in the open sound. If the ice drifts west,
+she must go west. If it goes east, she must east. Her seeming freedom is
+over, and for that long winter she is chained again. But her heart is
+true to old England. And when she can go east, she is so happy! and when
+she must go west, she is so sad! Eastward she does go! Southward she
+does go! True to the instinct which sends us all home, she tracks
+undirected and without a sail fifteen hundred miles of that sea, without
+a beacon, which separates her from her own. And so goes a dismal year.
+"Perhaps another spring they will come and find me out, and fix things
+below. It is getting dreadfully damp down there; and I cannot keep the
+guns bright and the floors dry," No, good old "Resolute." May and June
+pass off the next year, and nobody comes; and here you are all alone out
+in the bay, drifting in this dismal pack. July and August,--the days are
+growing shorter again. "Will nobody come and take care of me, and cut
+off these horrid blocks of ice, and see to these sides of bacon in the
+hold, and all these mouldy sails, and this powder, and the bread and the
+spirit that I have kept for them so well? It is September, and the sun
+begins to set again. And here is another of those awful gales. Will it
+be my very last? all alone here,--who have done so much,--and if they
+would only take care of me I can do so much more. Will nobody come?
+Nobody?.... What! Is it ice blink,--are my poor old lookouts blind? Is
+not there the 'Intrepid'? Dear 'Intrepid,' I will never look down on you
+again! No! there is no smoke-stack, it is not the 'Intrepid.' But it is
+somebody. Pray see me, good somebody. Are you a Yankee whaler? I am glad
+to see the Yankee whalers, I remember the Yankee whalers very
+pleasantly. We had a happy summer together once.... It will be dreadful
+if they do not see me! But this ice, this wretched ice! They do see
+me,--I know they see me, but they cannot get at me. Do not go away, good
+Yankees; pray come and help me. I know I can get out, if you will help a
+little.... But now it is a whole week and they do not come! Are there
+any Yankees, or am I getting crazy? I have heard them talk of crazy old
+ships, in my young days.... No! I am not crazy. They are coming! they
+are coming. Brave Yankees! over the hummocks, down into the sludge. Do
+not give it up for the cold. There is coal below, and we will have a
+fire in the Sylvester, and in the captain's cabin.... There is a horrid
+lane of water. They have not got a Halkett. O, if one of these boats of
+mine would only start for them, instead of lying so stupidly on my deck
+here! But the men are not afraid of water! See them ferry over on that
+ice block! Come on, good friends! Welcome, whoever you be,--Dane, Dutch,
+French, or Yankee, come on! come on! It is coming up a gale, but I can
+bear a gale. Up the side, men. I wish I could let down the gangway
+alone. But here are all these blocks of ice piled up,--you can scramble
+over them! Why do you stop? Do not be afraid. I will make you very
+comfortable and jolly. Do not stay talking there. Pray come in. There is
+port in the captain's cabin, and a little preserved meat in the pantry.
+You must be hungry; pray come in! O, he is coming, and now all four are
+coming. It would be dreadful if they had gone back! They are on deck.
+Now I shall go home! How lonely it has been!"
+
+It was true enough that when Mr. Quail, the brother of the captain of
+the "McLellan," whom the "Resolute" had befriended, the mate of the
+George Henry, whaler, whose master, Captain Buddington, had discovered
+the "Resolute" in the ice, came to her after a hard day's journey with
+his men, the men faltered with a little superstitious feeling, and
+hesitated for a minute about going on board. But the poor lonely ship
+wooed them too lovingly, and they climbed over the broken ice and came
+on deck. She was lying over on her larboard side, with a heavy weight of
+ice holding her down. Hatches and companion were made fast, as Captain
+Kellett had left them. But, knocking open the companion, groping down
+stairs to the after cabin they found their way to the captain's table;
+somebody put his hand on a box of lucifers, struck a light, and
+revealed--books scattered in confusion, a candle standing, which he
+lighted at once, the glasses and the decanters from which Kellett and
+his officers had drunk good by to the vessel. The whalemen filled them
+again, and undoubtedly felt less discouraged. Meanwhile night came on,
+and a gale arose. So hard did it blow, that for two days these four were
+the whole crew of the "Resolute," and it was not till the 19th of
+September that they returned to their own ship, and reported what their
+prize was.
+
+All these ten days, since Captain Buddington had first seen her, the
+vessels had been nearing each other. On the 19th he boarded her himself;
+found that in her hold, on the larboard side, was a good deal of ice; on
+the starboard side there seemed to be water. In fact, her tanks had
+burst from the extreme cold; and she was full of water, nearly to her
+lower deck. Everything that could move from its place had moved;
+everything was wet; everything that would mould was mouldy. "A sort of
+perspiration" settled on the beams above. Clothes were wringing wet. The
+captain's party made a fire in Captain Kellett's stove, and soon started
+a sort of shower from the vapor with which it filled the air. The
+"Resolute" has, however, four fine force-pumps. For three days the
+captain and six men worked fourteen hours a day on one of these, and had
+the pleasure of finding that they freed her of water,--that she was
+tight still. They cut away upon the masses of ice; and on the 23d of
+September, in the evening, she freed herself from her encumbrances, and
+took an even keel. This was off the west shore of Baffin's Bay, in
+latitude 67°. On the shortest tack she was twelve hundred miles from
+where Captain Kellett left her.
+
+There was work enough still to be done. The rudder was to be shipped,
+the rigging to be made taut, sail to be set; and it proved, by the way,
+that the sail on the yards was much of it still serviceable, while a
+suit of new linen sails below were greatly injured by moisture. In a
+week more they had her ready to make sail. The pack of ice still drifted
+with both ships; but on the 21st of October, after a long northwest
+gale, the "Resolute" was free,--more free than she had been for more
+than two years.
+
+Her "last voyage" is almost told. Captain Buddington had resolved to
+bring her home. He had picked ten men from the "George Henry," leaving
+her fifteen, and with a rough tracing of the American coast drawn on a
+sheet of foolscap, with his lever watch and a quadrant for his
+instruments, he squared off for New London. A rough, hard passage they
+had of it. The ship's ballast was gone, by the bursting of the tanks;
+she was top-heavy and under manned. He spoke a British whaling bark, and
+by her sent to Captain Kellett his epaulettes, and to his own owners
+news that he was coming. They had heavy gales and head winds, were
+driven as far down as the Bermudas; the water left in the ship's tanks
+was brackish, and it needed all the seasoning which the ship's chocolate
+would give to make it drinkable. "For sixty hours at a time," says the
+spirited captain, "I frequently had no sleep"; but his perseverance was
+crowned with success at last, and on the night of the 23d-24th of
+December he made the light off the magnificent harbor from which he
+sailed; and on Sunday morning, the 24th, dropped anchor in the Thames,
+opposite _New_ London, ran up the royal ensign on the shorn masts of the
+"Resolute," and the good people of the town knew that he and his were
+safe, and that one of the victories of peace was won.
+
+As the fine ship lies opposite the piers of that beautiful town, she
+attracts visitors from everywhere, and is, indeed, a very remarkable
+curiosity. Seals were at once placed, and very properly, on the
+captain's book-cases, lockers, and drawers, and wherever private
+property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on
+duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided. But nothing is
+changed from what she was when she came into harbor. And, from stem to
+stern, every detail of her equipment is a curiosity, to the sailor or to
+the landsman. The candlestick in the cabin is not like a Yankee
+candlestick. The hawse hole for the chain cable is fitted as has not
+been seen before. And so of everything between. There is the aspect of
+wet over everything now, after months of ventilation;--the rifles, which
+were last fired at musk-oxen in Melville Island, are red with rust, as
+if they had lain in the bottom of the sea; the volume of Shakespeare,
+which you find in an officer's berth, has a damp feel, as if you had
+been reading it in the open air in a March north-easter. The old seamen
+look with most amazement, perhaps, on the preparations for
+amusement,--the juggler's cups and balls, or Harlequin's spangled dress;
+the quiet landsman wonders at the gigantic ice-saws, at the cast-off
+canvas boots, the long thick Arctic stockings. It seems almost wrong to
+go into Mr. Hamilton's wardroom, and see how he arranged his soap-cup
+and his tooth-brush; and one does not tell of it, if he finds on a blank
+leaf the secret prayer a sister wrote down for the brother to whom she
+gave a prayer-book. There is a good deal of disorder now,--thanks to her
+sudden abandonment, and perhaps to her three months' voyage home. A
+little union-jack lies over a heap of unmended and unwashed
+underclothes; when Kellett left the ship, he left his country's flag
+over his arm-chair as if to keep possession. Two officers' swords and a
+pair of epaulettes were on the cabin table. Indeed, what is there not
+there,--which should make an Arctic winter endurable,--make a long night
+into day,--or while long days away?
+
+The ship is stanch and sound. The "last voyage" which we have described
+will not, let us hope, be the last voyage of her career. But wherever
+she goes, under the English flag or under our own, she will scarcely
+ever crowd more adventure into one cruise than into that which sealed
+the discovery of the Northwest Passage; which gave new lands to England,
+nearest to the pole of all she has; which spent more than a year, no man
+knows where, self-governed and unguided; and which, having begun under
+the strict _régime_ of the English navy, ended under the remarkable
+mutual rules, adopted by common consent, on the business of American
+whalemen.
+
+Is it not worth noting that in this chivalry of Arctic adventure, the
+ships which have been wrecked have been those of the fight or horror?
+They are the "Fury," the "Victory," the "Erebus," the "Terror." But the
+ships which never failed their crews,--which, for all that man knows,
+are as sound now as ever,--bear the names of peaceful adventure; the
+"Hecla," the "Enterprise," and "Investigator," the "Assistance" and
+"Resolute," the "Pioneer" and "Intrepid," and our "Advance" and "Rescue"
+and "Arctic," never threatened any one, even in their names. And they
+never failed the men who commanded them or who sailed in them.
+
+
+
+
+MY DOUBLE, AND HOW HE UNDID ME
+
+ONE OF THE INGHAM PAPERS.
+
+
+[A Boston journal, in noticing this story, called it improbable. I think
+it is. But I think the moral important. It was first published in the
+Atlantic Monthly for September, 1859.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not often that I trouble the readers of the Atlantic Monthly. I
+should not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife, who
+"feels to insist" that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I have
+told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is sure, she
+says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that pressure upon
+public servants which alone drives any man into the employment of a
+double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of her heart, that my
+fortunes will never be remade, she has a faint hope that, as another
+Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future publics, from which they may
+profit, though we die. Owing to the behavior of my double, or, if you
+please, to that public pressure which compelled me to employ him, I have
+plenty of leisure to write this communication.
+
+I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was
+settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the
+finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the
+heart of the civilization of New England. A charming place it was and
+is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might
+have all "the joy of eventful living" to our heart's content.
+
+Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those
+halcyon moments of our first house-keeping. To be the confidential
+friend in a hundred families in the town,--cutting the social trifle, as
+my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped syllabub to the
+bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation,"--to keep abreast of
+the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best on Sunday to
+interweave that thought with the active life of an active town, and to
+inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the Eternal Glory,
+seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life! Enough to do, and all
+so real and so grand! If this vision could only have lasted!
+
+The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor,
+indeed, half bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his
+own business, the vision would have accomplished itself and brought out
+new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the original. The misery was
+and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that besides the
+vision, and besides the usual human and finite failures in life (such as
+breaking the old pitcher that came over in the "Mayflower" and putting
+into the fire the Alpenstock with which her father climbed Mont
+Blanc),--besides these, I say (imitating the style of Robinson Crusoe),
+there were pitchforked in on us a great rowen-heap of humbugs, handed
+down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were expected, and I
+chiefly, to fulfil certain public functions before the community, of the
+character of those fulfilled by the third row of supernumeraries who
+stand behind the Sepoys in the spectacle of the "Cataract of the
+Ganges." They were the duties, in a word, which one performs as member
+of one or another social class or subdivision, wholly distinct from what
+one does as A. by himself A. What invisible power put these functions on
+me, it would be very hard to tell. But such power there was and is. And
+I had not been at work a year before I found I was living two lives, one
+real and one merely functional,--for two sets of people, one my parish,
+whom I loved, and the other a vague public, for whom I did not care two
+straws. All this was in a vague notion, which everybody had and has,
+that this second life would eventually bring out some great results,
+unknown at present, to somebody somewhere.
+
+Crazed by this duality of life, I first read Dr. Wigan on the "Duality
+of the Brain," hoping that I could train one side of my head to do these
+outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties. For
+Richard Greenough once told me, that, in studying for the statue of
+Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was
+philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you
+will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has repeated
+this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is the
+portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of poor Richard. But Dr.
+Wigan does not go into these niceties of this subject, and I failed. It
+was then that, on my wife's suggestion, I resolved to look out for a
+Double.
+
+I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at
+Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the
+relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monson Poorhouse. We
+were passing through one of the large halls, when my destiny was
+fulfilled!
+
+He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green
+baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I
+saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He had
+black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He stooped in
+walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine. And--choicest gift of
+Fate in all--he had, not "a strawberry-mark on his left arm," but a cut
+from a juvenile brickbat over his right eye, slightly affecting the play
+of that eyebrow. Reader, so have I! My fate was sealed!
+
+A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing.
+It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the
+class known as shiftless, who had sealed his fate by marrying a dumb
+wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I left
+Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to Judge
+Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the name of
+Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We had explained to the Judge, what was
+the precise truth, that an eccentric gentleman wished to adopt Dennis,
+under this new name, into his family. It never occurred to him that
+Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to shorten this
+preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at Naguadavick, there
+entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb laundress, myself, who am Mr. Frederic
+Ingham, and my double, who was Mr. Frederic Ingham by as good right as
+I.
+
+O the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my pattern,
+cutting his hair to match mine, and teaching him how to wear and how to
+take off gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were electro-plate, and the
+glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were excellent). Then in
+four successive afternoons I taught him four speeches. I had found these
+would be quite enough for the supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it
+was well for me they were; for though he was good-natured, he was very
+shiftless, and it was, as our national proverb says, "like pulling
+teeth," to teach him. But at the end of the next week he could say, with
+quite my easy and frisky air,--
+
+1. "Very well, thank you. And you?" This for a answer to casual
+salutations.
+
+2. "I am very glad you liked it."
+
+3. "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I
+will not occupy the time."
+
+4. "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room."
+
+At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for
+clothing him. But it proved, of course, at once, that, whenever he was
+out, I should be at home. And I went, during the bright period of his
+success, to so few of those awful pageants which require a black
+dress-coat and what the ungodly call, after Mr. Dickens, a white choker,
+that in the happy retreat of my own dressing-gowns and jackets my days
+went by as happily and cheaply as those of another Thalaba. And Polly
+declares there was never a year when the tailoring cost so little. He
+lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife's room over the kitchen. He had
+orders never to show himself at that window. When he appeared in the
+front of the house, I retired to my sanctissimum and my dressing-gown.
+In short, the Dutchman and his wife, in the old weather-box, had not
+less to do with each other than he and I. He made the furnace-fire and
+split the wood before daylight; then he went to sleep again, and slept
+late; then came for orders, with a red silk bandanna tied round his
+head, with his overalls on, and his dress-coat and spectacles off. If we
+happened to be interrupted, no one guessed that he was Frederic Ingham
+as well as I; and, in the neighborhood, there grew up an impression that
+the minister's Irishman worked day-times in the factory-village at New
+Coventry. After I had given him his orders, I never saw him till the
+next day.
+
+I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board.
+The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom
+sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under
+the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by
+being ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot
+help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four
+successive meetings, averaging four hours each,--wholly occupied in
+whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at the
+next, by force of three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third, thanks to
+two days' canvassing by Auchmuty and myself, begging men to come, we had
+sixty. Half the others were in Europe. But without a quorum we could do
+nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our four hours, and
+adjourned without any action. At the fourth meeting we had flagged, and
+only got fifty-nine together. But on the first appearance of my
+double,--whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the fifth meeting,--he was
+the _sixty-seventh_ man who entered the room. He was greeted with a
+storm of applause! The poor fellow had missed his way,--read the street
+signs ill through his spectacles (very ill, in fact, without them),--and
+had not dared to inquire. He entered the room,--finding the president
+and secretary holding to their chairs two judges of the Supreme Court,
+who were also members _ex officio_, and were begging leave to go away.
+On his entrance all was changed. _Presto_, the by-laws were suspended,
+and the Western property was given away. Nobody stopped to converse with
+him. He voted, as I had charged him to do, in every instance, with the
+minority. I won new laurels as a man of sense, though a little
+unpunctual,--and Dennis, _alias_ Ingham, returned to the parsonage,
+astonished to see with how little wisdom the world is governed. He cut a
+few of my parishioners in the street; but he had his glasses off, and I
+am known to be near-sighted. Eventually he recognized them more readily
+than I.
+
+I "set him again" at the exhibition of the New Coventry Academy; and
+here he undertook a "speaking part,"--as, in my boyish, worldly days, I
+remember the bills used to say of Mlle. Celeste. We are all trustees of
+the New Coventry Academy; and there has lately been "a good deal of
+feeling" because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend the
+exhibitions. It has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are
+leaning towards Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected these
+semiannual exhibitions, while there is no doubt that Auchmuty last year
+went to Commencement at Waterville. Now the head master at New Coventry
+is a real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he sees it, and
+often cracks etymologies with me,--so that, in strictness, I ought to go
+to their exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting through three long
+July days in that Academy chapel, following the programme from
+
+    TUESDAY MORNING. _English Composition._ "SUNSHINE." Miss Jones.
+
+round to
+
+    _Trio on Three Pianos._ Duel from the Opera of "Midshipman Easy."
+    _Marryat_.
+
+coming in at nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men who
+know the world is trying to go backward, and who would give their lives
+if they could help it on! Well! The double had succeeded so well at the
+Board, that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade of Plato, pardon!) He
+arrived early on Tuesday, when, indeed, few but mothers and clergymen
+are generally expected, and returned in the evening to us, covered with
+honors. He had dined at the right hand of the chairman, and he spoke in
+high terms of the repast. The chairman had expressed his interest in the
+French conversation. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis; and the
+poor chairman, abashed, supposed the accent had been wrong. At the end
+of the day, the gentlemen present had been called upon for
+speeches,--the Rev. Frederic Ingham first, as it happened; upon which
+Dennis had risen, and had said, "There has been so much said, and, on
+the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time." The girls
+were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the year before, had given them at
+this occasion a scolding on impropriety of behavior at lyceum lectures.
+They all declared Mr. Ingham was a love,--and _so_ handsome! (Dennis is
+good-looking.) Three of them, with arms behind the others' waists,
+followed him up to the wagon he rode home in; and a little girl with a
+blue sash had been sent to give him a rosebud. After this _début_ in
+speaking, he went to the exhibition for two days more, to the mutual
+satisfaction of all concerned. Indeed, Polly reported that he had
+pronounced the trustees' dinners of a higher grade than those of the
+parsonage. When the next term began, I found six of the Academy girls
+had obtained permission to come across the river and attend our church.
+But this arrangement did not long continue.
+
+After this he went to several Commencements for me, and ate the dinners
+provided; he sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions for
+me,--always voting judiciously, by the simple rule mentioned above, of
+siding with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had before been losing
+caste among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the associations of
+the body, began to rise in everybody's favor. "Ingham's a good
+fellow,--always on hand "; "never talks much, but does the right thing
+at the right time"; "is not as unpunctual as he used to be,--he comes
+early, and sits through to the end." "He has got over his old talkative
+habit, too. I spoke to a friend of his about it once; and I think Ingham
+took it kindly," etc., etc.
+
+This voting power of Dennis was particularly valuable at the quarterly
+meetings of the proprietors of the Naguadavick Ferry. My wife inherited
+from her father some shares in that enterprise, which is not yet fully
+developed, though it doubtless will become a very valuable property. The
+law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by proxy at such
+meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a "hens'-rights
+hen," transferred her stock to me. I, after going once, disliked it more
+than she. But Dennis went to the next meeting, and liked it very much.
+He said the arm-chairs were good, the collation good, and the free rides
+to stockholders pleasant. He was a little frightened when they first
+took him upon one of the ferry-boats, but after two or three quarterly
+meetings he became quite brave.
+
+Thus far I never had any difficulty with him. Indeed, being, as I
+implied, of that type which is called shiftless, he was only too happy
+to be told daily what to do, and to be charged not to be forthputting or
+in any way original in his discharge of that duty. He learned, however,
+to discriminate between the lines of his life, and very much preferred
+these stockholders' meetings and trustees' dinners and Commencement
+collations to another set of occasions, from which he used to beg off
+most piteously. Our excellent brother, Dr. Fillmore, had taken a notion
+at this time that our Sandemanian churches needed more expression of
+mutual sympathy. He insisted upon it that we were remiss. He said, that,
+if the Bishop came to preach at Naguadavick, all the Episcopal clergy of
+the neighborhood were present; if Dr. Pond came, all the Congregational
+clergymen turned out to hear him; if Dr. Nichols, all the Unitarians;
+and he thought we owed it to each other, that, whenever there was an
+occasional service at a Sandemanian church, the other brethren should
+all, if possible, attend. "It looked well," if nothing more. Now this
+really meant that I had not been to hear one of Dr. Fillmore's lectures
+on the Ethnology of Religion. He forgot that he did not hear one of my
+course on the "Sandemanianism of Anselm." But I felt badly when he said
+it; and afterwards I always made Dennis go to hear all the brethren
+preach, when I was not preaching myself. This was what he took
+exceptions to,--the only thing, as I said, which he ever did except to.
+Now came the advantage of his long morning-nap, and of the green tea
+with which Polly supplied the kitchen. But he would plead, so humbly, to
+be let off, only from one or two! I never excepted him, however. I knew
+the lectures were of value, and I thought it best he should be able to
+keep the connection.
+
+Polly is more rash than I am, as the reader has observed in the outset
+of this memoir. She risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own
+sex. Governor Gorges had always been very kind to us, and, when he gave
+his great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go. I
+was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's "Mystics," which Haliburton had
+just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to return the
+Governor's civility and Mrs. Gorges's, when they will be sure to ask why
+you are away!" Still I demurred, and at last she, with the wit of Eve
+and of Semiramis conjoined, let me off by saying that, if I would go in
+with her, and sustain the initial conversations with the Governor and
+the ladies staying there, she would risk Dennis for the rest of the
+evening. And that was just what we did. She took Dennis in training all
+that afternoon, instructed him in fashionable conversation, cautioned
+him against the temptations of the supper-table,--and at nine in the
+evening he drove us all down in the carryall. I made the grand
+star-_entrée_ with Polly and the pretty Walton girls, who were staying
+with us. We had put Dennis into a great rough top-coat, without his
+glasses: and the girls never dreamed, in the darkness, of looking at
+him. He sat in the carriage, at the door, while we entered. I did the
+agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced to her niece, Miss Fernanda; I
+complimented Judge Jeffries on his decision in the great case of
+D'Aulnay _vs._ Laconia Mining Company; I stepped into the dressing-room
+for a moment, stepped out for another, walked home after a nod with
+Dennis and tying the horse to a pump; and while I walked home, Mr.
+Frederic Ingham, my double, stepped in through the library into the
+Gorges's grand saloon.
+
+Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even
+here, where I have to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to
+fence our cave, she dies of laughing as she recalls it,--and says that
+single occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve that she
+is! She joined Dennis at the library-door, and in an instant presented
+him to Dr. Ochterlony, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in town, and
+was talking with her as Dennis came in. "Mr. Ingham would like to hear
+what you were telling us about your success among the German
+population." And Dennis bowed and said, in spite of a scowl from Polly,
+"I'm very glad you liked it." But Dr. Ochterlony did not observe, and
+plunged into the tide of explanation; Dennis listened like a
+prime-minister, and bowing like a mandarin, which is, I suppose, the
+same thing. Polly declared it was just like Haliburton's Latin
+conversation with the Hungarian minister, of which he is very fond of
+telling. "_Quĉne sit historia Reformationis in Ungariâ?_" quoth
+Haliburton, after some thought. And his _confrère_ replied gallantly,
+"_In seculo decimo tertio_," etc., etc., etc.; and from _decimo
+tertio_[P] to the nineteenth century and a half lasted till the oysters
+came. So was it that before Dr. Ochterlony came to the "success," or
+near it, Governor Gorges came to Dennis, and asked him to hand Mrs.
+Jeffries down to supper, a request which he heard with great joy.
+
+Polly was skipping round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty came
+to her "in pity for poor Ingham," who was so bored by the stupid
+pundit,--and Auchmuty could not understand why I stood it so long. But
+when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could not resist standing
+near them. He was a little flustered, till the sight of the eatables and
+drinkables gave him the same Mercian courage which it gave Diggory. A
+little excited then, he attempted one or two of his speeches to the
+Judge's lady. But little he knew how hard it was to get in even a
+_promptu_ there edgewise. "Very well, I thank you," said he, after the
+eating elements were adjusted; "and you?" And then did not he have to
+hear about the mumps, and the measles, and arnica, and belladonna, and
+chamomile-flower, and dodecatheon, till she changed oysters for salad;
+and then about the old practice and the new, and what her sister said,
+and what her sister's friend said, and what the physician to her
+sister's friend said, and then what was said by the brother of the
+sister of the physician of the friend of her sister, exactly as if it
+had been in Ollendorff? There was a moment's pause, as she declined
+Champagne. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis again, which he
+never should have said but to one who complimented a sermon. "Oh! you
+are so sharp, Mr. Ingham! No! I never drink any wine at all,--except
+sometimes in summer a little currant shrub,--from our own currants, you
+know. My own mother,--that is, I call her my own mother, because, you
+know, I do not remember," etc., etc., etc.; till they came to the
+candied orange at the end of the feast, when Dennis, rather confused,
+thought he must say something, and tried No. 4,--"I agree, in general,
+with my friend the other side of the room,"--which he never should have
+said but at a public meeting. But Mrs. Jeffries, who never listens
+expecting to understand, caught him up instantly with "Well, I'm sure my
+husband returns the compliment; he always agrees with you,--though we do
+worship with the Methodists; but you know, Mr. Ingham," etc., etc.,
+etc., till the move up-stairs; and as Dennis led her through the hall,
+he was scarcely understood by any but Polly, as he said, "There has been
+so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy
+the time."
+
+His great resource the rest of the evening was standing in the library,
+carrying on animated conversations with one and another in much the same
+way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine,
+that it is not necessary to finish your sentences in a crowd, but by a
+sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals. This, indeed, if your
+words fail you, answers even in public extempore speech, but better
+where other talking is going on. Thus: "We missed you at the Natural
+History Society, Ingham." Ingham replies, "I am very gligloglum, that
+is, that you were mmmmm." By gradually dropping the voice, the
+interlocutor is compelled to supply the answer. "Mrs. Ingham, I hope
+your friend Augusta is better." Augusta has not been ill. Polly cannot
+think of explaining, however, and answers, "Thank you, Ma'am; she is
+very rearason wewahwewoh," in lower and lower tones. And Mrs.
+Throckmorton, who forgot the subject of which she spoke as soon as she
+asked the question, is quite satisfied. Dennis could see into the
+card-room, and came to Polly to ask if he might not go and play
+all-fours. But, of course, she sternly refused. At midnight they came
+home delighted,--Polly, as I said, wild to tell me the story of the
+victory; only both the pretty Walton girls said, "Cousin Frederic, you
+did not come near me all the evening."
+
+We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real
+name was Frederic Ingham, as I have explained. When the election-day
+came round, however, I found that by some accident there was only one
+Frederic Ingham's name on the voting-list; and as I was quite busy that
+day in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I would forego
+my privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling Dennis that
+he might use the record on the voting-list, and vote. I gave him a
+ticket, which I told him he might use, if he liked to. That was that
+very sharp election in Maine which the readers of the Atlantic so well
+remember, and it had been intimated in public that the ministers would
+do well not to appear at the polls. Of course, after that, we had to
+appear by self or proxy. Still, Naguadavick was not then a city, and
+this standing in a double queue at town-meeting several hours to vote
+was a bore of the first water; and so when I found that there was but
+one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that one of us must give up, I
+stayed at home and finished the letters (which, indeed, procured for
+Fothergill his coveted appointment of Professor of Astronomy at
+Leavenworth), and I gave Dennis, as we called him, the chance. Something
+in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the Frederic Ingham
+name; and at the adjourned election, next week, Frederic Ingham was
+chosen to the legislature. Whether this was I or Dennis I never really
+knew. My friends seemed to think it was I; but I felt that as Dennis had
+done the popular thing, he was entitled to the honor; so I sent him to
+Augusta when the time came, and he took the oaths. And a very valuable
+member he made. They appointed him on the Committee on Parishes; but I
+wrote a letter for him, resigning, on the ground that he took an
+interest in our claim to the stumpage in the minister's sixteenths of
+Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range. He never made any speeches, and
+always voted with the minority, which was what he was sent to do. He
+made me and himself a great many good friends, some of whom I did not
+afterwards recognize as quickly as Dennis did my parishioners. On one or
+two occasions, when there was wood to saw at home, I kept him at home;
+but I took those occasions to go to Augusta myself. Finding myself often
+in his vacant seat at these times, I watched the proceedings with a good
+deal of care; and once was so much excited that I delivered my somewhat
+celebrated speech on the Central School-District question, a speech of
+which the "State of Maine" printed some extra copies. I believe there is
+no formal rule permitting strangers to speak; but no one objected.
+
+Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this
+session led me to think that if, by some such "general understanding" as
+the reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress
+might leave a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer to
+roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears stereotyped
+in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we should gain
+decidedly in working-power. As things stand, the saddest State prison I
+ever visit is that Representatives' Chamber in Washington. If a man
+leaves for an hour, twenty "correspondents" may be howling, "Where was
+Mr. Pendergrast when the Oregon bill passed?" And if poor Pendergrast
+stays there! Certainly the worst use you can make of a man is to put him
+in prison!
+
+I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to
+this expedient long ago. Dumas's novel of the "Iron Mask" turns on the
+brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth's double. There seems little
+doubt, in our own history, that it was the real General Pierce who shed
+tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of
+the people there, and only General Pierce's double who had given the
+orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day. My
+charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who
+preaches his afternoon sermons for him. This is the reason that the
+theology often varies so from that of the forenoon. But that double is
+almost as charming as the original. Some of the most well defined men,
+who stand out most prominently on the background of history, are in this
+way stereoscopic men, who owe their distinct relief to the slight
+differences between the doubles. All this I know. My present suggestion
+is simply the great extension of the system, so that all public
+machine-work may be done by it.
+
+But I see I loiter on my story, which is rushing to the plunge. Let me
+stop an instant more, however, to recall, were it only to myself, that
+charming year while all was yet well. After the double had become a
+matter of course, for nearly twelve months before he undid me, what a
+year it was! Full of active life, full of happy love, of the hardest
+work, of the sweetest sleep, and the fulfilment of so many of the fresh
+aspirations and dreams of boyhood! Dennis went to every school-committee
+meeting, and sat through all those late wranglings which used to keep me
+up till midnight and awake till morning. He attended all the lectures to
+which foreign exiles sent me tickets begging me to come for the love of
+Heaven and of Bohemia. He accepted and used all the tickets for charity
+concerts which were sent to me. He appeared everywhere where it was
+specially desirable that "our denomination," or "our party," or "our
+class," or "our family," or "our street," or "our town," or "our
+country," or "our State," should be fully represented. And I fell back
+to that charming life which in boyhood one dreams of, when he supposes
+he shall do his own duty and make his own sacrifices, without being tied
+up with those of other people. My rusty Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek,
+Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English began to take
+polish. Heavens! how little I had done with them while I attended to my
+_public_ duties! My calls on my parishioners became the friendly,
+frequent, homelike sociabilities they were meant to be, instead of the
+hard work of a man goaded to desperation by the sight of his lists of
+arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday
+the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to
+a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand
+friend;--I, never tired on Sunday, and in condition to leave the sermon
+at home, if I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should do
+always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a sensible people, like
+ours,--really more attached to their clergy than they were in the lost
+days, when the Mathers and Nortons were noblemen,--should choose to
+neutralize so much of their ministers' lives, and destroy so much of
+their early training, by this undefined passion for seeing them in
+public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a spirited
+Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is put on the Poor
+Board, every other denomination must have a minister there, lest the
+poorhouse be changed into St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian is
+chosen president of the Young Men's Library, there must be a Methodist
+vice-president and a Baptist secretary. And if a Universalist
+Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates, the next
+Congregationalist Sabbath-School Conference must be as large, "lest
+'they'--whoever _they_ may be--should think 'we'--whoever _we_ may
+be--are going down."
+
+Freed from these necessities, that happy year I began to know my wife by
+sight. We saw each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when Dennis
+was in the study explaining to map-peddlers that, I had eleven maps of
+Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents that I would see them
+hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their text-books into the
+schools,--she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy
+days,--and in these of our log-cabin again. But all this could not
+last,--and at length poor Dennis, my double, overtasked in turn, undid
+me.
+
+It was thus it happened. There is an excellent fellow, once a
+minister,--I will call him Isaacs,--who deserves well of the world till
+he dies, and after, because he once, in a real exigency, did the right
+thing, in the right way, at the right time, as no other man could do it.
+In the world's great football match, the ball by chance found him
+loitering on the outside of the field; he closed with it, "camped" it,
+charged it home,--yes, right through the other side,--not disturbed, not
+frightened by his own success,--and breathless found himself a great
+man, as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did not find himself a
+rich man; and the football has never come in his way again. From that
+moment to this moment he has been of no use, that one can see at all.
+Still, for that great act we speak of Isaacs gratefully and remember him
+kindly; and he forges on, hoping to meet the football somewhere again.
+In that vague hope, he had arranged a "movement" for a general
+organization of the human family into Debating-Clubs, County Societies,
+State Unions, etc., etc., with a view of inducing all children to take
+hold of the handles of their knives and forks, instead of the metal.
+Children have bad habits in that way. The movement, of course, was
+absurd; but we all did our best to forward, not it, but him. It came
+time for the annual county-meeting on this subject to be held at
+Naguadavick. Isaacs came round, good fellow! to arrange for it,--got the
+town-hall, got the Governor to preside (the saint!--he ought to have
+triplet doubles provided him by law), and then came to get me to speak.
+"No," I said, "I would not speak, if ten Governors presided. I do not
+believe in the enterprise. If I spoke, it should be to say children
+should take hold of the prongs of the forks and the blades of the
+knives. I would subscribe ten dollars, but I would not speak a mill." So
+poor Isaacs went his way sadly, to coax Auchmuty to speak, and
+Delafield. I went out. Not long after he came back, and told Polly that
+they had promised to speak, the Governor would speak, and he himself
+would close with the quarterly report, and some interesting anecdotes
+regarding Miss Biffin's way of handling her knife and Mr. Nellis's way
+of footing his fork. "Now if Mr. Ingham will only come and sit on the
+platform, he need not say one word; but it will show well in the
+paper,--it will show that the Sandemanians take as much interest in the
+movement as the Armenians or the Mesopotamians, and will be a great
+favor to me." Polly, good soul! was tempted, and she promised. She knew
+Mrs. Isaacs was starving, and the babies,--she knew Dennis was at
+home,--and she promised! Night came, and I returned. I heard her story.
+I was sorry. I doubted. But Polly had promised to beg me, and I dared
+all! I told Dennis to hold his peace, under all circumstances, and sent
+him down.
+
+It was not half an hour more before he returned, wild with
+excitement,--in a perfect Irish fury,--which it was long before I
+understood. But I knew at once that he had undone me!
+
+What happened was this. The audience got together, attracted by Governor
+Gorges's name. There were a thousand people. Poor Gorges was late from
+Augusta. They became impatient. He came in direct from the train at
+last, really ignorant of the object of the meeting. He opened it in the
+fewest possible words, and said other gentlemen were present who would
+entertain them better than he. The audience were disappointed, but
+waited. The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, "The Honorable Mr.
+Delafield will address you." Delafield had forgotten the knives and
+forks, and was playing the Ruy Lopez opening at the chess-club. "The
+Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will address you." Auchmuty had promised to speak
+late, and was at the school-committee. "I see Dr. Stearns in the hall;
+perhaps he will say a word." Dr. Stearns said he had come to listen and
+not to speak The Governor and Isaacs whispered. The Governor looked at
+Dennis, who was resplendent on the platform; but Isaacs, to give him his
+due, shook his head. But the look was enough. A miserable lad, ill-bred,
+who had once been in Boston, thought it would sound well to call for me,
+and peeped out, "Ingham!" A few more wretches cried, "Ingham! Ingham!"
+Still Isaacs was firm; but the Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a
+row, knew I would say something, and said, "Our friend Mr. Ingham is
+always prepared; and, though we had not relied upon him, he will say a
+word perhaps." Applause followed, which turned Dennis's head. He rose,
+fluttered, and tried No. 3: "There has been so much said, and, on the
+whole, so well said, that I will not longer occupy the time!" and sat
+down, looking for his hat; for things seemed squally. But the people
+cried, "Go on! go on!" and some applauded. Dennis, still confused, but
+flattered by the applause, to which neither he nor I are used, rose
+again, and this time tried No. 2: "I am very glad you liked it!" in a
+sonorous, clear delivery. My best friends stared. All the people who did
+not know me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening;
+the Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone!
+Alas, it was I! A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, "It's all an
+infernal humbug," just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded silence,
+and tried No. 4: "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of
+the room." The poor Governor doubted his senses and crossed to stop
+him,--not in time, however. The same gallery-boy shouted, "How's your
+mother?" and Dennis, now completely lost, tried, as his last shot, No.
+1, vainly: "Very well, thank you; and you?"
+
+I think I must have been undone already. But Dennis, like another
+Lockhard, chose "to make sicker."
+
+The audience rose in a whirl of amazement, rage, and sorrow. Some other
+impertinence, aimed at Dennis, broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish,
+he delivered himself of an address to the gallery, inviting any person
+who wished to fight to come down and do so,--stating, that they were all
+dogs and cowards and the sons of dogs and cowards,--that he would take
+any five of them single-handed. "Shure, I have said all his Riverence
+and the Misthress bade me say," cried he, in defiance; and, seizing the
+Governor's cane from his hand, brandished it, quarter-staff fashion,
+above his head. He was, indeed, got from the hall only with the greatest
+difficulty by the Governor, the City Marshal, who had been called in,
+and the Superintendent of my Sunday-School.
+
+The universal impression, of course, was, that the Rev. Frederic Ingham
+had lost all command of himself in some of those haunts of intoxication
+which for fifteen years I have been laboring to destroy. Till this
+moment, indeed, that is the impression in Naguadavick. This number of
+the Atlantic will relieve from it a hundred friends of mine who have
+been sadly wounded by that notion now for years; but I shall not be
+likely ever to show my head there again.
+
+No! My double has undone me.
+
+We left town at seven the next morning. I came to No. 9, in the Third
+Range, and settled on the Minister's Lot. In the new towns in Maine, the
+first settled minister has a gift of a hundred acres of land.
+
+I am the first settled minister in No. 9. My wife and little Paulina
+are my parish. We raise corn enough to live on in summer. We kill bear's
+meat enough to carbonize it in winter. I work on steadily on my "Traces
+of Sandemanianism in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries," which I hope to
+persuade Phillips, Sampson, & Co. to publish next year. We are very
+happy, but the world thinks we are undone.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN OF THE PUBLIC
+
+
+[This story originated in the advertisement of the humbug which it
+describes. Some fifteen or twenty years since, when gift enterprises
+rose to one of their climaxes, a gift of a large sum of money, I think
+$10,000, was offered in New York to the most successful ticket-holder in
+some scheme, and one of $5,000 to the second. It was arranged that one
+of these parties should be a man and the other a woman; and the amiable
+suggestion was added, on the part of the undertaker of the enterprise,
+that if the gentleman and lady who drew these prizes liked each other
+sufficiently well when the distribution was made, they might regard the
+decision as a match made for them in Heaven, and take the money as the
+dowry of the bride. This thoroughly practical, and, at the same time,
+thoroughly absurd suggestion, arrested the attention of a distinguished
+story-teller, a dear friend of mine, who proposed to me that we should
+each of us write the history of one of the two successful parties, to be
+woven together by their union at the end. The plan, however, lay latent
+for years,--the gift enterprise of course blew up,--and it was not until
+the summer of 1862 that I wrote my half of the proposed story, with the
+hope of eliciting the other half. My friend's more important
+engagements, however, have thus far kept Fausta's detailed biography
+from the light. I sent my half to Mr. Frank Leslie, in competition for a
+premium offered by him, as is stated in the second chapter of the story.
+And the story found such favor in the eyes of the judges, that it
+received one of his second premiums. The first was very properly awarded
+to Miss Louisa Alcott, for a story of great spirit and power. "The
+Children of the Public" was printed in Frank Leslie's Illustrated
+Newspaper for January 24 and January 31, 1863. The moral which it tries
+to illustrate, which is, I believe, an important one, was thus commended
+to the attention of the very large circle of the readers of that
+journal,--a journal to which I am eager to say I think this nation has
+been very largely indebted for the loyalty, the good sense, and the high
+tone which seem always to characterize it. During the war, the pictorial
+journals had immense influence in the army, and they used this influence
+with an undeviating regard to the true honor of the country.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE PORK-BARREL.
+
+
+"Felix," said my wife to me, as I came home to-night, "you will have to
+go to the pork-barrel."
+
+"Are you quite sure," said I,--"quite sure? 'Woe to him,' says the
+oracle, 'who goes to the pork-barrel before the moment of his need.'"
+
+"And woe to him, say I," replied my brave wife,--"woe and disaster to
+him; but the moment of our need has come. The figures are here, and you
+shall see. I have it all in black and in white."
+
+And so it proved, indeed, that when Miss Sampson, the nurse, was paid
+for her month's service, and when the boys had their winter boots, and
+when my life-insurance assessment was provided for, and the new payment
+for the insurance on the house,--when the taxes were settled with the
+collector (and my wife had to lay aside double for the war),--when the
+pew-rent was paid for the year, and the water-rate--we must have to
+start with, on the 1st of January, one hundred dollars. This, as we
+live, would pay, in cash, the butcher, and the grocer, and the baker,
+and all the dealers in things that perish, and would buy the omnibus
+tickets, and recompense Bridget till the 1st of April. And at my house,
+if we can see forward three months we are satisfied. But, at my house,
+we are never satisfied if there is a credit at any store for us. We are
+sworn to pay as we go. We owe no man anything.
+
+So it was that my wife said: "Felix, you will have to go to the
+pork-barrel."
+
+This is the story of the pork-barrel.
+
+It happened once, in a little parish in the Green Mountains, that the
+deacon reported to Parson Plunkett, that, as he rode to meeting by
+Chung-a-baug Pond, he saw Michael Stowers fishing for pickerel through a
+hole in the ice on the Sabbath day. The parson made note of the
+complaint, and that afternoon drove over to the pond in his "one-horse
+shay." He made his visit, not unacceptable, on the poor Stowers
+household, and then crossed lots to the place where he saw poor Michael
+hoeing. He told Michael that he was charged with Sabbath breaking, and
+bade him plead to the charge. And poor Mike, like a man, plead guilty;
+but, in extenuation, he said that there was nothing to eat in the
+house, and rather than see wife and children faint, he had cut a hole in
+the ice, had put in his hook again and again, and yet again, and coming
+home had delighted the waiting family with an unexpected breakfast. The
+good parson made no rebuke, nodded pensive, and drove straightway to the
+deacon's door.
+
+"Deacon," said he, "what meat did you eat for breakfast yesterday?"
+
+The deacon's family had eaten salt pork, fried.
+
+"And where did you get the pork, Deacon?"
+
+The Deacon stared, but said he had taken it from his pork-barrel.
+
+"Yes, Deacon," said the old man; "I supposed so. I have been to see
+Brother Stowers, to talk to him about his Sabbath-breaking; and, Deacon,
+I find the pond is his pork-barrel."
+
+The story is a favorite with me and with Fausta. But "woe," says the
+oracle, "to him who goes to the pork-barrel before the moment of his
+need." And to that "woe" both Fausta and I say "amen." For we know that
+there is no fish in our pond for spend-thrifts or for lazy-bones; none
+for people who wear gold chains or Attleborough jewelry; none for people
+who are ashamed of cheap carpets or wooden mantelpieces. Not for those
+who run in debt will the fish bite; nor for those who pretend to be
+richer or better or wiser than they are. No! But we have found, in our
+lives, that in a great democracy there reigns a great and gracious
+sovereign. We have found that this sovereign, in a reckless and
+unconscious way, is, all the time, making the most profuse provision for
+all the citizens. We have found that those who are not too grand to
+trust him fare as well as they deserve. We have found, on the other
+hand, that those who lick his feet or flatter his follies fare worst of
+living men. We find that those who work honestly, and only seek a man's
+fair average of life, or a woman's, get that average, though sometimes
+by the most singular experiences in the long run. And thus we find that,
+when an extraordinary contingency arises in life, as just now in ours,
+we have only to go to our pork-barrel, and the fish rises to our hook or
+spear.
+
+The sovereign brings this about in all sorts of ways, but he does not
+fail, if, without flattering him, you trust him. Of this sovereign the
+name is--"the Public." Fausta and I are apt to call ourselves his
+children, and so I name this story of our lives,
+
+"THE CHILDREN OF THE PUBLIC."
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHERE IS THE BARREL?
+
+
+"Where is the barrel this time, Fausta?" said I, after I had added and
+subtracted her figures three times, to be sure she had carried her tens
+and hundreds rightly. For the units, in such accounts, in face of Dr.
+Franklin, I confess I do not care.
+
+"The barrel," said she, "is in FRANK LESLIE'S OFFICE. Here is the mark!"
+and she handed me FRANK LESLIE'S NEWSPAPER, with a mark at this
+announcement:--
+
+    $100
+
+    for the best Short Tale of from one to two pages of FRANK LESLIE'S
+    ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER, to be sent in on or before the 1st of
+    November, 1862.
+
+"There is another barrel," she said, "with $5,000 in it, and another
+with $1,000. But we do not want $5,000 or $1,000. There is a little
+barrel with $50 in it. But see here, with all this figuring, I cannot
+make it do. I have stopped the gas now, and I have turned the children's
+coats,--I wish you would see how well Robert's looks,--and I have had a
+new tile put in the cook-stove, instead of buying that lovely new
+'Banner.' But all will not do. We must go to this barrel."
+
+"And what is to be the hook, darling, this time?" said I.
+
+"I have been thinking of it all day. I hope you will not hate it,--I
+know you will not like it exactly; but why not write down just the whole
+story of what it is to be 'Children of the Public'; how we came to live
+here, you know; how we built the house, and--all about it?"
+
+"How Felix knew Fausta," said I; "and how Fausta first met Felix,
+perhaps; and when they first kissed each other; and what she said to
+him when they did so."
+
+"Tell that, if you dare," said Fausta; "but perhaps--the oracle says we
+must not be proud--perhaps you might tell just a little. You
+know--really almost everybody is named Carter now; and I do not believe
+the neighbors will notice,--perhaps they won't read the paper. And if
+they do notice it, I don't care! There!"
+
+"It will not be so bad as--"
+
+But I never finished the sentence. An imperative gesture closed my lips
+physically as well as metaphorically, and I was glad to turn the subject
+enough to sit down to tea with the children. After the bread and butter
+we agreed what we might and what we might not tell, and then I wrote
+what the reader is now to see.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MY LIFE TO ITS CRISIS.
+
+
+New-Yorkers of to-day see so many processions, and live through so many
+sensations, and hurrah for so many heroes in every year, that it is only
+the oldest of fogies who tells you of the triumphant procession of
+steamboats which, in the year 1824, welcomed General Lafayette on his
+arrival from his tour through the country he had so nobly served.
+
+But, if the reader wishes to lengthen out this story he may button the
+next silver-gray friend he meets, and ask him to tell of the broken
+English and broken French of the Marquis, of Levasseur, and the rest of
+them; of the enthusiasm of the people and the readiness of the visitors,
+and he will please bear in mind that of all that am I.
+
+For it so happened that on the morning when, for want of better lions to
+show, the mayor and governor and the rest of them took the Marquis and
+his secretary, and the rest of them, to see the orphan asylum in Deering
+Street,--as they passed into the first ward, after having had "a little
+refreshment" in the managers' room, Sally Eaton, the head nurse, dropped
+the first courtesy to them, and Sally Eaton, as it happened, held me
+screaming in her arms. I had been sent to the asylum that morning with a
+paper pinned to my bib, which said my name was Felix Carter.
+
+"Eet ees verra fine," said the Marquis, smiling blandly.
+
+"Ràvissant!" said Levasseur, and he dropped a five-franc piece into
+Sally Eaton's hand. And so the procession of exhibiting managers talking
+bad French, and of exhibited Frenchmen talking bad English, passed on;
+all but good old Elkanah Ogden--God bless him!--who happened to have
+come there with the governor's party, and who loitered a minute to talk
+with Sally Eaton about me.
+
+Years afterwards she told me how the old man kissed me, how his eyes
+watered when he asked my story, how she told again of the moment when I
+was heard screaming on the doorstep, and how she offered to go and bring
+the paper which had been pinned to my bib. But the old man said it was
+no matter,--"only we would have called him Marquis," said he, "if his
+name was not provided for him. We must not leave him here," he said; "he
+shall grow up a farmer's lad, and not a little cockney." And so, instead
+of going the grand round of infirmaries, kitchens, bakeries, and
+dormitories with the rest, the good old soul went back into the
+managers' room, and wrote at the moment a letter to John Myers, who took
+care of his wild land in St. Lawrence County for him, to ask him if Mrs.
+Myers would not bring up an orphan baby by hand for him; and if, both
+together, they would not train this baby till he said "stop"; if, on the
+other hand, he allowed them, in the yearly account, a hundred dollars
+each year for the charge.
+
+Anybody who knows how far a hundred dollars goes in the backwoods, in
+St. Lawrence County, will know that any settler would be glad to take a
+ward so recommended. Anybody who knew Betsy Myers as well as old Elkanah
+Ogden did, would know she would have taken any orphan brought to her
+door, even if he were not recommended at all.
+
+So it happened, thanks to Lafayette and the city council! that I had not
+been a "Child of the Public" a day, before, in its great, clumsy,
+liberal way, it had provided for me. I owed my healthy, happy home of
+the next fourteen years in the wilderness to those marvellous habits,
+which I should else call absurd, with which we lionize strangers.
+Because our hospitals and poorhouses are the largest buildings we have,
+we entertain the Prince of Wales and Jenny Lind alike, by showing them
+crazy people and paupers. Easy enough to laugh at is the display; but
+if, dear Public, it happen, that by such a habit you ventilate your
+Bridewell or your Bedlam, is not the ventilation, perhaps, a
+compensation for the absurdity? I do not know if Lafayette was any the
+better for his seeing the Deering Street Asylum; but I do know I was.
+
+This is no history of my life. It is only an illustration of one of its
+principles. I have no anecdotes of wilderness life to tell, and no
+sketch of the lovely rugged traits of John and Betsy Myers,--my real
+father and mother. I have no quest for the pretended parents, who threw
+me away in my babyhood, to record. They closed accounts with me when
+they left me on the asylum steps, and I with them. I grew up with such
+schooling as the public gave,--ten weeks in winter always, and ten in
+summer, till I was big enough to work on the farm,--better periods of
+schools, I hold, than on the modern systems. Mr. Ogden I never saw.
+Regularly he allowed for me the hundred a year till I was nine years
+old, and then suddenly he died, as the reader perhaps knows. But John
+Myers kept me as his son, none the less. I knew no change until, when I
+was fourteen, he thought it time for me to see the world, and sent me to
+what, in those days, was called a "Manual-Labor School."
+
+There was a theory coming up in those days, wholly unfounded in
+physiology, that if a man worked five hours with his hands, he could
+study better in the next five. It is all nonsense. Exhaustion is
+exhaustion; and if you exhaust a vessel by one stopcock, nothing is
+gained or saved by closing that and opening another. The old up-country
+theory is the true one. Study ten weeks and chop wood fifteen; study ten
+more and harvest fifteen. But the "Manual-Labor School" offered itself
+for really no pay, only John Myers and I carried over, I remember, a
+dozen barrels of potatoes when I went there with my books. The school
+was kept at Roscius, and if I would work in the carpenter's shop and on
+the school farm five hours, why they would feed me and teach me all they
+knew in what I had of the day beside.
+
+"Felix," said John, as he left me, "I do not suppose this is the best
+school in the world, unless you make it so. But I do suppose you can
+make it so. If you and I went whining about, looking for the best school
+in the world, and for somebody to pay your way through it, I should die,
+and you would lose your voice with whining, and we should not find one
+after all. This is what the public happens to provide for you and me. We
+won't look a gift-horse in the mouth. Get on his back, Felix; groom him
+well as you can when you stop, feed him when you can, and at all events
+water him well and take care of him well. My last advice to you, Felix,
+is to take what is offered you, and never complain because nobody offers
+more."
+
+Those words are to be cut on my seal-ring, if I ever have one, and if
+Dr. Anthon or Professor Webster will put them into short enough Latin
+for me. That is the motto of the "Children of the Public."
+
+John Myers died before that term was out. And my more than mother,
+Betsy, went back to her friends in Maine. After the funeral I never saw
+them more. How I lived from that moment to what Fausta and I call the
+Crisis is nobody's concern. I worked in the shop at the school, or on
+the farm. Afterwards I taught school in neighboring districts. I never
+bought a ticket in a lottery or a raffle. But whenever there was a
+chance to do an honest stroke of work, I did it. I have walked fifteen
+miles at night to carry an election return to the _Tribune's_ agent at
+Gouverneur. I have turned out in the snow to break open the road when
+the supervisor could not find another man in the township.
+
+When Sartain started his magazine, I wrote an essay in competition for
+his premiums, and the essay earned its hundred dollars. When the
+managers of the "Orphan Home," in Baltimore, offered their prizes for
+papers on bad boys, I wrote for one of them, and that helped me on four
+hard months. There was no luck in those things. I needed the money, and
+I put my hook into the pork-barrel,--that is, I trusted the Public. I
+never had but one stroke of luck in my life. I wanted a new pair of
+boots badly. I was going to walk to Albany, to work in the State library
+on the history of the Six Nations, which had an interest for me. I did
+not have a dollar. Just then there passed Congress the bill dividing the
+surplus revenue. The State of New York received two or three millions,
+and divided it among the counties. The county of St. Lawrence divided it
+among the townships, and the township of Roscius divided it among the
+voters. Two dollars and sixty cents of Uncle Sam's money came to me, and
+with that money on my feet I walked to Albany. That I call luck! How
+many fools had to assent in an absurdity before I could study the
+history of the Six Nations!
+
+But one instance told in detail is better than a thousand told in
+general, for the illustration of a principle. So I will detain you no
+longer from the history of what Fausta and I call
+
+THE CRISIS.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CRISIS.
+
+
+I was at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when
+some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great
+financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us
+all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan
+Whittemore--a real good fellow, who used to cover the hammers with
+leather--came to me the day the shop was closed, and told me he was
+going to take the chance to go to Europe. He was going to the Musical
+Conservatory at Leipsic, if he could. He would work his passage out as a
+stoker. He would wash himself for three or four days at Bremen, and then
+get work, if he could, with Voightlander or Von Hammer till he could
+enter the Conservatory. By way of preparation for this he wanted me to
+sell him my Adler's German Dictionary.
+
+"I've nothing to give you for it, Felix, but this foolish thing,--it is
+one of Burrham's tickets,--which I bought in a frolic the night of our
+sleigh-ride. I'll transfer it to you."
+
+I told Jonathan he might have the dictionary and welcome. He was doing a
+sensible thing, and he would use it twenty times as much as I should. As
+for the ticket, he had better keep it. I did not want it. But I saw he
+would feel better if I took it,--so he indorsed it to me.
+
+Now the reader must know that this Burrham was a man who had got hold of
+one corner of the idea of what the Public could do for its children. He
+had found out that there were a thousand people who would be glad to
+make the tour of the mountains and the lakes every summer if they could
+do it for half-price. He found out that the railroad companies were glad
+enough to put the price down if they could be sure of the thousand
+people. He mediated between the two, and so "cheap excursions" came into
+being. They are one of the gifts the Public gives its children. Rising
+from step to step, Burrham had, just before the great financial crisis,
+conceived the idea of a great cheap combination, in which everybody was
+to receive a magazine for a year and a cyclopĉdia, both at half-price;
+and not only so, but the money that was gained in the combination was to
+be given by lot to two ticket-holders, one a man and one a woman, for
+their dowry in marriage. I dare say the reader remembers the prospectus.
+It savors too much of the modern "Gift Enterprise" to be reprinted in
+full; but it had this honest element, that everybody got more than he
+could get for his money in retail. I have my magazine, the old _Boston
+Miscellany_, to this day, and I just now looked out Levasseur's name in
+my cyclopĉdia; and, as you will see, I have reason to know that all the
+other subscribers got theirs.
+
+One of the tickets for these books, for which Whittemore had given five
+good dollars, was what he gave to me for my dictionary. And so we
+parted. I loitered at Attica, hoping for a place where I could put in my
+oar. But my hand was out at teaching, and in a time when all the world's
+veneers of different kinds were ripping off, nobody wanted me to put on
+more of my kind,--so that my cash ran low. I would not go in debt,--that
+is a thing I never did. More honest, I say, to go to the poorhouse, and
+make the Public care for its child there, than to borrow what you cannot
+pay. But I did not come quite to that, as you shall see.
+
+I was counting up my money one night,--and it was easily done,--when I
+observed that the date on this Burrham order was the 15th of October,
+and it occurred to me that it was not quite a fortnight before those
+books were to be delivered. They were to be delivered at Castle Garden,
+at New York; and the thought struck me that I might go to New York, try
+my chance there for work, and at least see the city, which I had never
+seen, and get my cyclopĉdia and magazine. It was the least offer the
+Public ever made to me; but just then the Public was in a collapse, and
+the least was better than nothing. The plan of so long a journey was
+Quixotic enough, and I hesitated about it a good deal. Finally I came to
+this resolve: I would start in the morning to walk to the lock-station
+at Brockport on the canal. If a boat passed that night where they would
+give me my fare for any work I could do for them, I would go to Albany.
+If not, I would walk back to Lockport the next day, and try my fortune
+there. This gave me, for my first day's enterprise, a foot journey of
+about twenty-five miles. It was out of the question, with my finances,
+for me to think of compassing the train.
+
+Every point of life is a pivot on which turns the whole action of our
+after-lives; and so, indeed, of the after-lives of the whole world. But
+we are so pur-blind that we only see this of certain special enterprises
+and endeavors, which we therefore call critical. I am sure I see it of
+that twenty-five miles of fresh autumnal walking. I was in tiptop
+spirits. I found the air all oxygen, and everything "all right." I did
+not loiter, and I did not hurry. I swung along with the feeling that
+every nerve and muscle drew, as in the trades a sailor feels of every
+rope and sail. And so I was not tired, not thirsty, till the brook
+appeared where I was to drink; nor hungry till twelve o'clock came, when
+I was to dine. I called myself as I walked "The Child of Good Fortune,"
+because the sun was on my right quarter, as the sun should be when you
+walk, because the rain of yesterday had laid the dust for me, and the
+frost of yesterday had painted the hills for me, and the northwest wind
+cooled the air for me. I came to Wilkie's Cross-Roads just in time to
+meet the Claremont baker and buy my dinner loaf of him. And when my walk
+was nearly done, I came out on the low bridge at Sewell's, which is a
+drawbridge, just before they raised it for a passing boat, instead of
+the moment after. Because I was all right I felt myself and called
+myself "The Child of Good Fortune." Dear reader, in a world made by a
+loving Father, we are all of us children of good fortune, if we only
+have wit enough to find it out, as we stroll along.
+
+The last stroke of good fortune which that day had for me was the
+solution of my question whether or no I would go to Babylon. I was to go
+if any good-natured boatman would take me. This is a question, Mr.
+Millionnaire, more doubtful to those who have not drawn their dividends
+than to those who have. As I came down the village street at Brockport,
+I could see the horses of a boat bound eastward, led along from level to
+level at the last lock; and, in spite of my determination not to hurry,
+I put myself on the long, loping trot which the St. Regis Indians taught
+me, that I might overhaul this boat before she got under way at her new
+speed. I came out on the upper gate of the last lock just as she passed
+out from the lower gate. The horses were just put on, and a reckless boy
+gave them their first blow after two hours of rest and corn. As the
+heavy boat started off under the new motion, I saw, and her skipper saw
+at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope of his, which had lain
+coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length. The outer
+end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder,
+and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a
+hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was
+running out, and at the call of the skipper one of them condescended to
+throw the loop overboard, but he did it so carelessly that the lazy rope
+rolled over into the lock, and the loop caught on one of the valve-irons
+of the upper gate. The whole was the business of an instant, of course.
+But the poor skipper saw, what we did not, that the coil of the rope on
+deck was foul, and so entangled round his long tiller, that ten seconds
+would do one of three things,--they would snap his new rope in two,
+which was a trifle, or they would wrench his tiller-head off the rudder,
+which would cost him an hour to mend, or they would upset those two
+horses, at this instant on a trot, and put into the canal the rowdy
+youngster who had started them. It was this complex certainty which gave
+fire to the double cries which he addressed aft to us on the lock, and
+forward to the magnet boy, whose indifferent intelligence at that moment
+drew him along.
+
+I was stepping upon the gate-head to walk across it. It took but an
+instant, not nearly all the ten seconds, to swing down by my arms into
+the lock, keeping myself hanging by my hands, to catch with my right
+foot the bight of the rope and lift it off the treacherous iron, to kick
+the whole into the water, and then to scramble up the wet lock-side
+again. I got a little wet, but that was nothing. I ran down the
+tow-path, beckoned to the skipper, who sheered his boat up to the shore,
+and I jumped on board.
+
+At that moment, reader, Fausta was sitting in a yellow chair on the
+deck of that musty old boat, crocheting from a pattern in _Grodey's
+Lady's Book_. I remember it as I remember my breakfast of this morning.
+Not that I fell in love with her, nor did I fall in love with my
+breakfast; but I knew she was there. And that was the first time I ever
+saw her. It is many years since, and I have seen her every day from that
+evening to this evening. But I had then no business with her. My affair
+was with him whom I have called the skipper, by way of adapting this
+fresh-water narrative to ears accustomed to Marryat and Tom Cringle. I
+told him that I had to go to New York; that I had not time to walk, and
+had not money to pay; that I should like to work my passage to Troy, if
+there were any way in which I could; and to ask him this I had come on
+board.
+
+"Waal," said the skipper, "'taint much that is to be done, and Zekiel
+and I calc'late to do most of that and there's that blamed boy beside--"
+
+This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who
+are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as
+men take to flagroot who are abandoning tobacco.
+
+"He ain't good for nothin', as you see," continued the skipper
+meditatively, "and you air, anybody can see that," he added. "Ef you've
+mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are
+too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride. I guess
+where there's room for three in the bunks there's room for four. 'Taint
+everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat as you
+did."
+
+From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we
+travelled farther, that but for the timely assistance I had rendered him
+I should have plead for my passage in vain.
+
+This was my introduction to Fausta. That is to say, she heard the whole
+of the conversation. The formal introduction, which is omitted in no
+circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place
+at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with her
+husband, brought in the flapjacks from the kitchen. "Miss Jones," said
+Grills, as I came into the meal, leaving Zekiel at the tiller,--"Miss
+Jones, this is a young man who is going to Albany. I don't rightly know
+how to call your name, sir." I said my name was Carter. Then he said,
+"Mr. Carter, this is Miss Jones. Mrs. Grills, Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter,
+Mrs. Grills. She is my wife." And so our _partie carrée_ was established
+for the voyage.
+
+In these days there are few people who know that a journey on a canal is
+the pleasantest journey in the world. A canal has to go through fine
+scenery. It cannot exist unless it follow through the valley of a
+stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not
+know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded
+from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or
+you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar,
+without one hint of inconvenience. At a "low bridge" you duck your head
+lest you lose your hat,--and that reminder teaches you that you are
+human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at the memento. For the
+rest of the time you journey, if you are "all right" within, in elysium.
+
+I rode one of those horses perhaps two or three hours a day. At locks I
+made myself generally useful. At night I walked the deck till one
+o'clock, with my pipe or without it, to keep guard against the
+lock-thieves. The skipper asked me sometimes, after he found I could
+"cipher," to disentangle some of the knots in his bills of lading for
+him. But all this made but a little inroad in those lovely autumn days,
+and for the eight days that we glided along,--there is one blessed level
+which is seventy miles long,--I spent most of my time with Fausta. We
+walked together on the tow-path to get our appetites for dinner and for
+supper. At sunrise I always made a cruise inland, and collected the
+gentians and black alder-berries and colored leaves, with which she
+dressed Mrs. Grill's table. She took an interest in my wretched
+sketch-book, and though she did not and does not draw well, she did show
+me how to spread an even tint, which I never knew before. I was working
+up my French. She knew about as much and as little as I did, and we
+read Mad. Reybaud's Clementine together, guessing at the hard words,
+because we had no dictionary.
+
+Dear old Grill offered to talk French at table, and we tried it for a
+few days. But it proved he picked up his pronunciation at St.
+Catherine's, among the boatmen there, and he would say _shwo_ for
+"horses," where the book said _chevaux_. Our talk, on the other hand,
+was not Parisian,--but it was not Catherinian,--and we subsided into
+English again.
+
+So sped along these blessed eight days. I told Fausta thus much of my
+story, that I was going to seek my fortune in New York. She, of course,
+knew nothing of me but what she saw, and she told me nothing of her
+story.
+
+But I was very sorry when we came into the basin at Troy, for I knew
+then that in all reason I must take the steamboat down. And I was very
+glad,--I have seldom in my life been so glad,--when I found that she
+also was going to New York immediately. She accepted, very pleasantly,
+my offer to carry her trunk to the Isaac Newton for her, and to act as
+her escort to the city. For me, my trunk,
+
+                      "in danger tried,"
+    Swung in my hand,--"nor left my side."
+
+My earthly possessions were few anywhere. I had left at Attica most of
+what they were. Through the voyage I had been man enough to keep on a
+working-gear fit for a workman's duty. And old Grills had not yet grace
+enough to keep his boat still on Sunday. How one remembers little
+things! I can remember each touch of the toilet, as, in that corner of a
+dark cuddy where I had shared "Zekiel's" bunk with him. I dressed myself
+with one of my two white shirts, and with the change of raiment which
+had been tight squeezed in my portmanteau. The old overcoat was the best
+part of it, as in a finite world it often is. I sold my felt hat to
+Zekiel, and appeared with a light travelling-cap. I do not know how
+Fausta liked my metamorphosis. I only know that, like butterflies, for a
+day or two after they go through theirs, I felt decidedly cold.
+
+As Carter, the canal man, I had carried Fausta's trunk on board. As Mr.
+Carter, I gave her my arm, led her to the gangway of the Newton, took
+her passage and mine, and afterwards walked and sat through the splendid
+moonlight of the first four hours down the river.
+
+Miss Jones determined that evening to breakfast on the boat. Be it
+observed that I did not then know her by any other name. She was to go
+to an aunt's house, and she knew that if she left the boat on its early
+arrival in New York, she would disturb that lady by a premature ringing
+at her bell. I had no reason for haste, as the reader knows. The
+distribution of the cyclopĉdias was not to take place till the next day,
+and that absurd trifle was the only distinct excuse I had to myself for
+being in New York at all. I asked Miss Jones, therefore, if I might not
+be her escort still to her aunt's house. I had said it would be hard to
+break off our pleasant journey before I had seen where she lived, and I
+thought she seemed relieved to know that she should not be wholly a
+stranger on her arrival. It was clear enough that her aunt would send no
+one to meet her.
+
+These preliminaries adjusted, we parted to our respective cabins. And
+when, the next morning, at that unearthly hour demanded by Philadelphia
+trains and other exigencies, the Newton made her dock, I rejoiced that
+breakfast was not till seven o'clock, that I had two hours more of the
+berth, which was luxury compared to Zekiel's bunk,--I turned upon my
+other side and slept on.
+
+Sorry enough for that morning nap was I for the next thirty-six hours.
+For when I went on deck, and sent in the stewardess to tell Miss Jones
+that I was waiting for her, and then took from her the check for her
+trunk, I woke to the misery of finding that, in that treacherous two
+hours, some pirate from the pier had stepped on board, had seized the
+waiting trunk, left almost alone, while the baggage-master's back was
+turned, and that, to a certainty, it was lost. I did not return to
+Fausta with this story till the breakfast-bell had long passed and the
+breakfast was very cold. I did not then tell it to her till I had seen
+her eat her breakfast with an appetite much better than mine. I had
+already offered up stairs the largest reward to anybody who would bring
+it back which my scanty purse would pay. I had spoken to the clerk, who
+had sent for a policeman. I could do nothing more, and I did not choose
+to ruin her chop and coffee by ill-timed news. The officer came before
+breakfast was over, and called me from table.
+
+On the whole, his business-like way encouraged one. He had some clews
+which I had not thought possible. It was not unlikely that they should
+pounce on the trunk before it was broken open. I gave him a written
+description of its marks; and when he civilly asked if "my lady" would
+give some description of any books or other articles within, I readily
+promised that I would call with such a description at the police
+station. Somewhat encouraged, I returned to Miss Jones, and, when I led
+her from the breakfast-table, told her of her misfortune. I took all
+shame to myself for my own carelessness, to which I attributed the loss.
+But I told her all that the officer had said to me, and that I hoped to
+bring her the trunk at her aunt's before the day was over.
+
+Fausta took my news, however, with a start which frightened me. All her
+money, but a shilling or two, was in the trunk. To place money in trunks
+is a weakness of the female mind which I have nowhere seen accounted
+for. Worse than this, though,--as appeared after a moment's examination
+of her travelling _sac_,--her portfolio in the trunk contained the
+letter of the aunt whom she came to visit, giving her her address in
+the city. To this address she had no other clew but that her aunt was
+Mrs. Mary Mason, had married a few years before a merchant named Mason,
+whom Miss Jones had never seen, and of whose name and business this was
+all she knew. They lived in a numbered street, but whether it was Fourth
+Street, or Fifty-fourth, or One Hundred and Twenty-fourth, or whether it
+was something between, the poor child had no idea. She had put up the
+letter carefully, but had never thought of the importance of the
+address. Besides this aunt, she knew no human being in New York.
+
+"Child of the Public," I said to myself, "what do you do now?" I had
+appealed to my great patron in sending for the officer, and on the whole
+I felt that my sovereign had been gracious to me, if not yet hopeful.
+But now I must rub my lamp again, and ask the genie where the unknown
+Mason lived. The genie of course suggested the Directory, and I ran for
+it to the clerk's office. But as we were toiling down the pages of
+"Masons," and had written off thirteen or fourteen who lived in numbered
+streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its date, flung
+down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which I ever saw
+her, and cried, "First of May! They were abroad until May. They have
+been abroad since the day they were married!" So that genie had to put
+his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to the office
+again.
+
+The natural thing to propose was, that I should find for Miss Jones a
+respectable boarding-house, and that she should remain there until her
+trunk was found, or till she could write to friends who had this fatal
+address, and receive an answer. But here she hesitated. She hardly liked
+to explain why,--did not explain wholly. But she did not say that she
+had no friends who knew this address. She had but few relations in the
+world, and her aunt had communicated with her alone since she came from
+Europe. As for the boarding-house, "I had rather look for work," she
+said bravely. "I have never promised to pay money when I did not know
+how to obtain it; and that"--and here she took out fifty or sixty cents
+from her purse--"and that is all now. In respectable boarding-houses,
+when people come without luggage, they are apt to ask for an advance.
+Or, at least," she added with some pride, "I am apt to offer it."
+
+I hastened to ask her to take all my little store; but I had to own that
+I had not two dollars. I was sure, however, that my overcoat and the
+dress-suit I wore would avail me something, if I thrust them boldly up
+some spout. I was sure that I should be at work within a day or two. At
+all events, I was certain of the cyclopĉdia the next day. That should go
+to old Gowan's,--in Fulton Street it was then,--"the moral centre of the
+intellectual world," in the hour I got it. And at this moment, for the
+first time, the thought crossed me, "If mine could only be the name
+drawn, so that that foolish $5,000 should fall to me." In that case I
+felt that Fausta might live in "a respectable boarding-house" till she
+died. Of this, of course, I said nothing, only that she was welcome to
+my poor dollar and a half, and that I should receive the next day some
+more money that was due me.
+
+"You forget, Mr. Carter," replied Fausta, as proudly as
+before,--"you forget that I cannot borrow of you any more than of a
+boarding-house-keeper. I never borrow. Please God, I never will. It must
+be," she added, "that in a Christian city like this there is some
+respectable and fit arrangement made for travellers who find themselves
+where I am. What that provision is I do not know; but I will find out
+what it is before this sun goes down."
+
+I paused a moment before I replied. If I had been fascinated by this
+lovely girl before, I now bowed in respect before her dignity and
+resolution; and, with my sympathy, there was a delicious throb of
+self-respect united, when I heard her lay down so simply, as principles
+of her life, two principles on which I had always myself tried to live.
+The half-expressed habits of my boyhood and youth were now uttered for
+me as axioms by lips which I knew could speak nothing but right and
+truth.
+
+I paused a moment. I stumbled a little as I expressed my regret that she
+would not let me help her,--joined with my certainty that she was in the
+right in refusing,--and then it the only stiff speech I ever made to
+her, I said:--
+
+"I am the 'Child of the Public.' If you ever hear my story, you will
+say so too. At the least, I can claim this, that I have a right to help
+you in your quest as to the way in which the public will help you. Thus
+far I am clearly the officer in his suite to whom he has intrusted you.
+Are you ready, then, to go on shore?"
+
+Fausta looked around on that forlorn ladies' saloon, as if it were the
+last link holding her to her old safe world.
+
+    "Looked upon skylight, lamp, and chain,
+    As what she ne'er might see again."
+
+Then she looked right through me; and if there had been one mean thought
+in me at that minute, she would have seen the viper. Then she said,
+sadly,--
+
+"I have perfect confidence in you, though people would say we were
+strangers. Let us go."
+
+And we left the boat together. We declined the invitations of the noisy
+hackmen, and walked slowly to Broadway.
+
+We stopped at the station-house for that district, and to the attentive
+chief Fausta herself described those contents of her trunk which she
+thought would be most easily detected, if offered for sale. Her mother's
+Bible, at which the chief shook his head; Bibles, alas! brought nothing
+at the shops; a soldier's medal, such as were given as target prizes by
+the Montgomery regiment; and a little silver canteen, marked with the
+device of the same regiment, seemed to him better worthy of note. Her
+portfolio was wrought with a cipher, and she explained to him that she
+was most eager that this should be recovered. The pocketbook contained
+more than one hundred dollars, which she described, but he shook his
+head here, and gave her but little hope of that, if the trunk were once
+opened. His chief hope was for this morning.
+
+"And where shall we send to you then, madam?" said he.
+
+I had been proud, as if it were my merit, of the impression Fausta had
+made upon the officer, in her quiet, simple, ladylike dress and manner.
+For myself, I thought that one slip of pretence in my dress or bearing,
+a scrap of gold or of pinchbeck, would have ruined both of us in our
+appeal. But, fortunately, I did not disgrace her, and the man looked at
+her as if he expected her to say "Fourteenth Street." What would she
+say?
+
+"That depends upon what the time will be. Mr. Carter will call at noon,
+and will let you know."
+
+We bowed, and were gone. In an instant more she begged my pardon, almost
+with tears; but I told her that if she also had been a "Child of the
+Public," she could not more fitly have spoken to one of her father's
+officers. I begged her to use me as her protector, and not to apologize
+again. Then we laid out the plans which we followed out that day.
+
+The officer's manner had reassured her, and I succeeded in persuading
+her that it was certain we should have the trunk at noon. How much
+better to wait, at least so far, before she entered on any of the
+enterprises of which she talked so coolly, as of offering herself as a
+nursery-girl, or as a milliner, to whoever would employ her, if only she
+could thus secure an honest home till money or till aunt were found.
+Once persuaded that we were safe from this Quixotism, I told her that we
+must go on, as we did on the canal, and first we must take our
+constitutional walk for two hours.
+
+"At least," she said, "our good papa, the Public, gives us wonderful
+sights to see, and good walking to our feet, as a better Father has
+given us this heavenly sky and this bracing air."
+
+And with those words the last heaviness of despondency left her face for
+that day. And we plunged into the delicious adventure of exploring a new
+city, staring into windows as only strangers can, revelling in
+print-shops as only they do, really seeing the fine buildings as
+residents always forget to do, and laying up, in short, with those
+streets, nearly all the associations which to this day we have with
+them.
+
+Two hours of this tired us with walking, of course. I do not know what
+she meant to do next; but at ten I said, "Time for French, Miss Jones."
+"_Ah oui_" said she, "_mais où_?" and I had calculated my distances, and
+led her at once into Lafayette Place; and, in a moment, pushed open the
+door of the Astor Library, led her up the main stairway, and said,
+"This is what the Public provides for his children when they have to
+study."
+
+"This is the Astor," said she, delighted. "And we are all right, as you
+say, here?" Then she saw that our entrance excited no surprise among the
+few readers, men and women, who were beginning to assemble.
+
+We took our seats at an unoccupied table, and began to revel in the
+luxuries for which we had only to ask that we might enjoy. I had a
+little memorandum of books which I had been waiting to see. She needed
+none; but looked for one and another, and yet another, and between us we
+kept the attendant well in motion. A pleasant thing to me to be finding
+out her thoroughbred tastes and lines of work, and I was happy enough to
+interest her in some of my pet readings; and, of course, for she was a
+woman, to get quick hints which had never dawned on me before. A very
+short hour and a half we spent there before I went to the station-house
+again. I went very quickly. I returned to her very slowly.
+
+The trunk was not found. But they were now quite sure they were on its
+track. They felt certain it had been carried from pier to pier and taken
+back up the river. Nor was it hopeless to follow it. The particular
+rascal who was supposed to have it would certainly stop either at
+Piermont or at Newburg. They had telegraphed to both places, and were in
+time for both. "The day boat, sir, will bring your lady's trunk, and
+will bring me Rowdy Rob, too, I hope," said the officer. But at the same
+moment, as he rang his bell, he learned that no despatch had yet been
+received from either of the places named. I did not feel so certain as
+he did.
+
+But Fausta showed no discomfort as I told my news. "Thus far," said she,
+"the Public serves me well. I will borrow no trouble by want of faith."
+And I--as Dante would say--and I, to her, "will you let me remind you,
+then, that at one we dine, that Mrs. Grills is now placing the salt-pork
+upon the cabin table, and Mr. Grills asking the blessing; and, as this
+is the only day when I can have the honor of your company, will you let
+me show you how a Child of the Public dines, when his finances are low?"
+
+Fausta laughed, and said again, less tragically than before, "I have
+perfect confidence in you,"--little thinking how she started my blood
+with the words; but this time, as if in token, she let me take her hand
+upon my arm, as we walked down the street together.
+
+If we had been snobs, or even if I had been one, I should have taken her
+to Taylor's, and have spent all the money I had on such a luncheon as
+neither of us had ever eaten before. Whatever else I am, I am not a snob
+of that sort. I show my colors. I led her into a little cross-street
+which I had noticed in our erratic morning pilgrimage. We stopped at a
+German baker's. I bade her sit down at the neat marble table, and I
+bought two rolls. She declined lager, which I offered her in fun. We
+took water instead, and we had dined, and had paid two cents for our
+meal, and had had a very merry dinner, too, when the clock struck two.
+
+"And now, Mr. Carter," said she, "I will steal no more of your day. You
+did not come to New York to escort lone damsels to the Astor Library or
+to dinner. Nor did I come only to see the lions or to read French. I
+insist on your going to your affairs, and leaving me to mine. If you
+will meet me at the Library half an hour before it closes, I will thank
+you; till then," with a tragedy shake of the hand, and a merry laugh,
+"adieu!"
+
+I knew very well that no harm could happen to her in two hours of an
+autumn afternoon. I was not sorry for her _congé_, for it gave me an
+opportunity to follow my own plans. I stopped at one or two
+cabinet-makers, and talked with the "jours" about work, that I might
+tell her with truth that I had been in search of it;--then I sedulously
+began on calling upon every man I could reach named Mason. O, how often
+I went through one phase or another of this colloquy:--
+
+"Is Mr. Mason in?"
+
+"That's my name, sir."
+
+"Can you give me the address of Mr. Mason who returned from Europe last
+May?"
+
+"Know no such person, sir."
+
+The reader can imagine how many forms this dialogue could be repeated
+in, before, as I wrought my way through a long line of dry-goods cases
+to a distant counting-room, I heard some one in it say, "No, madam, I
+know no such person as you describe"; and from the recess Fausta emerged
+and met me. Her plan for the afternoon had been the same with mine. We
+laughed as we detected each other; then I told her she had had quite
+enough of this, that it was time she should rest, and took her, _nolens
+volens_, into the ladies' parlor of the St. Nicholas, and bade her wait
+there through the twilight, with my copy of Clementine, till I should
+return from the police-station. If the reader has ever waited in such a
+place for some one to come and attend to him, he will understand that
+nobody will be apt to molest him when he has not asked for attention.
+
+Two hours I left Fausta in the rocking-chair, which there the Public had
+provided for her. Then I returned, sadly enough. No tidings of Rowdy
+Rob, none of trunk, Bible, money, letter, medal, or anything. Still was
+my district sergeant hopeful, and, as always, respectful. But I was
+hopeless this time, and I knew that the next day Fausta would be
+plunging into the war with intelligence-houses and advertisements. For
+the night, I was determined that she should spend it in my ideal
+"respectable boarding-house." On my way down town, I stopped in at one
+or two shops to make inquiries, and satisfied myself where I would take
+her. Still I thought it wisest that we should go after tea; and another
+cross-street baker, and another pair of rolls, and another tap at the
+Croton, provided that repast for us. Then I told Fausta of the
+respectable boarding-house, and that she must go there. She did not say
+no. But she did say she would rather not spend the evening there. "There
+must be some place open for us," said she. "There! there is a
+church-bell! The church is always home. Let us come there."
+
+So to "evening meeting" we went, startling the sexton by arriving an
+hour early. If there were any who wondered what was the use of that
+Wednesday-evening service, we did not. In a dark gallery pew we sat, she
+at one end, I at the other; and, if the whole truth be told, each of us
+fell asleep at once, and slept till the heavy organ tones taught us that
+the service had begun. A hundred or more people had straggled in then,
+and the preacher, good soul, he took for his text, "Doth not God care
+for the ravens?" I cannot describe the ineffable feeling of home that
+came over me in that dark pew of that old church. I had never been in so
+large a church before. I had never heard so heavy an organ before.
+Perhaps I had heard better preaching, but never any that came to my
+occasions more. But it was none of these things which moved me. It was
+the fact that we were just where we had a right to be. No impudent
+waiter could ask us why we were sitting there, nor any petulant
+policeman propose that we should push on. It was God's house, and,
+because his, it was his children's.
+
+All this feeling of repose grew upon me, and, as it proved, upon Fausta
+also. For when the service was ended, and I ventured to ask her whether
+she also had this sense of home and rest, she assented so eagerly, that
+I proposed, though with hesitation, a notion which had crossed me, that
+I should leave her there.
+
+"I cannot think," I said, "of any possible harm that could come to you
+before morning."
+
+"Do you know, I had thought of that very same thing, but I did not dare
+tell you," she said.
+
+Was not I glad that she had considered me her keeper! But I only said,
+"At the 'respectable boarding-house' you might be annoyed by questions."
+
+"And no one will speak to me here. I know that from Goody Two-Shoes."
+
+"I will be here," said I, "at sunrise in the morning." And so I bade her
+good by, insisting on leaving in the pew my own great-coat. I knew she
+might need it before morning. I walked out as the sexton closed the door
+below on the last of the down-stairs worshippers. He passed along the
+aisles below, with his long poker which screwed down the gas. I saw at
+once that he had no intent of exploring the galleries. But I loitered
+outside till I saw him lock the doors and depart; and then, happy in the
+thought that Miss Jones was in the safest place in New York,--as
+comfortable as she was the night before, and much more comfortable than
+she had been any night upon the canal, I went in search of my own
+lodging.
+
+"To the respectable boarding-house?"
+
+Not a bit, reader. I had no shillings for respectable or disrespectable
+boarding-houses. I asked the first policeman where his district station
+was. I went into its office, and told the captain that I was green in
+the city; had got no work and no money. In truth, I had left my purse in
+Miss Jones's charge, and a five-cent piece, which I showed the chief,
+was all I had. He said no word but to bid me go up two flights and turn
+into the first bunk I found. I did so; and in five minutes was asleep in
+a better bed than I had slept in for nine days.
+
+That was what the Public did for me that night. I, too, was safe!
+
+I am making this story too long. But with that night and its anxieties
+the end has come. At sunrise I rose and made my easy toilet. I bought
+and ate my roll,--varying the brand from yesterday's. I bought another,
+with a lump of butter, and an orange, for Fausta. I left my portmanteau
+at the station, while I rushed to the sexton's house, told his wife I
+had left my gloves in church the night before,--as was the truth,--and
+easily obtained from her the keys. In a moment I was in the
+vestibule--locked in--was in the gallery, and there found Fausta, just
+awake, as she declared, from a comfortable night, reading her morning
+lesson in the Bible, and sure, she said, that I should soon appear. Nor
+ghost, nor wraith, had visited her. I spread for her a brown paper
+tablecloth on the table in the vestibule. I laid out her breakfast for
+her, called her, and wondered at her toilet. How is it that women always
+make themselves appear as neat and finished as if there were no
+conflict, dust, or wrinkle in the world.
+
+[Here Fausta adds, in this manuscript, a parenthesis, to say that she
+folded her undersleeves neatly, and her collar, before she slept, and
+put them between the cushions, upon which she slept. In the morning they
+had been pressed--without a sad-iron.]
+
+She finished her repast. I opened the church door for five minutes. She
+passed out when she had enough examined the monuments, and at a
+respectable distance I followed her. We joined each other, and took our
+accustomed morning walk; but then she resolutely said, "Good by," for
+the day. She would find work before night,--work and a home. And I must
+do the same. Only when I pressed her to let me know of her success, she
+said she would meet me at the Astor Library just before it closed. No,
+she would not take my money. Enough, that for twenty-four hours she had
+been my guest. When she had found her aunt and told her the story, they
+should insist on repaying this hospitality. Hospitality, dear reader,
+which I had dispensed at the charge of six cents. Have you ever treated
+Miranda for a day and found the charge so low? When I urged other
+assistance she said resolutely, "No." In fact, she had already made an
+appointment at two, she said, and she must not waste the day.
+
+I also had an appointment at two; for it was at that hour that Burrham
+was to distribute the cyclopĉdias at Castle Garden. The Emigrant
+Commission had not yet seized it for their own. I spent the morning in
+asking vainly for Masons fresh from Europe, and for work in
+cabinet-shops. I found neither, and so wrought my way to the appointed
+place, where, instead of such wretched birds in the bush, I was to get
+one so contemptible in my hand.
+
+Those who remember Jenny Lind's first triumph night at Castle Garden
+have some idea of the crowd as it filled gallery and floor of that
+immense hall when I entered. I had given no thought to the machinery of
+this folly, I only know that my ticket bade me be there at two P.M. this
+day. But as I drew near, the throng, the bands of policemen, the long
+queues of persons entering, reminded me that here was an affair of ten
+thousand persons, and also that Mr. Burrham was not unwilling to make it
+as showy, perhaps as noisy, an affair as was respectable, by way of
+advertising future excursions and distributions. I was led to seat No.
+3,671 with a good deal of parade, and when I came there I found I was
+very much of a prisoner. I was late, or rather on the stroke of two.
+Immediately, almost, Mr. Burrham arose in the front and made a long
+speech about his liberality, and the public's liberality, and
+everybody's liberality in general, and the method of the distribution in
+particular. The mayor and four or five other well-known and respectable
+gentlemen were kind enough to be present to guarantee the fairness of
+the arrangements. At the suggestion of the mayor and the police, the
+doors would now be closed, that no persons might interrupt the ceremony
+till it was ended. And the distribution of the cyclopĉdias would at once
+go forward, in the order in which the lots were drawn,--earliest numbers
+securing the earliest impressions; which, as Mr. Burrham almost
+regretted to say, were a little better than the latest. After these had
+been distributed two figures would be drawn,--one green and one red, to
+indicate the fortunate lady and gentleman who would receive respectively
+the profits which had arisen from this method of selling the
+cyclopĉdias, after the expenses of printing and distribution had been
+covered, and after the magazines had been ordered.
+
+Great cheering followed this announcement from all but me. Here I had
+shut myself up in this humbug hall, for Heaven knew how long, on the
+most important day of my life. I would have given up willingly my
+cyclopĉdia and my chance at the "profits," for the certainty of seeing
+Fausta at five o'clock. If I did not see her then, what might befall
+her, and when might I see her again. An hour before this certainty was
+my own, now it was only mine by my liberating myself from this prison.
+Still I was encouraged by seeing that everything was conducted like
+clock-work. From literally a hundred stations they were distributing the
+books. We formed ourselves into queues as we pleased, drew our numbers,
+and then presented ourselves at the bureaux, ordered our magazines, and
+took our cyclopĉdias. It would be done, at that rate, by half past four.
+An omnibus might bring me to the Park, and a Bowery car do the rest in
+time. After a vain discussion for the right of exit with one or two of
+the attendants, I abandoned myself to this hope, and began studying my
+cyclopĉdia.
+
+It was sufficiently amusing to see ten thousand people resign themselves
+to the same task, and affect to be unconcerned about the green and red
+figures which were to divide the "profits." I tried to make out who were
+as anxious to get out of that tawdry den as I was. Four o'clock struck,
+and the distribution was not done. I began to be very impatient. What if
+Fausta fell into trouble? I knew, or hoped I knew, that she would
+struggle to the Astor Library, as to her only place of rescue and
+refuge,--her asylum. What if I failed her there? I who had pretended to
+be her protector! "Protector, indeed!" she would say, if she knew I was
+at a theatre witnessing the greatest folly of the age. And if I did not
+meet her to-day, when should I meet her? If she found her aunt, how
+should I find her? If she did not find her,--good God? that was
+worse,--where might she not be before twelve hours were over? Then the
+fatal trunk! I had told the police agent he might send it to the St.
+Nicholas, because I had to give him some address. But Fausta did not
+know this, and the St. Nicholas people knew nothing of us. I grew more
+and more excited, and when at last my next neighbor told me that it was
+half past four, I rose and insisted on leaving my seat. Two ushers with
+blue sashes almost held me down; they showed me the whole assembly
+sinking into quiet. In fact, at that moment Mr. Burrham was begging
+every one to be seated. I would not be seated. I would go to the door. I
+would go out. "Go, if you please!" said the usher next it,
+contemptuously. And I looked, and there was no handle! Yet this was not
+a dream. It is the way they arrange the doors in halls where they choose
+to keep people in their places. I could have collared that grinning blue
+sash. I did tell him I would wring his precious neck for him, if he did
+not let me out. I said I would sue him for false imprisonment; I would
+have a writ of _habeas corpus_.
+
+"_Habeas corpus_ be d----d!" said the officer, with an irreverent
+disrespect to the palladium. "If you are not more civil, sir, I will
+call the police, of whom we have plenty. You say you want to go out; you
+are keeping everybody in."
+
+And, in fact, at that moment the clear voice of the mayor was announcing
+that they would not go on until there was perfect quiet; and I felt that
+I was imprisoning all these people, not they me.
+
+"Child of the Public," said my mourning genius, "are you better than
+other men?" So I sneaked back to seat No. 3,671, amid the contemptuous
+and reproachful looks and sneers of my more respectable neighbors, who
+had sat where they were told to do. We must be through in a moment, and
+perhaps Fausta would be late also. If only the Astor would keep open
+after sunset! How often have I wished that since, and for less reasons!
+
+Silence thus restored, Mr. A----, the mayor, led forward his little
+daughter, blindfolded her, and bade her put her hand into a green box,
+from which she drew out a green ticket. He took it from her, and read,
+in his clear voice again, "No. 2,973!" By this time we all knew where
+the "two thousands" sat. Then "nine hundreds" were not far from the
+front, so that it was not far that that frightened girl, dressed all in
+black, and heavily veiled, had to walk, who answered to this call. Mr.
+A---- met her, helped her up the stair upon the stage, took from her her
+ticket, and read, "Jerusha Stillingfleet, of Yellow Springs, who, at her
+death, as it seems, transferred this right to the bearer."
+
+The disappointed nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine joined in a
+rapturous cheer, each man and woman, to show that he or she was not
+disappointed. The bearer spoke with Mr. Burrham, in answer to his
+questions, and, with a good deal of ostentation, he opened a check-book,
+filled a check and passed it to her, she signing a receipt as she took
+it, and transferring to him her ticket. So far, in dumb show, all was
+well. What was more to my purpose, it was rapid, for we should have been
+done in five minutes more, but that some devil tempted some loafer in a
+gallery to cry, "Face! face!" Miss Stillingfleet's legatee was still
+heavily veiled.
+
+In one horrid minute that whole amphitheatre, which seemed to me then
+more cruel than the Coliseum ever was, rang out with a cry of "Face,
+face!" I tried the counter-cry of "Shame! shame!" but I was in disgrace
+among my neighbors, and a counter-cry never takes as its prototype does,
+either. At first, on the stage, they affected not to hear or understand;
+then there was a courtly whisper between Mr. Burrham and the lady; but
+Mr. A----, the mayor, and the respectable gentlemen, instantly
+interfered. It was evident that she would not unveil, and that they were
+prepared to indorse her refusal. In a moment more she courtesied to the
+assembly; the mayor gave her his arm, and led her out through a
+side-door.
+
+O, the yell that rose up then! The whole assembly stood up, and, as if
+they had lost some vested right, hooted and shrieked, "Back! back! Face!
+face!" Mr. A---- returned, made as if he would speak, came forward to
+the very front, and got a moment's silence.
+
+"It is not in the bond, gentlemen," said he. "The young lady is
+unwilling to unveil, and we must not compel her."
+
+"Face! face!" was the only answer, and oranges from up stairs flew
+about his head and struck upon the table,--an omen only fearful from
+what it prophesied. Then there was such a row for five minutes as I hope
+I may never see or hear again. People kept their places fortunately,
+under a vague impression that they should forfeit some magic rights if
+they left those numbered seats. But when, for a moment, a file of
+policemen appeared in the orchestra, a whole volley of cyclopĉdias fell
+like rain upon their chief, with a renewed cry of "Face! face!"
+
+At this juncture, with a good deal of knowledge of popular feeling, Mr.
+A---- led forward his child again. Frightened to death the poor thing
+was, and crying; he tied his handkerchief round her eyes hastily, and
+took her to the red box. For a minute the house was hushed. A cry of
+"Down! down!" and every one took his place as the child gave the red
+ticket to her father. He read it as before, "No. 3,671!" I heard the
+words as if he did not speak them. All excited by the delay and the row,
+by the injustice to the stranger and the personal injustice of everybody
+to me, I did not know, for a dozen seconds, that every one was looking
+towards our side of the house, nor was it till my next neighbor with the
+watch said, "Go, you fool," that I was aware that 3,671 was I! Even
+then, as I stepped down the passage and up the steps, my only feeling
+was, that I should get out of this horrid trap, and possibly find Miss
+Jones lingering near the Astor,--not by any means that I was invited to
+take a check for $5,000.
+
+There was not much cheering. Women never mean to cheer, of course. The
+men had cheered the green ticket, but they were mad with the red one. I
+gave up my ticket, signed my receipt, and took my check, shook hands
+with Mr. A---- and Mr. Burrham, and turned to bow to the mob,--for mob I
+must call it now. But the cheers died away. A few people tried to go out
+perhaps, but there was nothing now to retain any in their seats as
+before, and the generality rose, pressed down the passages, and howled,
+"Face! face!" I thought for a moment that I ought to say something, but
+they would not hear me, and, after a moment's pause, my passion to
+depart overwhelmed me. I muttered some apology to the gentlemen, and
+left the stage by the stage door.
+
+I had forgotten that to Castle Garden there can be no back entrance. I
+came to door after door, which were all locked. It was growing dark.
+Evidently the sun was set, and I knew the library door would be shut at
+sunset. The passages were very obscure. All around me rang this horrid
+yell of the mob, in which all that I could discern was the cry, "Face,
+face!" At last, as I groped round, I came to a practicable door. I
+entered a room where the western sunset glare dazzled me. I was not
+alone. The veiled lady in black was there. But the instant she saw me
+she sprang towards me, flung herself into my arms, and cried:--
+
+"Felix, is it you?--you are indeed my protector!"
+
+It was Miss Jones! It was Fausta! She was the legatee of Miss
+Stillingfleet. My first thought was, "O, if that beggarly usher had let
+me go! Will I ever, ever think I have better rights than the Public
+again?"
+
+I took her in my arms. I carried her to the sofa. I could hardly speak
+for excitement. Then I did say that I had been wild with terror; that I
+had feared I had lost her, and lost her forever; that to have lost that
+interview would have been worse to me than death; for unless she knew
+that I loved her better than man ever loved woman, I could not face a
+lonely night, and another lonely day.
+
+"My dear, dear child," I said, "you may think me wild; but I must say
+this,--it has been pent up too long."
+
+"Say what you will," she said after a moment, in which still I held her
+in my arms; she was trembling so that she could not have sat upright
+alone,--"say what you will, if only you do not tell me to spend another
+day alone."
+
+And I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I said,
+"Never, darling, God helping me, till I die!"
+
+How long we sat there I do not know. Neither of us spoke again. For one,
+I looked out on the sunset and the bay. We had but just time to
+rearrange ourselves in positions more independent, when Mr. A----came
+in, this time in alarm, to say:--
+
+"Miss Jones, we must get you out of this place, or we must hide you
+somewhere. I believe, before God, they will storm this passage, and pull
+the house about our ears."
+
+He said this, not conscious as he began that I was there. At that
+moment, however, I felt as if I could have met a million men. I started
+forward and passed him, saying, "Let me speak to them." I rushed upon
+the stage, fairly pushing back two or three bullies who were already
+upon it. I sprang upon the table, kicking down the red box as I did so,
+so that the red tickets fell on the floor and on the people below. One
+stuck in an old man's spectacles in a way which made the people in the
+galleries laugh. A laugh is a great blessing at such a moment. Curiosity
+is another. Three loud words spoken like thunder do a good deal more.
+And after three words the house was hushed to hear me. I said:--
+
+"Be fair to the girl. She has no father nor mother She has no brother
+nor sister. She is alone in the world, with nobody to help her but the
+Public--and me!"
+
+The audacity of the speech brought out a cheer and we should have come
+off in triumph, when some rowdy--the original "face" man, I
+suppose--said,--
+
+"And who are you?"
+
+If the laugh went against me now I was lost, of course. Fortunately I
+had no time to think. I said without thinking,--
+
+"I am the Child of the Public, and her betrothed husband!"
+
+O Heavens! what a yell of laughter, of hurrahings, of satisfaction with
+a _dénouement_, rang through the house, and showed that all was well.
+Burrham caught the moment, and started his band, this time
+successfully,--I believe with "See the Conquering Hero." The doors, of
+course, had been open long before. Well-disposed people saw they need
+stay no longer; ill-disposed people dared not stay; the blue-coated men
+with buttons sauntered on the stage in groups, and I suppose the worst
+rowdies disappeared as they saw them. I had made my single speech, and
+for the moment I was a hero.
+
+I believe the mayor would have liked to kiss me. Burrham almost did.
+They overwhelmed me with thanks and congratulations. All these I
+received as well as I could,--somehow I did not feel at all
+surprised,--everything was as it should be. I scarcely thought of
+leaving the stage myself, till, to my surprise, the mayor asked me to go
+home with him to dinner.
+
+Then I remembered that we were not to spend the rest of our lives in
+Castle Garden. I blundered out something about Miss Jones, that she had
+no escort except me, and pressed into her room to find her. A group of
+gentlemen was around her. Her veil was back now. She was very pale, but
+very lovely. Have I said that she was beautiful as heaven? She was the
+queen of the room, modestly and pleasantly receiving their felicitations
+that the danger was over, and owning that she had been very much
+frightened.
+
+"Until," she said, "my friend, Mr. Carter, was fortunate enough to guess
+that I was here. How he did it," she said, turning to me, "is yet an
+utter mystery to me."
+
+She did not know till then that it was I who had shared with her the
+profits of the cyclopĉdias.
+
+As soon as we could excuse ourselves, I asked some one to order a
+carriage. I sent to the ticket-office for my valise, and we rode to the
+St. Nicholas. I fairly laughed as I gave the hackman at the hotel door
+what would have been my last dollar and a half only two hours before. I
+entered Miss Jones's name and my own. The clerk looked, and said,
+inquiringly,--
+
+"Is it Miss Jones's trunk which came this afternoon?"
+
+I followed his finger to see the trunk on the marble floor. Rowdy Rob
+had deserted it, having seen, perhaps, a detective when he reached
+Piermont. The trunk had gone to Albany, had found no owner, and had
+returned by the day boat of that day.
+
+Fausta went to her room, and I sent her supper after her. One kiss and
+"Good night" was all that I got from her then.
+
+"In the morning," said she, "you shall explain."
+
+It was not yet seven, I went to my own room and dressed, and tendered
+myself at the mayor's just before his gay party sat down to dine. I met,
+for the first time in my life, men whose books I had read, and whose
+speeches I had by heart, and women whom I have since known to honor;
+and, in the midst of this brilliant group, so excited had Mr. A---- been
+in telling the strange story of the day, I was, for the hour, the lion.
+
+I led Mrs. A---- to the table; I made her laugh very heartily by telling
+her of the usher's threats to me, and mine to him, and of the disgrace
+into which I fell among the three thousand six hundreds. I had never
+been at any such party before. But I found it was only rather simpler
+and more quiet than most parties I had seen, that its good breeding was
+exactly that of dear Betsy Myers.
+
+As the party broke up, Mrs. A---- said to me,--
+
+"Mr. Carter, I am sure you are tired, with all this excitement. You say
+you are a stranger here. Let me send round for your trunk to the St.
+Nicholas, and you shall spend the night here. I know I can make you a
+better bed than they."
+
+I thought as much myself, and assented. In half an hour more I was in
+bed in Mrs. A----'s "best room."
+
+"I shall not sleep better," said I to myself, "than I did last night."
+
+That was what the Public did for me that night. I was safe again!
+
+
+CHAPTER LAST.
+
+FAUSTA'S STORY.
+
+
+Fausta slept late, poor child. I called for her before breakfast. I
+waited for her after. About ten she appeared, so radiant, so beautiful,
+and so kind! The trunk had revealed a dress I never saw before, and the
+sense of rest, and eternal security, and unbroken love had revealed a
+charm which was never there to see before. She was dressed for walking,
+and, as she met me, said,--
+
+"Time for constitutional, Mr. Millionnaire."
+
+So we walked again, quite up town, almost to the region of pig-pens and
+cabbage-gardens which is now the Central Park. And after just the first
+gush of my enthusiasm, Fausta said, very seriously:--
+
+"I must teach you to be grave. You do not know whom you are asking to be
+your wife. Excepting Mrs. Mason, No. 27 Thirty-fourth Street, sir, there
+is no one in the world who is of kin to me, and she does not care for me
+one straw, Felix," she said, almost sadly now. "You call yourself 'Child
+of the Public.' I started when you first said so, for that is just what
+I am.
+
+"I am twenty-two years old. My father died before I was born. My mother,
+a poor woman, disliked by his relatives and avoided by them, went to
+live in Hoboken over there, with me. How she lived, God knows, but it
+happened that of a strange death she died, I in her arms."
+
+After a pause, the poor girl went on:--
+
+"There was a great military review, an encampment. She was tempted out
+to see it. Of a sudden by some mistake, a ramrod was fired from a
+careless soldier's gun, and it pierced her through her heart. I tell
+you, Felix, it pinned my baby frock into the wound, so that they could
+not part me from her till it was cut away.
+
+"Of course every one was filled with horror. Nobody claimed poor me, the
+baby. But the battalion, the Montgomery Battalion, it was, which had, by
+mischance, killed my mother, adopted me as their child. I was voted
+'Fille du Regiment.' They paid an assessment annually, which the colonel
+expended for me. A kind old woman nursed me."
+
+"She was your Betsy Myers," interrupted I.
+
+"And when I was old enough I was sent into Connecticut, to the best of
+schools. This lasted till I was sixteen. Fortunately for me, perhaps,
+the Montgomery Battalion then dissolved. I was finding it hard to answer
+the colonel's annual letters. I had my living to earn,--it was best I
+should earn it. I declined a proposal to go out as a missionary. I had
+no call. I answered one of Miss Beecher's appeals for Western teachers.
+Most of my life since has been a school-ma'am's. It has had ups and
+downs. But I have always been proud that the Public was my godfather;
+and, as you know," she said, "I have trusted the Public well. I have
+never been lonely, wherever I went. I tried to make myself of use. Where
+I was of use I found society. The ministers have been kind to me. I
+always offered my services in the Sunday schools and sewing-rooms. The
+school committees have been kind to me. They are the Public's high
+chamberlains for poor girls. I have written for the journals. I won one
+of Sartain's hundred-dollar prizes--"
+
+"And I another," interrupted I.
+
+"When I was very poor, I won the first prize for an essay on bad boys."
+
+"And I the second," answered I.
+
+"I think I know one bad boy better than he knows himself," said she. But
+she went on. "I watched with this poor Miss Stillingfleet the night she
+died. This absurd 'distribution' had got hold of her, and she would not
+be satisfied till she had transferred that strange ticket, No. 2,973, to
+me, writing the indorsement which you have heard. I had had a longing to
+visit New York and Hoboken again. This ticket seemed to me to beckon me.
+I had money enough to come, if I would come cheaply. I wrote to my
+father's business partner, and enclosed a note to his only sister. She
+is Mrs. Mason. She asked me, coldly enough, to her house. Old Mr. Grills
+always liked me,--he offered me escort and passage as far as Troy or
+Albany. I accepted his proposal, and you know the rest."
+
+When I told Fausta my story, she declared I made it up as I went along.
+When she believed it,--as she does believe it now,--she agreed with me
+in declaring that it was not fit that two people thus joined should ever
+be parted. Nor have we been, ever!
+
+She made a hurried visit at Mrs. Mason's. She prepared there for her
+wedding. On the 1st of November we went into that same church which was
+our first home in New York; and that dear old raven-man made us
+
+ONE!
+
+
+
+
+THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.
+
+BY J. THOMAS DARKAGH (LATE C.C.S.).
+
+
+[This paper was first published in the "Galaxy," in 1866.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I see that an old chum of mine is publishing bits of confidential
+Confederate History in Harper's Magazine. It would seem to be time,
+then, for the pivots to be disclosed on which some of the wheelwork of
+the last six years has been moving. The science of history, as I
+understand it, depends on the timely disclosure of such pivots, which
+are apt to be kept out of view while things are moving.
+
+I was in the Civil Service at Richmond. Why I was there, or what I did,
+is nobody's affair. And I do not in this paper propose to tell how it
+happened that I was in New York in October, 1864, on confidential
+business. Enough that I was there, and that it was honest business. That
+business done, as far as it could be with the resources intrusted to me,
+I prepared to return home. And thereby hangs this tale, and, as it
+proved, the fate of the Confederacy.
+
+For, of course, I wanted to take presents home to my family. Very little
+question was there what these presents should be,--for I had no boys nor
+brothers. The women of the Confederacy had one want, which overtopped
+all others. They could make coffee out of beans; pins they had from
+Columbus; straw hats they braided quite well with their own fair hands;
+snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we
+had no hoop-skirts,--skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had
+made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the
+Deer, the Flora, the J.C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all
+took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and
+the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J.C. Cobb sunk at sea, the
+Fore-and-Aft and the Greyhound were set fire to by their own crews, and
+the Varuna (our Varuna) was never heard of. Then the State of Arkansas
+offered sixteen townships of swamp land to the first manufacturer who
+would exhibit five gross of a home-manufactured article. But no one ever
+competed. The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield
+crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch. The
+consequence was, that people's crinoline collapsed faster than the
+Confederacy did, of which that brute of a Grierson said there was never
+anything of it but the outside.
+
+Of course, then, I put in the bottom of my new large trunk in New York,
+not a "duplex elliptic," for none were then made, but a "Belmonte," of
+thirty springs, for my wife. I bought, for her more common wear, a good
+"Belle-Fontaine." For Sarah and Susy each, I got two "Dumb-Belles." For
+Aunt Eunice and Aunt Clara, maiden sisters of my wife, who lived with us
+after Winchester fell the fourth time, I got the "Scotch Harebell," two
+of each. For my own mother I got one "Belle of the Prairies" and one
+"Invisible Combination Gossamer." I did not forget good old Mamma Chloe
+and Mamma Jane. For them I got substantial cages, without names. With
+these, tied in the shapes of figure eights in the bottom of my trunk, as
+I said, I put in an assorted cargo of dry-goods above, and, favored by a
+pass, and Major Mulford's courtesy on the flag-of-truce boat, I arrived
+safely at Richmond before the autumn closed.
+
+I was received at home with rapture. But when, the next morning, I
+opened my stores, this became rapture doubly enraptured. Words cannot
+tell the silent delight with which old and young, black and white,
+surveyed these fairy-like structures, yet unbroken and unmended.
+
+Perennial summer reigned that autumn day in that reunited family. It
+reigned the next day, and the next. It would have reigned till now if
+the Belmontes and the other things would last as long as the
+advertisements declare; and, what is more, the Confederacy would have
+reigned till now, President Davis and General Lee! but for that great
+misery, which all families understand, which culminated in our great
+misfortune.
+
+I was up in the cedar closet one day, looking for an old parade cap of
+mine, which I thought, though it was my third best, might look better
+than my second best, which I had worn ever since my best was lost at the
+Seven Pines. I say I was standing on the lower shelf of the cedar
+closet, when, as I stepped along in the darkness, my right foot caught
+in a bit of wire, my left did not give way in time, and I fell, with a
+small wooden hat-box in my hand, full on the floor. The corner of the
+hat-box struck me just below the second frontal sinus, and I fainted
+away.
+
+When I came to myself I was in the blue chamber; I had vinegar on a
+brown paper on my forehead; the room was dark, and I found mother
+sitting by me, glad enough indeed to hear my voice, and to know that I
+knew her. It was some time before I fully understood what had happened.
+Then she brought me a cup of tea, and I, quite refreshed, said I must go
+to the office.
+
+"Office, my child!" said she. "Your leg is broken above the ankle; you
+will not move these six weeks. Where do you suppose you are?"
+
+Till then I had no notion that it was five minutes since I went into the
+closet. When she told me the time, five in the afternoon, I groaned in
+the lowest depths. For, in my breast pocket in that innocent coat, which
+I could now see lying on the window-seat, were the duplicate despatches
+to Mr. Mason, for which, late the night before, I had got the
+Secretary's signature. They were to go at ten that morning to
+Wilmington, by the Navy Department's special messenger. I had taken them
+to insure care and certainty. I had worked on them till midnight, and
+they had not been signed till near one o'clock. Heavens and earth, and
+here it was five o'clock! The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this
+time. I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk. Lafarge did his prettiest
+in rushing to the telegraph. But no! A freshet on the Chowan River, or a
+raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire
+for that night. And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the
+navy agent was in the offing in the Sea Maid.
+
+"But perhaps the duplicate got through?" No, breathless reader, the
+duplicate did not get through. The duplicate was taken by Faucon, in the
+Ino. I saw it last week in Dr. Lieber's hands, in Washington. Well, all
+I know is, that if the duplicate had got through, the Confederate
+government would have had in March a chance at eighty-three thousand two
+hundred and eleven muskets, which, as it was, never left Belgium. So
+much for my treading into that blessed piece of wire on the shelf of the
+cedar closet, up stairs.
+
+"What was the bit of wire?"
+
+Well, it was not telegraph wire. If it had been, it would have broken
+when it was not wanted to. Don't you know what it was? Go up in your own
+cedar closet, and step about in the dark, and see what brings up round
+your ankles. Julia, poor child, cried her eyes out about it. When I got
+well enough to sit up, and as soon as I could talk and plan with her,
+she brought down seven of these old things, antiquated Belmontes and
+Simplex Elliptics, and horrors without a name, and she made a pile of
+them in the bedroom, and asked me in the most penitent way what she
+should do with them.
+
+"You can't burn them" said she; "fire won't touch them. If you bury them
+in the garden, they come up at the second raking. If you give them to
+the servants, they say, 'Thank-e, missus,' and throw them in the back
+passage. If you give them to the poor, they throw them into the street
+in front, and do not say, 'Thank-e,' Sarah sent seventeen over to the
+sword factory, and the foreman swore at the boy, and told him he would
+flog him within an inch of his life if he brought any more of his sauce
+there; and so--and so," sobbed the poor child, "I just rolled up these
+wretched things, and laid them in the cedar closet, hoping, you know,
+that some day the government would want something, and would advertise
+for them. You know what a good thing; I made out of the bottle corks."
+
+In fact, she had sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and
+sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrellas
+and a corkscrew with the money.
+
+Well, I did not scold Julia. It was certainly no fault of hers that I
+was walking on the lower shelf of her cedar closet. I told her to make
+a parcel of the things, and the first time we went to drive I hove the
+whole shapeless heap into the river, without saying mass for them.
+
+But let no man think, or no woman, that this was the end of troubles. As
+I look back on that winter, and on the spring of 1865 (I do not mean the
+steel spring), it seems to me only the beginning. I got out on crutches
+at last; I had the office transferred to my house, so that Lafarge and
+Hepburn could work there nights, and communicate with me when I could
+not go out; but mornings I hobbled up to the Department, and sat with
+the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp
+winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of
+the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew
+that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had
+nick-named the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come,
+and that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to
+go home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the Major's
+ambulance, I remember; and hopped in, to surprise Julia with the good
+news, only to find that the whole house was in that quiet uproar which
+shows that something bad has happened of a sudden.
+
+"What is it, Chloe?" said I, as the old wench rushed by me with a bucket
+of water.
+
+"Poor Mr. George, I 'fraid he's dead, sah!"
+
+And there he really was,--dear handsome, bright George Schaff,--the
+delight of all the nicest girls of Richmond; he lay there on Aunt
+Eunice's bed on the ground floor, where they had brought him in. He was
+not dead,--and he did not die. He is making cotton in Texas now. But he
+looked mighty near it then. "The deep cut in his head" was the worst I
+then had ever seen, and the blow confused everything. When McGregor got
+round, he said it was not hopeless; but we were all turned out of the
+room, and with one thing and another he got the boy out of the swoon,
+and somehow it proved his head was not broken.
+
+No, but poor George swears to this day it were better it had been, if it
+could only have been broken the right way and on the right field. For
+that evening we heard that everything had gone wrong in the surprise.
+There we had been waiting for one of those early fogs, and at last the
+fog had come. And Jubal Early had, that morning, pushed out every man he
+had, that could stand; and they lay hid for three mortal hours, within I
+don't know how near the picket line at Fort Powhatan, only waiting for
+the shot which John Streight's party were to fire at Wilson's Wharf, as
+soon as somebody on our left centre advanced in force on the enemy's
+line above Turkey Island stretching across to Nansemond. I am not in the
+War Department, and I forget whether he was to advance _en barbette_ or
+by _échelon_ of infantry. But he was to advance somehow, and he knew
+how; and when he advanced, you see, that other man lower down was to
+rush in, and as soon as Early heard him he was to surprise Powhatan, you
+see; and then, if you have understood me, Grant and Butler and the whole
+rig of them would have been cut off from their supplies, would have had
+to fight a battle for which they were not prepared, with their right
+made into a new left, and their old left unexpectedly advanced at an
+oblique angle from their centre, and would not that have been the end of
+them?
+
+Well, that never happened. And the reason it never happened was, that
+poor George Schaff, with the last fatal order for this man whose name I
+forget (the same who was afterward killed the day before High Bridge),
+undertook to save time by cutting across behind my house, from Franklin
+to Green Streets. You know how much time he saved,--they waited all day
+for that order. George told me afterwards that the last thing he
+remembered was kissing his hand to Julia, who sat at her bedroom window.
+He said he thought she might be the last woman he ever saw this side of
+heaven. Just after that, it must have been,--his horse--that white
+Messenger colt old Williams bred--went over like a log, and poor George
+was pitched fifteen feet head-foremost against a stake there was in that
+lot. Julia saw the whole. She rushed out with all the women, and had
+just brought him in when I got home. And that was the reason that the
+great promised combination of December, 1864, never came off at all.
+
+I walked out in the lot, after McGregor turned me out of the chamber, to
+see what they had done with the horse. There he lay, as dead as old
+Messenger himself. His neck was broken. And do you think, I looked to
+see what had tripped him. I supposed it was one of the boys' bandy
+holes. It was no such thing. The poor wretch had tangled his hind legs
+in one of those infernal hoop-wires that Chloe had thrown out in the
+piece when I gave her her new ones. Though I did not know it then, those
+fatal scraps of rusty steel had broken the neck that day of Robert Lee's
+army.
+
+That time I made a row about it. I felt too badly to go into a passion.
+But before the women went to bed,--they were all in the sitting-room
+together,--I talked to them like a father. I did not swear. I had got
+over that for a while, in that six weeks on my back. But I did say the
+old wires were infernal things, and that the house and premises must be
+made rid of them. The aunts laughed,--though I was so serious,--and
+tipped a wink to the girls. The girls wanted to laugh, but were afraid
+to. And then it came out that the aunts had sold their old hoops, tied
+as tight as they could tie them, in a great mass of rags. They had made
+a fortune by the sale,--I am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the
+rags they got were new instead of old,--it was a real Aladdin bargain.
+The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty
+dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made
+the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was
+fair with a pedler,--and I own I was glad the things were well out of
+Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and
+Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do
+with the old things. Did I expect them to walk down to the bridge
+themselves with great parcels to throw into the river, as I had done by
+Julia's? Of course it ended, as such things always do, by my taking the
+work on my own shoulders. I told them to tie up all they had in as small
+a parcel as they could, and bring them to me.
+
+Accordingly, the next day, I found a handsome brown paper parcel, not so
+very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the
+minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great
+frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official
+it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and
+most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh
+over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next
+time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one
+evening with young Norton of our gallant little navy, and a very curious
+thing he told us.
+
+We were talking about the disappointment of the combined land attack. I
+did not tell what upset poor Schaff's horse; indeed, I do not think
+those navy men knew the details of the disappointment. O'Brien had told
+me, in confidence, what I have written down probably for the first time
+now. But we were speaking, in a general way, of the disappointment.
+Norton finished his cigar rather thoughtfully, and then said: "Well,
+fellows, it is not worth while to put in the newspapers, but what do you
+suppose upset our grand naval attack, the day the Yankee gunboats
+skittled down the river so handsomely?"
+
+"Why," said Allen, who is Norton's best-beloved friend, "they say that
+you ran away from them as fast as they did from you."
+
+"Do they?" said Norton, grimly. "If you say that, I'll break your head
+for you. Seriously, men," continued he, "that was a most extraordinary
+thing. You know I was on the ram. But why she stopped when she stopped I
+knew as little as this wineglass does; and Callender himself knew no
+more than I. We had not been hit. We were all right as a trivet for all
+we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead,
+and began to drift down under those batteries. Callender had to
+telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat,
+and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape.
+Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not
+have done better. Of course we all rushed to the engine-room. What in
+thunder were they at there? All they knew was they could get no water
+into her boiler.
+
+"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers
+cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged
+if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth,
+and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that
+French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the
+Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have
+such a chance again!"
+
+Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he
+did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown
+into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I
+changed my mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on my
+table.
+
+That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe.
+The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the
+office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other
+people--but no matter for that! The 3d of April came, and the fire, and
+the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I had
+moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there.
+Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that
+be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days. I
+improved those days as well as I could,--burning carefully what was to
+be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One thing that
+happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the private
+bureau,--it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt
+Eunice give up when I broke my leg,--I came, to my horror, on a neat
+parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were
+not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they
+were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of
+the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use
+them, if necessary, in his escape. When I found them, I hopped out and
+called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for
+them. "Certainly," she said, "it was the first I knew of the danger.
+Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up,
+walked in, and in a moment was gone."
+
+And here, on the file of April 3d, was Lafarge's line to me:--
+
+"I got the secret-service parcel myself, and have put it in the
+President's own hands. I marked it, 'Gulf coast,' as you bade me."
+
+What could Lafarge have given to the President? Not the soundings of
+Hatteras Bar. Not the working-drawings of the first monitor. I had all
+these under my hand. Could it be,--"Julia, what did we do with that
+stuff of Sarah's that she marked _secret service?_"
+
+As I live, we had sent the girls' old hoops to the President in his
+flight.
+
+And when the next day we read how he used them, and how Pritchard
+arrested him, we thought if he had only had the right parcel he would
+have found the way to Florida.
+
+That is really the end of this memoir. But I should not have written it,
+but for something that happened just now on the piazza. You must know,
+some of us wrecks are up here at the Berkeley baths. My uncle has a
+place near here. Here came to-day John Sisson, whom I have not seen
+since Memminger ran and took the clerks with him. Here we had before,
+both the Richards brothers, the great paper men, you know, who started
+the Edgerly Works in Prince George's County, just after the war began.
+After dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they
+had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of
+Richards's paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had
+used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we
+all fell to talking of old times,--old they seem now, though it is not a
+year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last
+order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government-callendered paper
+of _sureté?_ We never got it, and I never knew why."
+
+"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.
+
+"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in
+the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of
+the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue
+of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country
+cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers
+ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really
+very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new
+they were, made by some Frenchmen we got, who had worked for the Bank of
+France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited
+three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We
+never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in
+March."
+
+Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his
+teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours,
+both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.
+
+"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died
+before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no
+secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it
+happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant
+little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever
+pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought
+all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers
+screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I
+tried it myself every way; back current; I tried; forward current; high
+feed; low freed, I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr.
+Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off
+every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my brother,
+there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the frame and
+the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of
+wire,"--and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel,
+which poor I knew so well by this time,--"that little bit of wire had
+passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens,
+through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the
+lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a
+Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the
+cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife--for you see it was a
+knife, by that time--had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web
+every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson,
+because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."
+
+On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I
+got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by
+writing down the story.
+
+That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hour-glass parcels, was
+the ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordnance, and treasury; and it
+led to the capture of the poor President too.
+
+But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its
+duty!
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS WAITS IN BOSTON.
+
+FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.
+
+
+[When my friends of the Boston Daily Advertiser asked me last year to
+contribute to their Christmas number, I was very glad to recall this
+scrap of Mr. Ingham's memoirs.
+
+For in most modern Christmas stories I have observed that the rich wake
+up of a sudden to befriend the poor, and that the moral is educed from
+such compassion. The incidents in this story show, what all life shows,
+that the poor befriend the rich as truly as the rich the poor: that, in
+the Christian life, each needs all.
+
+I have been asked a dozen times how far the story is true. Of course no
+such series of incidents has ever taken place in this order in four or
+five hours. But there is nothing told here which has not parallels
+perfectly fair in my experience or in that of any working minister.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I always give myself a Christmas present.
+
+And on this particular year the present was a carol party, which is
+about as good fun, all things consenting kindly, as a man can have.
+
+Many things must consent, as will appear. First of all, there must be
+good sleighing; and second, a fine night for Christmas eve. Ours are not
+the carollings of your poor shivering little East Angles or South
+Mercians, where they have to plod round afoot in countries which do not
+know what a sleigh-ride is.
+
+I had asked Harry to have sixteen of the best voices in the chapel
+school to be trained to five or six good carols, without knowing why. We
+did not care to disappoint them if a February thaw setting in on the
+24th of December should break up the spree before it began. Then I had
+told Howland that he must reserve for me a span of good horses, and a
+sleigh that I could pack sixteen small children into, tight-stowed.
+Howland is always good about such things, knew what the sleigh was for,
+having done the same in other years, and made the span four horses of
+his own accord, because the children would like it better, and "it would
+be no difference to him." Sunday night, as the weather nymphs ordered,
+the wind hauled round to the northwest and everything froze hard. Monday
+night, things moderated and the snow began to fall steadily,--so
+steadily; and so Tuesday night the Metropolitan people gave up their
+unequal contest, all good men and angels rejoicing at their
+discomfiture, and only a few of the people in the very lowest _Bolgie_
+being ill-natured enough to grieve. And thus it was, that by Thursday
+evening was one hard compact roadway from Copp's Hill to the
+Bone-burner's Gehenna, fit for good men and angels to ride over, without
+jar, without noise, and without fatigue to horse or man. So it was that
+when I came down with Lycidas to the chapel at seven o'clock, I found
+Harry had gathered there his eight pretty girls and his eight jolly
+boys, and had them practising for the last time,
+
+    "Carol, carol, Christians,
+    Carol joyfully;
+    Carol for the coming
+    Of Christ's nativity."
+
+I think the children had got inkling of what was coming, or perhaps
+Harry had hinted it to their mothers. Certainly they were warmly
+dressed, and when, fifteen minutes afterwards, Howland came round
+himself with the sleigh, he had put in as many rugs and bear-skins as if
+he thought the children were to be taken new-born from their respective
+cradles. Great was the rejoicing as the bells of the horses rang beneath
+the chapel windows, and Harry did not get his last _da capo_ for his
+last carol. Not much matter indeed, for they were perfect enough in it
+before midnight.
+
+Lycidas and I tumbled in on the back seat, each with a child in his lap
+to keep us warm; I flanked by Sam Perry, and he by John Rich, both of
+the mercurial age, and therefore good to do errands. Harry was in front
+somewhere flanked in like wise, and the other children lay in
+miscellaneously between, like sardines when you have first opened the
+box I had invited Lycidas, because, besides being my best friend, he is
+the best fellow in the world, and so deserves the best Christmas eve can
+give him. Under the full moon, on the still white snow, with sixteen
+children at the happiest, and with the blessed memories of the best the
+world has ever had, there can be nothing better than two or three such
+hours.
+
+"First, driver, out on Commonwealth Avenue. That will tone down the
+horses. Stop on the left after you have passed Fairfield Street." So we
+dashed up to the front of Haliburton's palace, where he was keeping his
+first Christmas tide. And the children, whom Harry had hushed down for a
+square or two, broke forth with good full voice under his strong lead in
+
+    "Shepherd of tender sheep,"
+
+singing with all that unconscious pathos with which children do sing,
+and starting the tears in your eyes in the midst of your gladness. The
+instant the horses' bells stopped their voices began. In an instant more
+we saw Haliburton and Anna run to the window and pull up the shades, and
+in a minute more faces at all the windows. And so the children sung
+through Clement's old hymn. Little did Clement think of bells and snow,
+as he taught it in his Sunday school there in Alexandria. But perhaps
+to-day, as they pin up the laurels and the palm in the chapel at
+Alexandria, they are humming the words, not thinking of Clement more
+than he thought of us. As the children closed with
+
+    "Swell the triumphant song
+    To Christ, our King."
+
+Haliburton came running out, and begged me to bring them in. But I told
+him, "No," as soon as I could hush their shouts of "Merry Christmas";
+that we had a long journey before us, and must not alight by the way.
+And the children broke out with
+
+    "Hail to the night,
+    Hail to the day,"
+
+rather a favorite,--quicker and more to the childish taste perhaps than
+the other,--and with another "Merry Christmas" we were off again.
+
+Off, the length of Commonwealth Avenue, to where it crosses the
+Brookline branch of the Mill-Dam, dashing along with the gayest of the
+sleighing-parties as we came back into town, up Chestnut Street, through
+Louisburg Square; ran the sleigh into a bank on the slope of Pinckney
+Street in front of Walter's house; and, before they suspected there that
+any one had come, the children were singing
+
+    "Carol, carol, Christians,
+    Carol joyfully."
+
+Kisses flung from the window; kisses flung back from the street. "Merry
+Christmas" again with a good-will, and then one of the girls began,
+
+    "When Anna took the baby,
+    And pressed his lips to hers,"
+
+and all of them fell in so cheerily. O dear me! it is a scrap of old
+Ephrem the Syrian, if they did but know it! And when, after this, Harry
+would fain have driven on, because two carols at one house was the
+rule, how the little witches begged that they might sing just one song
+more there, because Mrs. Alexander had been so kind to them, when she
+showed them about the German stitches. And then up the hill and over to
+the North End, and as far as we could get the horses up into Moon Court,
+that they might sing to the Italian image-man who gave Lucy the boy and
+dog in plaster, when she was sick in the spring. For the children had,
+you know, the choice of where they would go, and they select their best
+friends, and will be more apt to remember the Italian image-man than
+Chrysostom himself, though Chrysostom should have "made a few remarks"
+to them seventeen times in the chapel. Then the Italian image-man heard
+for the first time in his life
+
+    "Now is the time of Christmas come,"
+
+and
+
+    "Jesus in his babes abiding."
+
+And then we came up Hanover Street and stopped under Mr. Gerry's chapel,
+where they were dressing the walls with their evergreens, and gave them
+
+    "Hail to the night,
+    Hail to the day,"
+
+and so down State Street and stopped at the Advertiser office, because,
+when the boys gave their "Literary Entertainment," Mr. Hale put in their
+advertisement for nothing, and up in the old attic there the compositors
+were relieved to hear
+
+    "Nor war nor battle sound,"
+
+and
+
+    "The waiting world was still;"
+
+so that even the leading editor relaxed from his gravity, and the
+"In-General" man from his more serious views, and the Daily the next
+morning wished everybody a merry Christmas with even more unction, and
+resolved that in coming years it would have a supplement, large enough
+to contain all the good wishes. So away again to the houses of
+confectioners who had given the children candy,--to Miss Simonds's
+house, because she had been so good to them in school,--to the palaces
+of millionnaires who had prayed for these children with tears if the
+children only knew it,--to Dr. Frothingham's in Summer Street, I
+remember, where we stopped because the Boston Association of Ministers
+met here,--and out on Dover Street Bridge, that the poor chair-mender
+might hear our carols sung once more before he heard them better sung in
+an other world where nothing needs mending.
+
+    "King of glory, king of peace!"
+    "Hear the song, and see the Star!"
+    "Welcome be thou, heavenly King!"
+    "Was not Christ our Saviour?"
+
+and all the others, rung out with order or without order, breaking the
+hush directly as the horses' bells were stilled, thrown into the air
+with all the gladness of childhood, selected sometimes as Harry happened
+to think best for the hearers, but more often as the jubilant and
+uncontrolled enthusiasm of the children bade them break out in the most
+joyous, least studied, and purely lyrical of all. O, we went to twenty
+places that night, I suppose! We went to the grandest places in Boston,
+and we went to the meanest. Everywhere they wished us a merry Christmas,
+and we them. Everywhere a little crowd gathered round us, and then we
+dashed away far enough to gather quite another crowd; and then back,
+perhaps, not sorry to double on our steps if need were, and leaving
+every crowd with a happy thought of
+
+    "The star, the manger, and the Child!"
+
+At nine we brought up at my house, D Street, three doors from the
+corner, and the children picked their very best for Polly and my six
+little girls to hear, and then for the first time we let them jump out
+and run in. Polly had some hot oysters for them, so that the frolic was
+crowned with a treat. There was a Christmas cake cut into sixteen
+pieces, which they took home to dream upon; and then hoods and muffs on
+again, and by ten o'clock, or a little after, we had all the girls and
+all the little ones at their homes. Four of the big boys, our two
+flankers and Harry's right and left hand men, begged that they might
+stay till the last moment. They could walk back from the stable, and
+"rather walk than not, indeed." To which we assented, having gained
+parental permission, as we left younger sisters in their respective
+homes.
+
+
+II.
+
+Lycidas and I both thought, as we went into these modest houses, to
+leave the children, to say they had been good and to wish a "Merry
+Christmas" ourselves to fathers, mothers, and to guardian aunts, that
+the welcome of those homes was perhaps the best part of it all. Here was
+the great stout sailor-boy whom we had not seen since he came back from
+sea. He was a mere child when he left our school years on years ago, for
+the East, on board Perry's vessel, and had been round the world. Here
+was brave Mrs. Masury. I had not seen her since her mother died.
+"Indeed, Mr. Ingham, I got so used to watching then, that I cannot sleep
+well yet o' nights; I wish you knew some poor creature that wanted me
+to-night, if it were only in memory of Bethlehem." "You take a deal of
+trouble for the children," said Campbell, as he crushed my hand in his;
+"but you know they love you, and you know I would do as much for you and
+yours,"--which I knew was true. "What can I send to your children?" said
+Dalton, who was finishing sword-blades. (Ill wind was Fort Sumter, but
+it blew good to poor Dalton, whom it set up in the world with his
+sword-factory.) "Here's an old-fashioned tape-measure for the girl, and
+a Sheffield wimble for the boy. What, there is no boy? Let one of the
+girls have it then; it will count one more present for her." And so he
+pressed his brown-paper parcel into my hand. From every house, though
+it were the humblest, a word of love, as sweet, in truth, as if we could
+have heard the voice of angels singing in the sky.
+
+I bade Harry good night; took Lycidas to his lodgings, and gave his wife
+my Christmas wishes and good night; and, coming down to the sleigh
+again, gave way to the feeling which I think you will all understand,
+that this was not the time to stop, but just the time to begin. For the
+streets were stiller now, and the moon brighter than ever, if possible,
+and the blessings of these simple people and of the grand people, and of
+the very angels in heaven, who are not bound to the misery of using
+words when they have anything worth saying,--all these wishes and
+blessings were round me, all the purity of the still winter night, and I
+didn't want to lose it all by going to bed to sleep. So I put the boys
+all together, where they could chatter, took one more brisk turn on the
+two avenues, and then, passing through Charles Street, I believe I was
+even thinking of Cambridge, I noticed the lights in Woodhull's house,
+and, seeing they were up, thought I would make Fanny a midnight call.
+She came to the door herself. I asked if she were waiting for Santa
+Claus, but saw in a moment that I must not joke with her. She said she
+had hoped I was her husband. In a minute was one of those contrasts
+which make life, life. God puts us into the world that we may try them
+and be tried by them.
+
+Poor Fanny's mother had been blocked up on the Springfield train as she
+was coming on to Christmas. The old lady had been chilled through, and
+was here in bed now with pneumonia. Both Fanny's children had been
+ailing when she came, and this morning the doctor had pronounced it
+scarlet fever. Fanny had not undressed herself since Monday, nor slept,
+I thought, in the same time. So while we had been singing carols and
+wishing merry Christmas, the poor child had been waiting, and hoping
+that her husband or Edward, both of whom were on the tramp, would find
+for her and bring to her the model nurse, who had not yet appeared. But
+at midnight this unknown sister had not arrived, nor had either of the
+men returned. When I rang, Fanny had hoped I was one of them.
+Professional paragons, dear reader, are shy of scarlet fever. I told the
+poor child that it was better as it was. I wrote a line for Sam Perry to
+take to his aunt, Mrs. Masury, in which I simply said: "Dear mamma, I
+have found the poor creature who wants you to-night. Come back in this
+carriage." I bade him take a hack at Gates's, where they were all up
+waiting for the assembly to be done at Papanti's. I sent him over to
+Albany Street; and really as I sat there trying to soothe Fanny, it
+seemed to me less time than it has taken to dictate this little story
+about her, before Mrs. Masury rang gently, and I left them, having made
+Fanny promise that she would consecrate the day, which at that moment
+was born, by trusting God, by going to bed and going to sleep, knowing
+that her children were in much better hands than hers. As I passed out
+of the hall, the gas-light fell on a print of Correggio's Adoration,
+where Woodhull had himself written years before,
+
+    "Ut appareat iis qui in tenebris et umbra mortis positi sunt."
+
+"Darkness and the shadow of death" indeed, and what light like the light
+and comfort such a woman as my Mary Masury brings!
+
+And so, but for one of the accidents, as we call them, I should have
+dropped the boys at the corner of Dover Street, and gone home with my
+Christmas lesson.
+
+But it happened, as we irreverently say,--it happened as we crossed Park
+Square, so called from its being an irregular pentagon of which one of
+the sides has been taken away, that I recognized a tall man, plodding
+across in the snow, head down, round-shouldered, stooping forward in
+walking, with his right shoulder higher than his left; and by these
+tokens I knew Tom Coram, prince among Boston princes. Not Thomas Coram
+that built the Foundling Hospital, though he was of Boston too; but he
+was longer ago. You must look for him in Addison's contribution to a
+supplement to the Spectator,--the old Spectator, I mean, not the
+Thursday Spectator, which is more recent. Not Thomas Coram, I say, but
+Tom Coram, who would build a hospital to-morrow, if you showed him the
+need, without waiting to die first, and always helps forward, as a
+prince should, whatever is princely, be it a statue at home, a school in
+Richmond, a newspaper in Florida, a church in Exeter, a steam-line to
+Liverpool, or a widow who wants a hundred dollars. I wished him a merry
+Christmas, and Mr. Howland, by a fine instinct, drew up the horses as I
+spoke. Coram shook hands; and, as it seldom happens that I have an empty
+carriage while he is on foot, I asked him if I might not see him home.
+He was glad to get in. We wrapped him up with spoils of the bear, the
+fox, and the bison, turned the horses' heads again,--five hours now
+since they started on this entangled errand of theirs,--and gave him his
+ride. "I was thinking of you at the moment," said Coram,--"thinking of
+old college times, of the mystery of language as unfolded by the Abbé
+Faria to Edmond Dantes in the depths of the Chateau d'If. I was
+wondering if you could teach me Japanese, if I asked you to a Christmas
+dinner." I laughed. Japan was really a novelty then, and I asked him
+since when he had been in correspondence with the sealed country. It
+seemed that their house at Shanghae had just sent across there their
+agents for establishing the first house in Edomo, in Japan, under the
+new treaty. Everything looked promising, and the beginnings were made
+for the branch which has since become Dot and Trevilyan there. Of this
+he had the first tidings in his letters by the mail of that afternoon.
+John Coram, his brother, had written to him, and had said that he
+enclosed for his amusement the Japanese bill of particulars, as it had
+been drawn out, on which they had founded their orders for the first
+assorted cargo ever to be sent from America to Edomo. Bill of
+particulars there was, stretching down the long tissue-paper in
+exquisite chirography. But by some freak of the "total depravity of
+things," the translated order for the assorted cargo was not there. John
+Coram, in his care to fold up the Japanese writing nicely, had left on
+his own desk at Shanghae the more intelligible English. "And so I must
+wait," said Tom philosophically, "till the next East India mail for my
+orders, certain that seven English houses have had less enthusiastic and
+philological correspondents than my brother."
+
+I said I did not see that. That I could not teach him to speak the
+Taghalian dialects so well, that he could read them with facility before
+Saturday. But I could do a good deal better. Did he remember writing a
+note to old Jack Percival for me five years ago? No, he remembered no
+such thing; he knew Jack Percival, but never wrote a note to him in his
+life. Did he remember giving me fifty dollars, because I had taken a
+delicate boy, whom I was going to send to sea, and I was not quite
+satisfied with the government outfit? No, he did not remember that,
+which was not strange, for that was a thing he was doing every day,
+"Well, I don't care how much you remember, but the boy about whom you
+wrote to Jack Percival, for whose mother's ease of mind you provided
+the half-hundred, is back again,--strong, straight, and well; what is
+more to the point, he had the whole charge of Perry's commissariat on
+shore at Yokohama, was honorably discharged out there, reads Japanese
+better than you read English; and if it will help you at all, he shall
+be here at your house at breakfast." For as I spoke we stopped at
+Coram's door. "Ingham," said Coram, "if you were not a parson, I should
+say you were romancing." "My child," said I, "I sometimes write a
+parable for the Atlantic; but the words of my lips are verity, as all
+those of the Sandemanians. Go to bed; do not even dream of the Taghalian
+dialects; be sure that the Japanese interpreter will breakfast with you,
+and the next time you are in a scrape send for the nearest minister.
+George, tell your brother Ezra that Mr. Coram wishes him to breakfast
+here to-morrow morning at eight o'clock; don't forget the number,
+Pemberton Square, you know." "Yes, sir," said George; and Thomas Coram
+laughed, said "Merry Christmas," and we parted.
+
+It was time we were all in bed, especially these boys. But glad enough
+am I as I write these words that the meeting of Coram set us back that
+dropped-stitch in our night's journey. There was one more delay. We were
+sweeping by the Old State House, the boys singing again, "Carol, carol,
+Christians," as we dashed along the still streets, when I caught sight
+of Adams Todd, and he recognized me. He had heard us singing when we
+were at the Advertiser office. Todd is an old fellow-apprentice of
+mine,--and he is now, or rather was that night, chief pressman in the
+Argus office. I like the Argus people,--it was there that I was South
+American Editor, now many years ago,--and they befriend me to this hour.
+Todd hailed me, and once more I stopped. "What sent you out from your
+warm steam-boiler?" "Steam-boiler, indeed," said Todd. "Two rivets
+loose,--steam-room full of steam,--police frightened,--neighborhood in a
+row,--and we had to put out the fire. She would have run a week without
+hurting a fly,--only a little puff in the street sometimes. But there we
+are, Ingham. We shall lose the early mail as it stands. Seventy-eight
+tokens to be worked now." They always talked largely of their edition at
+the Argus. Saw it with many eyes, perhaps; but this time, I am sure,
+Todd spoke true. I caught his idea at once. In younger and more muscular
+times, Todd and I had worked the Adams press by that fly-wheel for full
+five minutes at a time, as a test of strength; and in my mind's eye, I
+saw that he was printing his paper at this moment with relays of
+grinding stevedores. He said it was so. "But think of it to-night," said
+he. "It is Christmas eve, and not an Irishman to be hired, though one
+paid him ingots. Not a man can stand the grind ten minutes." I knew that
+very well from old experience, and I thanked him inwardly for not
+saying "the demnition grind," with Mantihni. "We cannot run the press
+half the time," said he; "and the men we have are giving out now. We
+shall lose all our carrier delivery." "Todd," said I, "is this a night
+to be talking of ingots, or hiring, or losing, or gaining? When will you
+learn that Love rules the court, the camp, and the Argus office." And I
+wrote on the back of a letter to Campbell: "Come to the Argus office,
+No. 2 Dassett's Alley, with seven men not afraid to work"; and I gave it
+to John and Sam, bade Howland take the boys to Campbell's house,--walked
+down with Todd to his office,--challenged him to take five minutes at
+the wheel, in memory of old times,--made the tired relays laugh as they
+saw us take hold; and then,--when I had cooled off, and put on my
+Cardigan,--met Campbell, with his seven sons of Anak, tumbling down the
+stairs, wondering what round of mercy the parson had found for them this
+time. I started home, knowing I should now have my Argus with my coffee.
+
+
+III.
+
+And so I walked home. Better so, perhaps, after all, than in the lively
+sleigh, with the tinkling bells.
+
+    "It was a calm and silent night!--
+      Seven hundred years and fifty-three
+    Had Rome been growing up to might,
+      And now was queen of land and sea!
+    No sound was heard of clashing wars,--
+      Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;
+    Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
+      Held undisturbed their ancient reign
+        In the solemn midnight,
+          Centuries ago!"
+
+What an eternity it seemed since I started with those children singing
+carols. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary, Rome, Roman senators, Tiberius,
+Paul, Nero, Clement, Ephrem, Ambrose, and all the singers,--Vincent de
+Paul, and all the loving wonderworkers, Milton and Herbert and all the
+carol-writers, Luther and Knox and all the prophets,--what a world of
+people had been keeping Christmas with Sam Perry and Lycidas and Harry
+and me; and here were Yokohama and the Japanese, the Daily Argus and its
+ten million tokens and their readers,--poor Fanny Woodhull and her sick
+mother there, keeping Christmas too! For a finite world, these are a
+good many "waits" to be singing in one poor fellow's ears on one
+Christmas-tide.
+
+    "'Twas in the calm and silent night!--
+      The senator of haughty Rome,
+    Impatient urged his chariot's flight,
+      From lordly revel, roiling home.
+    Triumphal arches gleaming swell
+      His breast, with thoughts of boundless sway
+    What recked the _Roman_ what befell
+      A paltry province far away,
+        In the solemn midnight,
+          Centuries ago!
+
+    "Within that province far away
+      Went plodding home a weary boor;
+    A streak of light before him lay,
+      Fallen through a half-shut stable door
+    Across his path. He passed,--for naught
+      Told _what was going on within_;
+    How keen the stars, his only thought,
+      The air how calm and cold and thin,
+        In the solemn midnight,
+          Centuries ago!"
+
+"Streak of light"--Is there a light in Lycidas's room? They not in bed!
+That is making a night of it! Well, there are few hours of the day or
+night when I have not been in Lycidas's room, so I let myself in by the
+night-key he gave me, ran up the stairs,--it is a horrid seven-storied,
+first-class lodging-house. For my part, I had as lief live in a steeple.
+Two flights I ran up, two steps at a time,--I was younger then than I am
+now,--pushed open the door which was ajar, and saw such a scene of
+confusion as I never saw in Mary's over-nice parlor before. Queer! I
+remember the first thing that I saw was wrong was a great ball of white
+German worsted on the floor. Her basket was upset. A great
+Christmas-tree lay across the rug, quite too high for the room; a large
+sharp-pointed Spanish clasp-knife was by it, with which they had been
+lopping it; there were two immense baskets of white papered presents,
+both upset; but what frightened me most was the centre-table. Three or
+four handkerchiefs on it,--towels, napkins, I know not what,--all brown
+and red and almost black with blood! I turned, heart-sick, to look into
+the bedroom,--and I really had a sense of relief when I saw somebody.
+Bad enough it was, however. Lycidas, but just now so strong and well,
+lay pale and exhausted on the bloody bed, with the clothing removed from
+his right thigh and leg, while over him bent Mary and Morton. I learned
+afterwards that poor Lycidas, while trimming the Christmas-tree, and
+talking merrily with Mary and Morton,--who, by good luck, had brought
+round his presents late, and was staying to tie on glass balls and
+apples,--had given himself a deep and dangerous wound with the point of
+the unlucky knife, and had lost a great deal of blood before the
+hemorrhage could be controlled. Just before I entered, the stick
+tourniquet which Morton had improvised had slipped in poor Mary's
+unpractised hand, at the moment he was about to secure the bleeding
+artery, and the blood followed in such a gush as compelled him to give
+his whole attention to stopping its flow. He only knew my entrance by
+the "Ah, Mr. Ingham," of the frightened Irish girl, who stood useless
+behind the head of the bed.
+
+"O Fred," said Morton, without looking up, "I am glad you are here."
+
+"And what can I do for you?"
+
+"Some whiskey,--first of all."
+
+"There are two bottles," said Mary, who was holding the candle,--"in the
+cupboard behind his dressing-glass."
+
+I took Bridget with me, struck a light in the dressing-room (how she
+blundered about the match), and found the cupboard door locked! Key
+doubtless in Mary's pocket,--probably in pocket of "another dress." I
+did not ask. Took my own bunch, willed tremendously that my account-book
+drawer key should govern the lock, and it did. If it had not, I should
+have put my fist through the panels. Bottle of bedbug poison; bottle
+marked "bay rum"; another bottle with no mark; two bottles of Saratoga
+water. "Set them all on the floor, Bridget." A tall bottle of Cologne.
+Bottle marked in MS. What in the world is it? "Bring that candle,
+Bridget." "Eau destillée. Marron, Montreal." What in the world did
+Lycidas bring distilled water from Montreal for? And then Morton's clear
+voice in the other room, "As quick as you can, Fred." "Yes! in one
+moment. Put all these on the floor, Bridget." Here they are at last.
+"Bourbon whiskey." "Corkscrew, Bridget."
+
+"Indade, sir, and where is it?" "Where? I don't know. Run down as quick
+as you can, and bring it. His wife cannot leave him." So Bridget ran,
+and the first I heard was the rattle as she pitched down the last six
+stairs of the first flight headlong. Let us hope she has not broken her
+leg. I meanwhile am driving a silver pronged fork into the Bourbon
+corks, and the blade of my own penknife on the other side.
+
+"Now, Fred," from George within. (We all call Morton "George.") "Yes,
+in one moment," I replied. Penknife blade breaks off, fork pulls right
+out, two crumbs of cork come with it. Will that girl never come?
+
+I turned round; I found a goblet on the wash-stand; I took Lycidas's
+heavy clothes-brush, and knocked off the neck of the bottle. Did you
+ever do it, reader, with one of those pressed glass bottles they make
+now? It smashed like a Prince Rupert's drop in my hand, crumbled into
+seventy pieces,--a nasty smell of whiskey on the floor,--and I, holding
+just the hard bottom of the thing with two large spikes running
+worthless up into the air. But I seized the goblet, poured into it what
+was left in the bottom, and carried it in to Morton as quietly as I
+could. He bade me give Lycidas as much as he could swallow; then showed
+me how to substitute my thumb for his, and compress the great artery.
+When he was satisfied that he could trust me, he began his work again,
+silently; just speaking what must be said to that brave Mary, who seemed
+to have three hands because he needed them. When all was secure, he
+glanced at the ghastly white face, with beads of perspiration on the
+forehead and upper lip, laid his finger on the pulse, and said: "We will
+have a little more whiskey. No, Mary, you are overdone already; let Fred
+bring it." The truth was that poor Mary was almost as white as Lycidas.
+She would not faint,--that was the only reason she did not,--and at the
+moment I wondered that she did not fall. I believe George and I were
+both expecting it, now the excitement was over. He called her Mary and
+me Fred, because we were all together every day of our lives. Bridget,
+you see, was still nowhere.
+
+So I retired for my whiskey again,--to attack that other bottle. George
+whispered quickly as I went, "Bring enough,--bring the bottle." Did he
+want the bottle corked? Would that Kelt ever come up stairs? I passed
+the bell-rope as I went into the dressing-room, and rang as hard as I
+could ring. I took the other bottle, and bit steadily with my teeth at
+the cork, only, of course, to wrench the end of it off. George called
+me, and I stepped back. "No," said he, "bring your whiskey."
+
+Mary had just rolled gently back on the floor. I went again in despair.
+But I heard Bridget's step this time. First flight, first passage;
+second flight, second passage. She ran in in triumph at length, with a
+_screw-driver!_
+
+"No!" I whispered,--"no. The crooked thing you draw corks with," and I
+showed her the bottle again. "Find one somewhere and don't come back
+without it." So she vanished for the second time.
+
+"Frederic!" said Morton. I think he never called me so before. Should I
+risk the clothes-brush again? I opened Lycidas's own drawers,--papers,
+boxes, everything in order,--not a sign of a tool.
+
+"Frederic!" "Yes," I said. But why did I say "Yes"? "Father of Mercy,
+tell me what to do."
+
+And my mazed eyes, dim with tears,--did you ever shed tears from
+excitement?--fell on an old razor-strop of those days of shaving, made
+by C. WHITTAKER, SHEFFIELD. The "Sheffield" stood in black letters out
+from the rest like a vision. They make cork screws in Sheffield too. If
+this Whittaker had only made a corkscrew! And what is a "Sheffield
+wimble?"
+
+Hand in my pocket,--brown paper parcel.
+
+"Where are you, Frederic?" "Yes," said I, for the last time. Twine off!
+brown paper off. And I learned that the "Sheffield wimble" was one of
+those things whose name you never heard before, which people sell you in
+Thames Tunnel, where a hoof-cleaner, a gimlet, a screw-driver, and a
+_corkscrew_ fold into one handle.
+
+"Yes," said I, again. "Pop," said the cork "Bubble, bubble, bubble,"
+said the whiskey. Bottle in one hand, full tumbler in the other, I
+walked in. George poured half a tumblerful down Lycidas's throat that
+time. Nor do I dare say how much he poured down afterwards. I found that
+there was need of it, from what he said of the pulse, when it was all
+over. I guess Mary had some, too.
+
+This was the turning-point. He was exceedingly weak, and we sat by him
+in turn through the night, giving, at short intervals, stimulants and
+such food as he could swallow easily; for I remember Morton was very
+particular not to raise his head more than we could help. But there was
+no real danger after this.
+
+As we turned away from the house on Christmas morning,--I to preach and
+he to visit his patients,--he said to me, "Did you make that whiskey?"
+
+"No," said I, "but poor Dod Dalton had to furnish the corkscrew."
+
+And I went down to the chapel to preach. The sermon had been lying ready
+at home on my desk,--and Polly had brought it round to me,--for there
+had been no time for me to go from Lycidas's home to D Street and to
+return. There was the text, all as it was the day before:--
+
+    "They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his
+    brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the
+    goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote
+    the anvil."
+
+And there were the pat illustrations, as I had finished them yesterday;
+of the comfort Mary Magdalen gave Joanna, the court lady; and the
+comfort the court lady gave Mary Magdalen, after the mediator of a new
+covenant had mediated between them; how Simon the Cyrenian, and Joseph
+of Arimathea, and the beggar Bartimeus comforted each other, gave each
+other strength, common force, _com-fort_, when the One Life flowed in
+all their veins; how on board the ship the Tent-Maker proved to be
+Captain, and the Centurion learned his duty from his Prisoner, and how
+they "_All_ came safe to shore," because the New Life was there. But as
+I preached, I caught Frye's eye. Frye is always critical; and I said to
+myself, "Frye would not take his illustrations from eighteen hundred
+years ago." And I saw dear old Dod Dalton trying to keep awake, and
+Campbell hard asleep after trying, and Jane Masury looking round to see
+if her mother did not come in; and Ezra Sheppard, looking, not so much
+at me, as at the window beside me, as if his thoughts were the other
+side of the world. And I said to them all, "O, if I could tell you, my
+friends, what every twelve hours of my life tells me,--of the way in
+which woman helps woman, and man helps man, when only the ice is
+broken,--how we are all rich so soon as we find out that we are all
+brothers, and how we are all in want, unless we can call at any moment
+for a brother's hand,--then I could make you understand something, in
+the lives you lead every day, of what the New Covenant, the New
+Commonwealth, the New Kingdom is to be."
+
+But I did not dare tell Dod Dalton what Campbell had been doing for
+Todd, nor did I dare tell Campbell by what unconscious arts old Dod had
+been helping Lycidas. Perhaps the sermon would have been better had I
+done so.
+
+But, when we had our tree in the evening at home, I did tell
+all this story to Polly and the bairns, and I gave Alice her
+measuring-tape,--precious with a spot of Lycidas's blood,--and Bertha
+her Sheffield wimble. "Papa," said old Clara, who is the next child,
+"all the people gave presents, did not they, as they did in the picture
+in your study?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "though they did not all know they were giving them."
+
+"Why do they not give such presents every day?" said Clara.
+
+"O child," I said, "it is only for thirty-six hours of the three hundred
+and sixty-five days, that all people remember that they are all brothers
+and sisters, and those are the hours that we call, therefore, Christmas
+eve and Christmas day."
+
+"And when they always remember it," said Bertha, "it will be Christmas
+all the time! What fun!"
+
+"What fun, to be sure; but Clara, what is in the picture?"
+
+"Why, an old woman has brought eggs to the baby in the manger, and an
+old man has brought a sheep. I suppose they all brought what they had."
+
+"I suppose those who came from Sharon brought roses," said Bertha. And
+Alice, who is eleven, and goes to the Lincoln School, and therefore
+knows everything, said, "Yes, and the Damascus people brought Damascus
+wimbles."
+
+"This is certain," said Polly, "that nobody tried to give a straw, but
+the straw, if he really gave it, carried a blessing."
+
+
+
+
+_EDWARD E. HALE'S WRITINGS._
+
+
+THE GOOD TIME COMING; or, Our New Crusade.
+
+Square 18mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00
+
+"It has all the characteristics of its brilliant author,--unflagging
+entertainment, helpfulness, suggestive, practical hints, and a
+contagious vitality that sets one's blood tingling. Whoever has read
+'Ten Times One is Ten' will know just what we mean. We predict that the
+new volume, as being a more charming story, will have quite as great a
+parish of readers. The gist of the book is to show how possible it is
+for the best spirits of a community, through wise organization, to form
+themselves into a lever by means of which the whole tone of the social
+status may be elevated, and the good and highest happiness of the
+helpless many be attained through the self-denying exertions of the
+powerful few."--_Southern Churchman._
+
+
+THE INGHAM PAPERS, 16mo. $1.25.
+
+"But it is not alone for their wit and ingenuity we prize Mr. Hale's
+stories, but for the serious thought, the moral, or practical suggestion
+underlying all of them. They are not written simply to amuse, but have a
+graver purpose. Of the stories in the present volume, the best to our
+thinking is 'The Rag Man and Rag Woman.'"--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+HOW TO DO IT 16mo. $1.00
+
+"Good sense, very practical suggestions, telling illustrations (in
+words), lively fancy, and delightful humor combine to make Mr. Hale's
+hints exceedingly taking and stimulating, and we do not see how either
+sex can fail, after reading his pages, to know How to Talk, How to
+Write, How to Read, How to go into Society, and How to Travel. These,
+with Life at School, Life in Vacation, Life Alone, Habits in Church,
+Life with Children, Life with your Elders, Habits of Reading, and
+Getting Ready, are the several topics of the more than as many chapters,
+and make the volume one which should find its way to the hands of every
+boy and girl. To this end we would like to see it in every
+Sabbath-school library in the land."--_Congregationalist._
+
+
+CRUSOE IN NEW YORK, and other Stories, 16mo. $1.00
+
+"If one desires something unique, full of wit, a veiled sarcasm that is
+rich in the extreme, it will all be found in this charming little book.
+The air of perfect sincerity with which they are told, the diction,
+reminding one of 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and the ludicrous
+improbability of the tales, give them a power rarely met with in 'short
+stories.' There is many a lesson to be learned from the quiet little
+volume."
+
+
+HIS LEVEL BEST. 16mo. $1.25.
+
+"We like Mr. Hale's style. He is fresh, frank, pungent, straightforward,
+and pointed. The first story is the one that gives the book its title,
+and it is related in a dignified manner, showing peculiar genius and
+humorous talent. The contents are, 'His Level Best,' 'The Brick Moon,'
+'Water Talk,' 'Mouse and Lion,' 'The Modern Sinbad,' 'A Tale of a
+Salamander,'"--_Philadelphia Exchange._
+
+
+GONE TO TEXAS; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman, 16mo. $1.00.
+
+"There are few books of travel which combine in a romance of true love
+so many touches of the real life of many people, in glimpses of happy
+homes, in pictures of scenery and sunset, as the beautiful panorama
+unrolled before us from the windows of this Pullman car. The book is
+crisp and bright, and has a pleasant flavor; and whatever is lovely in
+the spirit of its author, or of good report in his name, one may look
+here and find promise of both fulfilled."--_Exchange._
+
+
+WHAT CAREER? or, The Choice of a Vocation and the Use of Time. 16mo.
+$1.25.
+
+"'What Career?' is a book which will do anybody good to read; especially
+is it a profitable book for young men to 'read, mark, and inwardly
+digest.' Mr. Hale seems to know what young men need, and here he gives
+them the result of his large experience and careful observation. A list
+of the subjects treated in this little volume will sufficiently indicate
+its scope: (1) The Leaders Lead; (2) The Specialties; (3) Noblesse
+Oblige; (4) The Mind's Maximum; (5) A Theological Seminary; (6)
+Character; (7) Responsibilities of Young Men; (8) Study Outside School;
+(9) The Training of Men; (10) Exercise."--_Watchman._
+
+
+UPS AND DOWNS. An Every-Day Novel, 16mo. $1.50.
+
+"This book is certainly very enjoyable. It delineates American life so
+graphically that we feel as if Mr. Hale must have seen every rood of
+ground he describes, and must have known personally every character he
+so cleverly depicts. In his hearty fellowship with young people lies his
+great power. The story is permeated with a spirit of glad-heartedness
+and elasticity which in this hurried, anxious, money-making age it is
+most refreshing to meet with in any one out of his teens; and the
+author's sympathy with, and respect for, the little romances of his
+young friends is most fraternal."--_New Church Magazine_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the
+Publishers_,
+
+ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote A: After Chapman.]
+
+[Footnote B: After Cowper and Pope. Long after!]
+
+[Footnote C: Iliad, vi.]
+
+[Footnote D: Iliad, vi--POPE.]
+
+[Footnote E: Iliad, xii., after Sotheby.]
+
+[Footnote F: I do not know that this explanation is at all clear. Let
+me, as the mathematicians say, give an instance which will illustrate
+the importance of this profession. It is now a few months since I
+received the following note from a distinguished member of the
+Cabinet:--
+
+    "WASHINGTON, January ----, 1842.
+
+    "DEAR SIR:--We are in a little trouble about a little thing. There
+    are now in this city no less than three gentlemen bearing
+    credentials to government as Chargés from the Republic of Oronoco.
+    They are, of course, accredited from three several home
+    governments. The President signified, when the first arrived, that
+    he would receive the Chargé from that government, on the 2d
+    proximo, but none of us know who the right Chargé is. The
+    newspapers tell nothing satisfactory about it. I suppose you know:
+    can you write me word be fore the 2d?
+
+    "The gentlemen are: Dr. Estremadura, accredited from the
+    'Constitutional Government,'--his credentials are dated the 2d of
+    November; Don Paulo Vibeira, of the 'Friends of the People,' 5th
+    of November; M. Antonio de Vesga, 'Constitution of 1823,' October
+    27th. They attach great importance to our decision, each having
+    scrip to sell. In haste, truly yours."
+
+To this letter I returned the following reply:--
+
+    "SIR:--Our latest dates from Oronoco are to the 13th ultimo. The
+    'Constitution of '23' was then in full power. If, however, the
+    policy of our government be to recognize the gentlemen whose
+    principals shall be in office on the 2d proximo, it is a very
+    different affair.
+
+    "You may not be acquainted with the formulas for ascertaining the
+    duration of any given modern revolution. I now use the following,
+    which I find almost exactly correct.
+
+    "Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles
+    from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given
+    Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in
+    days. This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the
+    heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of
+    the theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the
+    25th of October last If you will give the above formula into the
+    hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show
+    that that government will go out of power on the 1st of February,
+    at 25 minutes after 1, P.M. Your choice, on the 2d, must be
+    therefore between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no
+    difficulty. Bobádil (Vibeira's principal) was on the 13th ultimo
+    confined under sentence of death, at such a distance from the
+    capital that he cannot possibly escape and get into power before
+    the 2d of February. The 'Friends of the People,' in Oronoco, have
+    always moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less
+    than nineteen days' canvassing; that was in 1839. Generally they
+    are even longer. Of course, Estremadura will be your man.
+
+    "Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
+
+    "GEORGE HACKMATACK"
+
+The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice. My information
+proved nearly correct, the only error being one of seven minutes in the
+downfall of the 1823 Constitution. This arose from my making no
+allowance for difference of longitude between Piaut, where their
+government was established, and Opee, where it was crushed. The
+difference of time between those places is six minutes and fifty-three
+seconds, as the reader may see on a globe.
+
+Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold his
+scrip.]
+
+[Footnote G: Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that half
+past one was late in 1836. At that time the "Great Western Mail" was due
+in Boston at 6 P.M., and there was no later news except "local," or an
+occasional horse express.]
+
+[Footnote H: The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when
+the German was yet unknown.]
+
+[Footnote I: Anno Christi, 60.]
+
+[Footnote J: Tacit. Annal., xiv. 9]
+
+[Footnote K: Anno Christi, 60. See Neander, P. & T., B. iii. ch. x]
+
+[Footnote L: This correspondence, as preserved in the collections of
+fragments, has too much the aspect of a school-boy exercise to claim
+much credit, though high authorities support it as genuine. But the
+probability that there was such a correspondence, though now lost, is
+very strong.]
+
+[Footnote M: The Fire Alarm is the invention of Dr. William F. Channing:
+
+    "A wizard of such dreaded fame,
+      That when in Salamanca's cave,
+      Him listed his magic wand to wave,
+    The bells would ring in Notre Dame"]
+
+[Footnote N: I am proud to say that such suggestions have had so much
+weight, that in 1868 the alarm strikes the number of the box which first
+telegraphs danger, six-four, six-four, &c., six being the district
+number, and four the box number in that district.]
+
+[Footnote O: Tetrao lagopus.]
+
+[Footnote P: Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear little
+bell and coral reader. You have rightly guessed that the question means
+"What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?"]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Without a Country and Other
+Tales, by Edward E. Hale
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY ***
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