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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tales of the Chesapeake, by George Alfred
+Townsend
+
+
+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: Tales of the Chesapeake
+
+
+Author: George Alfred Townsend
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 5, 2006  [eBook #18126]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE CHESAPEAKE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Bethanne M. Simms, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+TALES OF THE CHESAPEAKE
+
+by
+
+GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND
+
+"GATH."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+         A fruity smell is in the school-house lane;
+           The clover bees are sick with evening heats;
+         A few old houses from the window-pane
+           Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats
+         The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets,
+           And clangorous music of the oyster tongs
+         Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats,
+           And sound of seine drawn home with negro songs.
+
+
+
+
+New York:
+American News Company,
+39 and 41 Chambers Street.
+1880.
+Copyright, 1880,
+Geo. Alfred Townsend.
+
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER,
+
+REV. STEPHEN TOWNSEND, M.D., PH.D.,
+
+WHOSE ANCESTORS EXPLORED THE CHESAPEAKE BAY IN 1623,
+AND WERE SETTLED ON THE POCOMOKE RIVER ALMOST
+TWO HUNDRED YEARS, NEAR HIS BIRTHPLACE;
+
+WITH
+
+THE AFFECTION OF
+
+_HIS ONLY SURVIVING SON._
+
+
+
+
+Of the following pieces, two, "Kidnapped," and "Dominion over the
+Fish," have been published in _Chambers's Journal_, London. The poem
+"Herman of Bohemia Manor" is new. All the compositions illustrate the
+same general locality.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+MOTHERNOOK.
+
+THE EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND.
+
+
+    One day, worn out with head and pen,
+    And the debate of public men,
+      I said aloud, "Oh! if there were
+    Some place to make me young awhile,
+      I would go there, I would go there,
+    And if it were a many a mile!"
+      Then something cried--perhaps my map,
+    That not in vain I oft invoke--
+      "Go seek again your mother's lap,
+      The dear old soil that gave you sap,
+    And see the land of Pocomoke!"
+
+    A sense of shame that never yet
+    My foot on that old shore was set,
+      Though prodigal in wandering,
+    Arose; and with a tingled cheek,
+      Like some late wild duck on the wing,
+    I started down the Chesapeake.
+      The morning sunlight, silvery calm,
+    From basking shores of woodland broke,
+      And capes and inlets breathing balm,
+      And lovely islands clothed in palm,
+    Closed round the sound of Pocomoke.
+
+    The pungy boats at anchor swing,
+    The long canoes were oystering,
+      And moving barges played the seine
+    Along the beaches of Tangiers;
+      I heard the British drums again
+    As in their predatory years,
+      When Kedge's Straits the Tories swept,
+    And Ross's camp-fires hid in smoke.
+      They plundered all the coasts except
+      The camp the Island Parson kept
+    For praying men of Pocomoke.
+
+    And when we thread in quaint intrigue
+    Onancock Creek and Pungoteague,
+      The world and wars behind us stop.
+    On God's frontiers we seem to be
+      As at Rehoboth wharf we drop,
+    And see the Kirk of Mackemie:
+      The first he was to teach the creed
+    The rugged Scotch will ne'er revoke;
+      His slaves he made to work and read,
+      Nor powers Episcopal to heed,
+    That held the glebes on Pocomoke.
+
+    But quiet nooks like these unman
+    The grim predestinarian,
+      Whose soul expands to mountain views;
+    And Wesley's tenets, like a tide,
+      These level shores with love suffuse,
+    Where'er his patient preachers ride.
+      The landscape quivered with the swells
+    And felt the steamer's paddle stroke,
+      That tossed the hollow gum-tree shells,
+      As if some puffing craft of hell's
+    The fisher chased in Pocomoke.
+
+    Anon the river spreads to coves,
+    And in the tides grow giant groves.
+      The water shines like ebony,
+    And odors resinous ascend
+      From many an old balsamic tree,
+    Whose roots the terrapin befriend;
+      The great ball cypress, fringed with beard,
+    Presides above the water oak,
+      As doth its shingles, well revered,
+      O'er many a happy home endeared
+    To thousands far from Pocomoke.
+
+    And solemn hemlocks drink the dew,
+    Like that old Socrates they slew;
+      The piny forests moan and moan,
+    And in the marshy splutter docks,
+      As if they grazed on sky alone,
+    Rove airily the herds of ox.
+      Then, like a narrow strait of light,
+    The banks draw close, the long trees yoke,
+      And strong old manses on the height
+      Stand overhead, as to invite
+    To good old cheer on Pocomoke.
+
+    And cunning baskets midstream lie
+    To trap the perch that gambol by;
+      In coves of creek the saw-mills sing,
+    And trim the spar and hew the mast;
+      And the gaunt loons dart on the wing,
+    To see the steamer looming past.
+      Now timber shores and massive piles
+    Repel our hull with friendly stroke,
+      And guide us up the long defiles,
+      Till after many fairy miles
+    We reach the head of Pocomoke.
+
+    Is it Snow Hill that greets me back
+    To this old loamy _cul-de-sac_?
+      Spread on the level river shore,
+    Beneath the bending willow-trees
+      And speckled trunks of sycamore,
+    All moist with airs of rival seas?
+      Are these old men who gravely bow,
+    As if a stranger all awoke,
+      The same who heard my parents vow,
+    --Ah well! in simpler days than now--
+    To love and serve by Pocomoke?
+
+    Does Chincoteague as then produce
+    These rugged ponies, lean and spruce?
+      Are these the steers of Accomac
+    That do the negro's drone obey?
+      The things of childhood all come back:
+    The wonder tales of mother day!
+      The jail, the inn, the ivy vines
+    That yon old English churchside cloak,
+      Wherein we read the stately lines
+      Of Addison, writ in his signs,
+    Above the dead of Pocomoke.
+
+    The world in this old nook may peep,
+    And think it listless and asleep;
+      But I have seen the world enough
+    To think its grandeur something dull.
+      And here were men of sterling stuff,
+    In their own era wonderful:
+      Young Luther Martin's wayward race,
+    And William Winder's core of oak,
+      The lion heart of Samuel Chase,
+      And great Decatur's royal face,
+    And Henry Wise of Pocomoke.
+
+    When we have raged our little part,
+    And weary out of strife and art,
+      Oh! could we bring to these still shores
+    The peace they have who harbor here,
+      And rest upon our echoing oars,
+    And float adown this tranquil sphere,
+      Then might yon stars shine down on me,
+    With all the hope those lovers spoke,
+      Who walked these tranquil streets I see
+      And thought God's love nowhere so free
+    Nor life so good as Pocomoke.
+
+
+
+
+TALES AND IDYLS.
+
+
+KING OF CHINCOTEAGUE
+
+HAUNTED PUNGY
+
+TICKING STONE
+
+THE IMP IN NANJEMOY
+
+FALL OF UTIE
+
+LEGEND OF FUNKSTOWN
+
+JUDGE WHALEY'S DEMON
+
+A CONVENT LEGEND
+
+CRUTCH, THE PAGE
+
+HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR
+
+KIDNAPPED
+
+THE JUDGE'S LAST TUNE
+
+DOMINION OVER THE FISH
+
+THE CIRCUIT PREACHER
+
+THE BIG IDIOT
+
+A BAYSIDE IDYL
+
+SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NIGHT
+
+PHANTOM ARCHITECT
+
+THE LOBBY BROTHER
+
+POTOMAC RIVER
+
+TELL-TALE FEET
+
+UPPER MARLB'RO'
+
+PREACHERS' SONS IN 1849
+
+CHESTER RIVER
+
+OLD WASHINGTON ALMSHOUSE
+
+OLD ST. MARY'S
+
+
+
+
+KING OF CHINCOTEAGUE.
+
+
+The night before Christmas, frosty moonlight, the outcast preacher
+came down to the island shore and raised his hands to the stars.
+
+"O God! whose word I so long preached in meekness and sincerity," he
+cried, "have mercy on my child and its mother, who are poor as were
+Thine own this morning, eighteen hundred and forty years ago!"
+
+The moonlight scarcely fretted the soft expanse of Chincoteague Bay.
+There seemed a slender hand of silver reaching down from the sky to
+tremble on the long chords of the water, lying there in light and
+shade, like a harp. The drowsy dash of the low surf on the bar beyond
+the inlet was harsh to this still and shallow haven for wreckers and
+oystermen. It was very far from any busy city or hive of men, between
+the ocean and the sandy peninsula of Maryland.
+
+But no land is so remote that it may not have its banished men. The
+outcast preacher had committed the one deadly sin acknowledged amongst
+those wild wreckers and watermen. It was not that he had knocked a
+drowning man in the head, nor shown a false signal along the shore to
+decoy a vessel into the breakers, nor darkened the lighthouse lamp.
+These things had been done, but not by him.
+
+He had married out of his race. His wife was crossed with despised
+blood.
+
+"What do you seek, preacher?" exclaimed a gruff, hard voice. "Has the
+Canaanite woman driven you out from your hut this sharp weather, in
+the night?"
+
+"No," answered the outcast preacher. "My heart has sent me forth to
+beg the service of your oyster-tongs, that I may dip a peck of
+oysters from the cove. We are almost starved."
+
+"And rightly starved, O psalm-singer! You were doing well. Preaching,
+ha! ha! Preaching the miracle of the God in the manger, the baby of
+the maid. You prayed and travelled for the good of Christians. The
+time came when you practised that gospel. You married the daughter of
+a slave. Then they cast you off. They outlawed you. You were made
+meaner, Levin Purnell, than the Jew of Chincoteague!"
+
+The speaker was a bearded, swarthy, low-set man, who looked out from
+the cabin of a pungy boat. His words rang in the cold air like
+dropping icicles articulate.
+
+"I know you, Issachar," exclaimed the outcast preacher. "They say that
+you are hard and avaricious. Your people were bond slaves once to
+every nation. This is the birth night of my faith. In the name of
+Joseph, who fed your brethren when they were starving, with their
+father, for corn, give me a few oysters, that we may live, and not
+die!"
+
+The Jew felt the supplication. He was reminded of Christmas eve. The
+poorest family on Chincoteague had bought his liquor that night for a
+carouse, or brought from the distant court-house town something for
+the children's stockings. Before him was one whose service had been
+that powerful religion, shivering in the light of its natal star on
+the loneliest sea-shore of the Atlantic. He had harmed no man, yet all
+shunned him, because he had loved, and honored his love with a
+religious rite, instead of profaning it, like others of his race.
+
+"Take my tongs," replied the Jew. "Dip yonder! It will be your only
+Christmas gift."
+
+"Peace to thee on earth and good-will to thee from men!" answered the
+outcast.
+
+The preacher raised the long-handled rakes, spread the handles, and
+dropped them into the Sound. They gave from the bottom a dull, ringing
+tingle along their shafts. He strove to lift them with their weight
+of oysters, but his famished strength was insufficient.
+
+"I am very weak and faint," he said. "Oh, help me, for the pity of
+God!"
+
+The Jew came to his relief doggedly. The Jew was a powerful,
+bow-legged man, but with all his strength he could scarcely raise the
+burden.
+
+"By Abraham!" he muttered, "they are oysters of lead. They will
+neither let go nor rise."
+
+He finally rolled upon the deck a single object. It broke apart as it
+fell. The moonlight, released by his humped shadow, fell upon
+something sparkling, at which he leaped with a sudden thirst, and
+cried:
+
+"Gold! Jewels! They are mine."
+
+It was an iron casket, old and rusty, that he had raised. Within it,
+partly rusted to the case, the precious lustre to which he had devoted
+his life flashed out to the o'erspread arch of night, sown thick with
+star-dust. A furious strength was added to his body. He broke the
+object from the casket and held it up to eyes of increased wonder and
+awe. Then, with an oath, he would have plunged it back into the sea.
+
+The outcast preacher interposed.
+
+"It is your Christmas gift, Issachar. _It is a cross._ Curse not! It
+cannot harm you nor me. Dip again, and bring me a few oysters, or my
+wife may die."
+
+"I know the form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish.
+Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to
+the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through
+the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined
+for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the
+brackish Sound. Ha! ha! That Issachar the Jew should raise a cross,
+and on the Christian's Christmas eve! But it is mine! My tongs, my
+vessel, myself brought it aboard!"
+
+He seized the preacher's skinny arm with the ferocity of greed.
+
+"I do not claim it, Issachar. My worship is not of forms and images.
+Dip again, and help me to my hut with a few oysters, for I am very
+faint. Then all my knowledge and interest in this effigy I will
+surrender to you."
+
+"Agreed!" exclaimed the Jew, plunging the tongs to the bottom again
+and again, in his satisfaction.
+
+They walked inland across the difficult sands, the Jew carrying the
+crucifix jealously. Lights gleamed from a few huts along the level
+island. At the meanest hut of all they stopped, and heard within a
+baby's cry, to which there was no response. The preacher staggered
+back with apprehension. The Jew raised the latch and led the way.
+
+The light of some burning driftwood and dried sea-weed filled the low
+roof and was reflected back to a cot, on which a woman lay with a
+living child beside her. Something dread and ineffable was conveyed by
+that stiffened form. The Jew, familiar with misery and all its
+indications, caught the preacher in his arms.
+
+"Levin Purnell," he said, "thy Christmas gift has come. Bear up! There
+is no more persecution for thee. She is dead!"
+
+The outcast preacher looked once, wildly, on the woman's face, and
+with a cry pressed his hands to his heart. The Jew laid him down upon
+a miserable pallet, and for a few moments watched him steadily.
+Neither sound nor motion revealed the presence of the cold spark of
+life. The husband's heart was broken.
+
+"Poor wretch!" exclaimed the Jew. "Mismated couple; in death as
+obstinate as in life. Lie there together, befriended in the closing
+hour by the Jew of Chincoteague, a present--to-morrow's Christmas--for
+thy neighbors of this Christian island!"
+
+He stirred the fire. Death had no terrors for him, who had seen it by
+land and sea, in brawls and shipwrecks, by hunger and by scurvy. He
+laid the bodies side by side, and warmed the infant at the fire.
+Looking up from the living child's face, he caught the sparkle of the
+crucifix he had discovered, where it stood in the narrow window-sill.
+There were gems of various colors in it, and they reflected the
+firelight lustrously, like a slender chandelier, or, as the Jew
+remembered in the version of the Evangels, like the gifts those
+bearded wise men, of whom he might resemble one, brought to the manger
+of the infant Christ--gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Struck
+by the conceit, he looked again at the baby's face--the baby but a few
+days or weeks old--and he felt, in spite of himself, a softness and
+pity.
+
+"It might be true," he muttered, "that a Jewish man, a tricked and
+unsuspecting husband of a menial, like her who has perished with this
+preacher, _did_ behold a new-born baby in the manger of an inn,
+eighteen hundred and forty years ago."
+
+He looked again at the cross. In the relief of the night against the
+window-pane its jewels shone like the only living things in the hovel.
+A figure was extended upon this cross, and every nail was a precious
+stone; the crown of thorns was all diamonds.
+
+"It might be true," he said again, "that on a cross-beam like that,
+the manger baby perished for some audacity--as I might be put to death
+if I mocked the usages of a whole nation, as this preacher has done."
+
+The cross, an object as high as one of the window-panes, and suffused
+with the exuding dyes of its jewels, took now a dewy lustre, as if
+weeping precious gum and amber. The Jew felt an instant's sense of
+superstition, which he dashed away, and placing the child, already
+sleeping, before the fire, awakened rapacity led him to hunt the hovel
+over. He found nothing but a few religious books, and amongst them a
+leather-covered Testament, which he opened and read with
+insensibility--passing on, at length, to interest, then to
+fascination, at last to rage and defiance--the opening chapters and
+the close of the story of Jesus.
+
+"Now, by the sufferings of my patient race! I will do a thing unlike
+myself, to prove this testimony a libel. Here is a child more homeless
+than this carpenter, Joseph's, without the false pretence of coming
+of David's line. Its mother tainted with negro blood, like the slaves
+I have imported. Its father the obscurest preacher of his sect. I will
+rob the shark and the crab of a repast. It shall be my child and a
+Hebrew. Yea, if I can make it so, a Rabbi of Israel!"
+
+Issachar looked again at the cross. Day was breaking in the window
+behind it, and the rich light of its gems was obscurer, but its form
+and proportions seemed to have expanded--perhaps because he had worn
+his eyes reading by the firelight--and the outstretched figure looked
+large as humanity, and the cross lofty and real, as that which it was
+made to commemorate. He hid it beneath his garment, and walked forth
+into the gray dawn of Christmas. One star remained in mid-heaven,
+whiter than the day. It poised over the hovel of the dead like
+something new-born in the sky, and unacquainted with its fellow orbs.
+
+"Christmas gift!" shouted a party of lads and women, rushing upon the
+Jew. "Christmas gift! You are caught, Issachar. Give us a present, old
+miser!"
+
+It was the custom in that old settled country that whoever should be
+earliest up, and say "Christmas gift!" to others, should receive some
+little token in farthings or kind.
+
+"Bah!" answered the Jew. "Look in yonder, where the best of your
+religion lie, perished by your inhumanity, and behold your Christmas
+gift to them!"
+
+There, where no friendly feet but those of negroes and slaves had
+entered for months, the strengthening morning showed a young wife,
+almost white, and the most beautiful of her type, with comely
+features, and eyes and hair that the proudest white beauty might envy.
+The gauntness of death had scarcely diminished those charms which had
+brought the pride of the world's esteem and the prudence of religion
+to her feet, and lifted her to virtuous matrimony, only to banish her
+lover from the hearthstones of his race and make them both outcasts,
+the poorest of the creatures of God, even on Chincoteague. A slight
+sense of self-accusation touched the bystanders.
+
+"He was a good preacher," said one, "and I was converted under him. He
+baptized my children. That he should have married a darkey!"
+
+"She was a pious girl," added another, "and from her youth up was in
+temptation, which she resisted, like a white woman. That she should
+have ruined this preacher!"
+
+"He was a poet," said a third. "'Peared like as if he believed every
+thing he preached. But, my sakes! we can't have sich things in _our_
+church."
+
+"She loved him, too, the hussy!" exclaimed a fourth. "She would have
+been his slave if he had asked her. Oh! what misery she felt when she
+knew that his passion for her was starving him, body and soul!"
+
+They slipped away, with a feeling that, somehow, two very guilty
+people had been punished in those two. The negroes made the funeral
+procession. The Jew walked amongst the negroes.
+
+"O Father Abraham," he said, chuckling to himself, "forgive me that I
+stand here, no renegade to my faith, yet the only white Christian on
+Chincoteague!"
+
+Issachar was oyster-man, sailor, and sutler in one. He advanced money
+to build pungy boats, knit nets, and make huts. He kept a trading
+place, packed fish, and dealt with the Eastern port cities by a
+schooner whose crew he shipped himself and sometimes commanded her. He
+was a wrecker, too, prompt and enterprising; passed middle life, but
+full of vitality; bold and cunning in equal degree; and he had been,
+it was guessed, a slaver, and some said a pirate. He was called by the
+negroes the King of Chincoteague. His schooner was named The Eli.
+
+Chincoteague is the principal inhabited island along the one hundred
+miles of coast between the capes of the Delaware and of the
+Chesapeake--a coast of low bars, divided into long and slender islands
+by a dozen inlets, which, almost filled with sand, permit only
+light-draught vessels to enter; and it is destruction to any ship to
+go ashore on that coast, where five successive lighthouses warn the
+commerce of the Atlantic off, but are unable to intimidate the storms
+which sweep the low shores and almost threaten to leap over the
+peninsula and submerge it. Chincoteague lies like a tongue between two
+inlets, and partly protrudes into the sea, but is also sheltered in
+part by the bar of Assateague, whose light has flamed for years.
+Chincoteague is about ten miles long, and behind it an inland bay
+stretches continuously, under various names, for thirty miles,
+protected from the ocean, and scarcely flavored with its salt, except
+near the outlet at Chincoteague, where the oysters lie in the brackish
+sluices, and all sorts of fish, from shrimps to sharks, hover around
+the oyster beds. In the green depths they can be seen, and there the
+crab darts sidewise, like a shooting star. In the sandy beach grows
+the mamano, or snail-clam, putting his head from his shell at high
+tide to suck nutrition from the mysterious food of the sea, and giving
+back such chowder to man as makes the eater feel his stomach to
+possess a nobility above the pleasures of the brain. The bay of
+Chincoteague is five or six miles wide, and the nearest hamlet is in
+Virginia, as is Chincoteague island also. The hamlet takes the name of
+Horntown, and not far from there is the old court-house seat of Snow
+Hill, in Maryland. Every soul on Chincoteague was native there or
+thereabout, except Issachar the Jew.
+
+He had appeared amongst them after a sudden storm, the solitary
+survivor of a wreck that had partly drifted ashore, and, as he said,
+gone down with all his fortune. The mild air and easy livelihood of
+the spot pleased the Jew, after his first despair, and he set about
+making another fortune. Capable, solitary and active, he soon
+outstripped all the people of the islands, and neither beloved nor
+unbeloved, lived grimly, as chance ordained, and until now, had never
+shown more than business benevolence. It was a surprising thing to the
+people of Chincoteague, when the news went round that he had been over
+to court at Drummond-town and given his recognizance to bring up the
+orphan boy--whom he named Abraham Purnell--so that the county should
+not be at the expense of him, and he also brought out from New York,
+on the Eli's next trip, a Hebrew woman to be the boy's matron. Suckled
+at a negro's breast, Abraham grew to a vigorous youth, resembling his
+guardian's race and his mother's as well, in the curling nature of his
+hair and the brightness of his eyes. The Old Testament Scriptures
+alone were taught him, and Issachar himself joined the family circle
+at daily prayer to encourage the faith of Israel in the stranger. The
+finest of the lean, tough ponies, bred only on Chincoteague, and
+renowned throughout the peninsula for their endurance, was bought for
+the boy, as he grew older. He was made Issachar's companion, and, in
+course of time, passed in fireside talk for a Jew, like his protector.
+
+Only once the superior comfort and clothing of Issachar's _protégé_
+provoked the remark from one of a group of men that Abraham was "only
+a stuck-up nigger, anyway;" and then, like a maniac, Old Issachar
+dashed from his store with a boat-hook and struck down the offender
+like a dead man.
+
+But the boy was of such docile and beautiful nature that he excited no
+general antagonism. He was four removals from pure African blood, and
+as his mother had been a freed girl, he was a citizen, or might be if
+he pleased. The certain heir of Issachar's possessions, the only thing
+except gold that Issachar loved, and of a parentage which linked
+misfortune with piety, his mysterious nativity gave him with the
+negroes a sacred character. They believed that he would become their
+king and priest and lead them out of bondage to a promised land; and
+this involuntary homage so pleased old Issachar that his heart
+inclined toward the black race above the Christian whites around him.
+If an aged negro fell sick, the Jew sent, by his ward, medicine and
+food. If a very poor negro was buried, the Jew contributed to the
+expenses. He gave the first counsel of worldly wisdom to the negro
+freedmen, and gave them faithful interest on their savings. One slave
+that he possessed he set free, saying:
+
+"By Jacob's staff! I will not hold as cattle the blood people of my
+son!"
+
+His enlarged benevolence made no difference in his business. It grew
+to the widest limits of that humble society, and by the accident of a
+younger life coming forward to bear his honor up, Issachar grew into
+sympathy with the social life of all the lower peninsula. If they
+wanted money for public enterprise on the mainland, the Jew of
+Chincoteague was first to be thought of. His credit, Masonic in its
+reach, extended to his compatriots in distant cities, and the
+politicians crossed the Sound to bring him into alliance with their
+parties. To personal flattery he was obtuse, except when it reached
+his ward, and then a melting mood came over him. At every Christmas he
+led himself the eloquent Oriental prayer, young Abraham responding
+with even a richer imagery, for his mind was alert, his schooling had
+been private and unintermittent, and his father's enthusiasm and his
+mother's docility made him a poet and a son together.
+
+"My son," said the Jew, as Abraham's fifteenth Christmas approached,
+"the time is at hand when we must part for years. I am growing old,
+and the loss of thee, O my love! is harder than thou canst know. The
+sands of life are running out with me, as from an hour-glass. With
+thee the heavens are rosy and the world is new. Thou beautiful Samuel,
+Jehovah's selected one! Wilt thou remember me when far away?"
+
+"Father," answered Abraham, "what besides thee can I love? Every
+morning, and at noon, and again at night, I will face from the East to
+pray toward thee; for God will not listen unless I am grateful to my
+father."
+
+"Thou art going to Amsterdam," said Issachar. "There, amongst the
+noblest Jews of Europe, the descendants of the Jewish Portuguese, the
+Hebrew tongue in its purity, the law of Moses in its majesty, our lore
+in its plenitude, thou wilt learn. I look to thee, adopted child of
+Israel! to give the promise of thy youth to the study of our grand old
+religion, and, like the infant Moses, discovered amongst these
+bulrushes of Chincoteague, to be the reviver of our faith, the
+statesman of our sect. Yea! the rebuilder of our Zion. It has been
+ordained that these things will be done, and, by the stars of Abraham;
+it shall be so!"
+
+"My father," said young Abraham, "God will keep all His promises."
+
+The Jew took from a chest of massive cedar wood, empty of all besides,
+the precious crucifix.
+
+"Look on that," he exclaimed. "Dost thou know what it represents?"
+
+"No," answered Abraham.
+
+"It is the symbol of the faith in which thy father died. A Hebrew
+impostor, one Jesus, was nailed by the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem
+to a cross-piece of wood. He affected to be the son of David and the
+Saviour of men. My son, in the name of his punishment the children of
+Israel have been burned at the stake, dispersed abroad among the
+nations, and hated of mankind. Preaching his imposture thy father and
+thy mother were suffered to die for their consistency. See what I have
+done with the bauble! The years I have expended on thy mind and
+comfort have cost me money. From that crucifix, one by one, I have
+plucked the precious stones for thy education. Here, from the side,
+where they say the soldier's spear was thrust, I have sold the costly
+ruby. The nail in the feet, a sapphire, paid thy Jewish matron. The
+emerald in this right hand purchased thy books. I send thee abroad
+with the price of the diamonds in the crown."
+
+"Father," said young Abraham, "the image is hallowed to me for thy
+piety. It is Humanity, O my father! that has made me devoutly a Jew,
+and thee, unsuspectingly, a Christian."
+
+He sailed away upon the Eli. His parting words had affected old
+Issachar so much that his mind returned along the course of years to
+the Christmas night he had passed in the outcast preacher's hut, and
+the curious story of Jesus he had read there in the New Testament and
+in the presence of the dead.
+
+"To-morrow is Christmas," said the Jew; "a hallowed day to me, because
+it brought me a son whose obedience and piety have gratified the exile
+of my old age. Although these Christians have covered him with their
+despite, his excellent charity remembers it not. I will be no less
+magnanimous, and I will cross the bay and attend the Methodist worship
+at Snow Hill on Christmas morning, that I may communicate its
+frivolity to my son."
+
+He kept his word; and for fear thieves might discover and steal the
+valuable crucifix, he hid it beneath his vesture and carried it to the
+mainland. The little plank meeting-house at the edge of Snow Hill was
+filled with whites on the floor, but in the end gallery, amongst the
+negroes, Issachar haughtily took his seat, an object of wonder to both
+races, for his face and reputation were generally recognized. Perhaps
+it was for this reason that the young preacher, a gentle, graceful
+person, adapted his sermon to the sweetness of the Christian story
+rather than bear upon those descriptions which might antagonize his
+Jewish auditor.
+
+He told the story of the world's selfishness when Christ appeared; how
+the Jews, living in the straitest of sectarian aristocracies, inviting
+and receiving no accessions, had finally fallen under the dogmatism of
+the uncharitable Pharisees, who esteemed themselves the only righteous
+devotees and doctrinaires amongst the millions of people on the earth.
+Jesus, a youth of good Jewish extraction, and honorable family, had
+been bold enough to denounce Phariseeism and make its votaries
+ridiculous. He was scorned by them, if for no other crime, for the
+cheap offence, in a bigoted age, denominated blasphemy. Here the
+preacher, looking toward the Jew, paid a tribute to the antiquity and
+loyalty of the better class of Jews, and said that it was well known
+that one of his own forerunners in the Christian ministry, dying in
+penury from the consequences of a marital mistake, had been befriended
+in his death and in his posterity by a gallant follower of the House
+of Israel.
+
+The congregation, facing about to look at the Jew in the gallery,
+amongst the negroes, were surprised to see tears on his gray
+eyelashes, and the colored elders, who loved Issachar exceedingly,
+exclaimed, in stentorian chorus:
+
+"Praise God for dat Israelite, in whom dar is no guile! Hallelujah!"
+
+Then, as if the Christmas frost had melted, these grateful
+exclamations made warmth at once in both races, and encouraged the
+orator in his extemporization. Issachar began to appreciate the
+possibility of the founder of a more liberal sect of Jews, whose
+charitable hand should be extended to Gentiles also, and whose heaven
+should comprehend all the posterity of Adam. Perhaps his son's
+portrait was in his mind--that loving son who had but just departed in
+the interests of the law of Moses and the restoration of the Temple.
+At the end of the sermon alms were invited for the support of the
+minister and the propagation of such a gospel as he had preached. With
+a mixture of pride and humility old Issachar descended the gallery
+stairs and walked up the aisle, and, taking the crucifix from his
+breast, planted it upon the altar.
+
+"There," he said, "if your sect asserts the sentiments of this sermon,
+you are entitled to this rich image. I am repaid for its possession by
+a son of Gentile parentage whose obedience has been the delight of my
+old years, and for the gift God has given me in him, I tender you
+this counterfeit of Jesus nailed on the Roman scaffold."
+
+The congregation gazed a minute at the golden cross. Ireful laughter
+broke forth, followed by rage.
+
+"The pagan! The papist! The Turk! The idolater!" they exclaimed. "He
+mocks the memory of our Saviour on Christmas morning! Out with him!"
+
+The Jew recovered the crucifix and put it beneath his mantle. He
+vouchsafed no reply except a scornful "Ha! ha! ha!" and with this he
+strode out of the Methodist meeting, rejoined his boatmen, and
+returned to the island of Chincoteague.
+
+Years passed, and the Jew grew very feeble. He had lasted his
+fourscore and ten years, and prosperity had attended him through all,
+and children loved him; but, true to his first and only fondness, his
+heart was ever across the sea, where gentle Abraham, studiously intent
+amongst the Rabbis, communicated with his father by every mail and
+raised the old man's mind to a height of serious appreciation which
+greed and commerce had never given him. Although hungering for his
+boy, Issachar forebore to disturb young Abraham's studies until a
+bitter illness came to him, and in his gloom and solitude his great
+want burst from his lips, and he said aloud:
+
+"Almighty Father! What will it avail to these old bones if the Temple
+be rebuilded, and I die without placing my hands on the eyelids of my
+boy and blessing him in Thy name? I will pluck from this Christian
+image the last jewel and dispose of it, that he may return and place
+his hands in mine, and receive my benediction, and gladden me with his
+gratitude."
+
+The image was therefore wholly separated from the cross. Nothing
+remained but the figure in gold of that bloody Pillory on which He
+died on whom two hundred millions of human beings rely for
+intercession with their Creator and Destiny.
+
+The days seemed months to the Jew of Chincoteague. The negroes
+gathered round his cabin to be of assistance if he should require it;
+for they also looked for young Abraham as the Shiloh of their race,
+and would have died for old Issachar, unredeemed as they thought him,
+except by his goodness to their prince and favorite.
+
+A high tide, following a series of dreadful storms, arose on the coast
+of the peninsula, as if the Gulf Stream, like a vast ploughshare, had
+thrown the Atlantic up from its furrow and tossed it over the beach of
+Assateague.
+
+The sturdy ponies were all drowned. The sea was undivided from the
+bay. Pungy boats and canoes drifted helplessly along the coast, and
+the Eli alone was out of danger in the harbor of New York, waiting to
+receive young Abraham. At last the freshet crept over the house-tops,
+and nothing remained but the cottage of the Jew, planted on piles,
+which lifting it higher than the surrounding houses, yet threatened it
+the more if the water should float it from its pedestal and send it to
+sea. Every effort was made to induce the Jew to abandon it, but he was
+obdurate.
+
+"By the tables of the law!" he said, "living or dead, here will I
+abide until my son returns."
+
+The bravest negro left the island of Chincoteague at last, placing
+food beside old Issachar, and there he lay upon his pallet, with
+nothing to pierce the darkness of his lair except that sacred cross he
+had raised from the depths of the ocean. That object, like a sentient,
+overruling thing, still shed its lustre upon the wretched interior of
+the deserted hut, and, day by day, repeated its story to the neglected
+occupant.
+
+The mighty storm increased in power as Christmas approached, in the
+year one thousand eight hundred and fifty----. Wrecks came ashore on
+the submerged shoal of Chincoteague, but there were now no wreckers to
+labor for salvage. The Eli, too, was overdue. One night a familiar gun
+was heard at sea, thrice, and twice thrice, and Issachar raised up and
+said, in anguish:
+
+"It is my schooner. My son is at hand and in danger. Oh! for a day's
+strength, as I had it in my youth, to go to his relief through the
+surf. But, miserable object that I am! I cannot rise from my bed. What
+help, what hope, in the earth or in heaven can I implore?"
+
+The naked cross beamed brightly all at once in the darkness of the
+cabin. Issachar felt the legend it conveyed, and with piety, not
+apostacy, he uttered:
+
+"O Paschal Lamb! O Waif of God! Die Thou for me this night, and give
+me to look upon the countenance of my son!"
+
+The Jew, intently gazing at the cross, passed into such a stupor or
+ecstasy that he had no knowledge of the flight of time. He only knew
+that, after a certain dreamy interval, the door of his house yielded
+to a living man, and, nearly naked with breasting the surf and
+fighting for life, young Abraham staggered into the hut and recognized
+his father.
+
+"O son!" cried Issachar, "I feel the news thou hast to tell. The Eli
+is wrecked and thou only hast survived. The moments are precious.
+Hark! this house is yielding to the buoyant current. Stay not for me,
+whose sands are nearly run. I am too old to try for life or fear to
+die, but thou art full of youth and beauty, and Israel needs thee in
+the world behind me. Let me bless thee, Abraham, and commit thee to
+God."
+
+The water entered the cracks of the cabin; a pitching motion, as if it
+were afloat, made the son of the negro cling closer to the Jew.
+
+"Father," he said, "I have passed the bitterness of death. When the
+vessel struck and threw me into the surf, I cried to God and fought
+for life. The waves rolled over me, and the agony of dying so young
+and happy grew into such a terror that I could not pray. In my despair
+a something seemed to grasp me, like tongs of iron, and my eyes were
+filled with light, bright as the face of the I AM. Behold! I am here,
+and that which saved me has made me content to die by thee."
+
+The old man drew the dripping ringlets of the younger one to his
+venerable beard. The house rocked like a sailing vessel, and the
+strong sea-fogs seemed to close them round.
+
+"We are sailing to sea," whispered the Jew. "It is too late to escape.
+The next billow may fling us apart, and our bones shall descend
+amongst the oyster-shells to build houses for the nutritious beings of
+the water. Thence, some day, my son, from the heavens God may drop His
+tongs and draw us up to Him, as on this night thy father and I drew
+the casket, many years ago. Look there! Look there!"
+
+The heads of both were turned toward the spot where the finger of the
+old man pointed, and they saw the denuded cross shining in the light
+of the agitated fire, so large and bright that it reduced all other
+objects to insignificance.
+
+"It was a light like that," exclaimed Abraham, "which shone in my eyes
+through the darkness of the billows."
+
+"It was on that," whispered Issachar, "that I called for help, my son,
+when thou wert dying. From the hour I dipped it from the water my
+heart has been warmer to the world and man. Is there, in all the hoary
+traditions of our church, a reason why we should not beseech its
+illumination again before it returns to the ocean with ourselves? Do
+thou decide, who art full of wisdom; for I am ignorant in thy eyes,
+and heavy with sins."
+
+The cross, resplendent, seemed to wear a visible countenance. Wrapped
+in Issachar's arms, like a babe to its mother, young Abraham extended
+his hands to the effigy, and in its beams a wondrous consolation of
+love and rest returned to those poor companions, reconciling them to
+their helplessness in the presence of the Almighty awe.
+
+"Child of God!" exclaimed the Jew, "thou beauty of the Gentiles, I
+gave thee life but for a span, and thou seemest to bring to me the
+life immortal."
+
+The morning broke on the shore frosty and clear after the subsided
+storm, and the earliest wreckers, seeking in the drift for Christmas
+gifts to give their children, found well-remembered parts of the Eli
+and portions of the tenement of its proprietor. A wave rolled higher
+than the rest and cast upon the shore two bodies--a young man of the
+comely face and symmetry of a woman, without a sign of pain in his
+features and dark, oriental eyes, and an old man, venerable as an
+inhabitant of the ocean and mysterious as a being of some race
+anterior to the deluge. In his rugged face the marks of that antiquity
+which has something stately in the lowest types of the Jew, and in
+this one an almost Mosaic might, were softened to a magnanimity where
+death had nothing to contribute but its silence and respect. Laying
+them together, the fishermen and idlers looked at them with a
+superstition partly of remorse and mild remembrance, and the star of
+Christmas twinkled over them in the sky. None felt that they were
+other than father and son, and black men and white, indifferent that
+day to social prejudices, followed the child of Hagar and the Hebrew
+patriarch to the grave.
+
+
+
+
+HAUNTED PUNGY.
+
+
+    They hewed the pines on Haunted Point
+      To build the pungy boat,
+    And other axes than their own
+      Yet other echoes smote;
+    They heard the phantom carpenters,
+      But not a man could see;
+    And every pine that crashed to earth
+      Brought down a viewless tree.
+
+    They launched the pungy, not alone;
+      Another vessel slipped
+    Down in the water with their own,
+      And ghostly sailors shipped;
+    They heard the rigging flap and creak,
+      And hollow orders cried.
+    But not a living man could seek,
+      And not a boat beside.
+
+    They sailed away from Haunted Point,
+      Convoyed by something more:
+    A boatswain's whistle answered back,
+      And oar replied to oar.
+    No matter where the anchor dropped,
+      The fiends would not aroint,
+    And every morn the pungy boat
+      Still lay off Haunted Point.
+
+    They hailed; and voices as in fog
+      Seemed half to speak again--
+    A devilish chuckling rolled afar,
+      And mutiny of men.
+    The parson of the islands said
+      It was the pirate band,
+    Whose gold was lost on Haunted Point
+      And hid with bloody hand.
+
+    Until what time a kidnapped boy,
+      By ruffians whipped and stole,
+    Should in the groves of Haunted Point
+      Convert his stealer's soul!
+    They stole the island parson's child,
+      He said a little prayer:
+    Down sank the ground; a gliding sound
+      Went whispering through the air.
+
+    And in the depths the pungy sank;
+      And, as the divers told,
+    They sought the wreck to lift again,
+      And found the pirates' gold.
+    And in a chapel close at hand
+      The pious freedmen toil;
+    No slaves are left in all the land,
+      Nor any pirates' spoil.
+
+
+
+
+TICKING STONE.
+
+
+People say that a certain tombstone in the London Tract "Hardshell"
+Baptist graveyard, near Newark, Delaware, will give to the ear placed
+flat upon it the sound of a ticking like a watch. The London Tract
+Church, as its name implies, was the worshipping place of certain
+settlers who either came from London, or chose land owned by a London
+company. It is a quaint edifice of hard stone, with low-bent bevelled
+roof, and surrounded by a stone wall, which has a shingle coping. The
+wall incloses many gravestones, their inscriptions showing that very
+many of the old worshippers of the church were Welsh. Some large and
+healthy forest trees partly shade the graveyard and the grassy and
+sandy cross-roads where it stands, near the brink of the pretty White
+Clay Creek.
+
+I climbed over the coping of the graveyard wall last spring, and
+followed my companion, the narrator of the following story, to what
+appeared to be the very oldest portion of the inclosure. The
+tombstones were in some cases quite illegible as to inscriptions, worn
+bare and smooth by more than a century's rains and chipping frosts,
+and others were sunken deep in the grass so as to afford only partial
+recompense for the epitaph hunter.
+
+"This is the Ticking Stone," said my companion, pointing to a
+recumbent slab, worn smooth and scarcely showing a trace of former
+lettering; "put your ear upon it while I pull away the weeds, and then
+note if you hear any thing."
+
+I laid my ear upon the mossy stone, and almost immediately felt an
+audible, almost tangible ticking, like that of a lady's watch.
+
+"You are scratching the stone, Pusey," I cried to my informant.
+
+"No! Upon my honor! That is not the sound of a scratch that you hear.
+It cannot be any insect nor any process of moving life in the stone or
+beneath it. Can you liken it to any thing but the equal motion of a
+rather feeble timepiece?"
+
+I listened again, and this time longer, and a sort of superstition
+grew over me, so that had I been alone, probably I would have
+experienced a sense of timid loneliness. To stand amidst those silent
+memorial stones of the early times and hear a watch beat beneath one
+of them as perfectly as you can feel it in your vest pocket, and then
+to feel your heart start nervously at the recognition of this
+disassociated sound, is not satisfying, even when in human company.
+
+"This is the best ghost I have ever found," I said. "Perhaps some one
+has slipped a watch underneath, for it is somebody's watch; there _is_
+something real in it."
+
+"I took the stone up once myself," said Pusey, "and the ticking then
+seemed to come up from the ground. While I deliberated, an old man
+came out of yonder old sexton-looking house, and warned me not to
+disturb the dead. He crossed the wall, and assisted me to replace the
+stone, and then bade me sit down upon it, ancient mariner-like, while
+he disclosed the cause of the phenomenon."
+
+Here my companion stopped a minute--and in the pause we could hear the
+old trees wave very solemnly above us, and a nut, or burr, or sycamore
+ball, came rattling down the old kirk roof as we stood there in the
+graves, to startle us the more, and then he said:
+
+"It is just as queer as the tale he told me--the disappearance of that
+old man. Nobody about here can recognize him from my descriptions. He
+walked toward the old mill down the Newark road, and the next time I
+looked up he was gone. The people in the house there think I am
+flighty in my mind for insisting upon his appearance to me at all."
+
+"Go on with the tale right here, my flesh-creeping friend," I said.
+"It will do us good to feel occasionally solemn."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This stone, young man," said my Quakerly rebuker, in a hard country
+farmer's voice; "this stone is the London Tract Ticking Stone. It is
+the oldest preacher and admonitor in this churchyard. It is older than
+the graves of any of the known pastors or communicants round about it.
+
+"In the year 1764 the comparative solitude of this region was broken
+by a large party of chain-bearers, rod-men, axe-men, commissaries,
+cooks, baggage-carriers, and camp-followers. They had come by order of
+Lord Baltimore and William Penn, to terminate a long controversy
+between two great landed proprietors, and they were led by Charles
+Mason, of the Royal Observatory, at Greenwich, England, and by
+Jeremiah Dixon, the son of a collier discovered in a coalpit. For
+three years they continued westward, running their stakes over
+mountains and streams, like a gypsy camp in appearance, frightening
+the Indians with their sorcery. But, near this spot, they halted
+longest, to fix with precision the tangent point, and the point of
+intersection of three States--the circular head of Delaware, the
+abutting right angle of Maryland, and the tiny pan-handle of
+Pennsylvania.
+
+"The people of this region were sparse in number, but of strong,
+sober, and yet wild characteristics. The long boundary quarrel had
+made them predatory, and though God-fearing people, they would fight
+with all their religious intensity for their right in the land and the
+dominion of their particular province. They suspended their feuds when
+the surveying battalion came into their broken country, and looked
+with curious interest upon all that pertained to the distinguished
+foreign mathematicians. Around their camp of tents and pack-mules,
+peddlers and preachers called together their motley congregations, and
+the sound of axes clearing the timber was accompanied by fiddling and
+haranguing, the fighting of dogs, and the coarse tones of religious or
+business oratory. It was in the height of the era of the great period
+of the Dissenters in England, and Methodist, Baptist, and Calvinistic
+zealots were piercing to the boundaries of English-speaking people,
+wild forerunners of those organized bands of clergy which were
+speedily to make our colonies sober-minded, and prepare them for
+self-government.
+
+"Charles Mason was the scientific spirit of the party--a cool,
+observing, painstaking, plodding man, slow in his processes and
+reliable in his conclusions, and the bond of friendship between
+himself and Dixon was that of two unequal minds admiring the
+superiorities of each other. They had already proceeded together to
+the Cape of Good Hope on two occasions to study an eclipse and an
+occultation. Mason liked Dixon for his ready spirits, almost
+improvident courage, speed with details, and worldly bearing. Though
+little is known of their memories now, because they left us no
+prolific records and spent much of the period of service among us in
+the midst of the wilderness or in the reticence required for
+mathematical calculation, yet they were the successors of Washington
+in the surveying of the Alleghany ridges. Their survey was reliable;
+the line was true. How much superior does it stand to-day to the line
+of thirty degrees thirty minutes, which is the next great political
+parallel below it, and was partly run only a few years afterwards! Up
+to their line for the next hundred years flowed the waters of slavery,
+but sent no human drop beyond, which did not evaporate in the free
+light of a milder sun. God speed the surveyor, whoever he be, who
+plants the stakes of a tranquil commonwealth and leaves them to be
+the limit of bad principles, the pioneer line of good ones!
+
+"Charles Mason had spent many years of his life, up to his old age,
+experimenting with timepieces of his own invention. Many years before,
+Sir Isaac Newton had called the attention of the British Government to
+the necessity for an accurate portable time-keeper at sea, to
+determine longitude, and in 1714 Parliament offered a reward of 20,000
+pounds sterling for such a chronometer. Thenceforward for fifty years
+the inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at
+work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward,
+amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion
+and uncommunicative self-reliance that none knew, none will ever know,
+the motive principle he employed or the enginery he devised. While he
+was working at this survey, near the spot at which we stand, the Board
+of Award gave the £20,000 to one John Harrison, almost at the very
+instant when Mason and Dixon's line was begun. This you can confirm by
+any history of Horology. Charles Mason lived down to the year 1787,
+surviving Dixon, who had died in England ten years previously, and he
+was known to say to the end of his days, to people resident in
+Philadelphia, that a child had eaten up £20,000 belonging to him at a
+single mouthful.
+
+"The child whom the neighborhood at that time accused of this act was
+known in later life as Fithian Minuit, babe of a woman of mixed
+English and Finnish-Dutch descent, who came from the fishermen's town
+of Head of Elk, a few hours jog to the southward, to sell fish to the
+surveying camp. She was a woman of mingled severity of features and
+bodily obesity, uniting in one temper and frame the Scandinavian and
+the Low Dutch traits, ignorant good-humor, grim commerce, and stolid
+appetite. Her baby was the fattest, quaintest, and ugliest in the
+country; ready to devour any thing, to grin at any thing, go to the
+arms of everybody, and, in short, it represented all the traits of
+the Middle State races--the government of the members, including the
+brain, by the belly.
+
+"One day this Finnish-Dutch baby--aged perhaps two years--was picked
+up by one of the assistant surveyors and carried into the tent of
+Charles Mason. The great surveyor was at that instant bending down
+over a small metallic object which he was examining through the medium
+of a lens. He recognized the child, and seemed glad of the opportunity
+to dismiss more serious occupation from his mind, so he instantly
+leaped up and poked the fat urchin with his thumb, tempting the bite
+of its teeth with his forefinger, and was otherwise reducing his tired
+faculties to the needs of a child's amusement, when suddenly the voice
+of its mother at the tent's opening drew him away.
+
+"'Fresh fish, mighty surveyor! Fall shad, and the most beautiful
+yellow perch. Buy something for the sake of Minuit's baby!'
+
+"The celebrated surveyor, who seemed in an admirable humor, stepped
+just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval
+his assistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and
+picked up the tiny object lying there under the magnifying glass.
+
+"'This is the little ticking seducer which absorbs my master's time,'
+he said. 'Why, it isn't big enough for an infant to count the minutes
+of its life upon it!'
+
+"At this the fat, good-humored baby, anticipating something to eat,
+reached out its hands. The surveyor's assistant, in a moment of
+mischief, put the object in the child's grasp. The child clutched it,
+bit at it, and swallowed it whole in an instant.
+
+"Before the assistant surveyor could think of any other harm done than
+the possible choking of the child, the child's mother and the great
+surveyor entered the tent. The arms of the first reached for her
+offspring, and of the second for the subject of his experiment.
+
+"'My chronometer!'
+
+"'The child of the fish-woman ate it!'
+
+"The fish-woman screamed, and reversed the urchin after the manner of
+mothers, and swung him to and fro like a pendulum. He came up a trifle
+red in the face, but laughing as usual, and the ludicrous
+inappositeness of the great loss, the unconscious cause of it, the
+baby's wonderful digestion, the assistant's distress, and the
+surveyor's calm but pallid self-control, made Jeremiah Dixon, dropping
+in at the minute, roar with laughter.
+
+"'Dixon,' said Mason, 'the work of half my life, my everlasting
+timepiece, just completed and set going, has found a temperature where
+it requires no compensation balance.'
+
+"'I am glad of it,' said his associate, 'for now we can proceed with
+Mason and Dixon's line, and nothing else!'
+
+"A look, more of pity than of reproach, passed over Mason's scarcely
+ruffled face--the pity of one man solely conscious of a great object
+lost, for another, indifferent or ignorant both of the object and the
+loss. He took the smiling urchin in his hands, and raising it upon his
+shoulder, placed his ear to its side. Thence came with faint
+regularity the sound of a simple, gentle ticking. They all heard it by
+turns, and, while they paused in puzzled wonder and humor, the
+undaunted infant looked down as innocent as a chubby, cheery face
+painted on some household clock. The innocent expression of the child
+touched the mathematician's heart. He filled a glass with good Madeira
+wine, and drank the devourer's health in these benignant words:
+
+"'May Minuit's baby run as long and as true as the article on which he
+has made his meal!'
+
+"Next day they set the great stone in the corner of the State of
+Maryland, and, breaking camp, vanished westward through the cleft of
+light opened by their pioneers, pursued yet for many miles by a motley
+multitude.
+
+"Before many years this fertile country filled up with hamlets,
+mills, and churches; the War of Independence scarcely interrupted its
+prosperity, because the Quaker element adhered with constancy to
+neither side, and only one campaign was fought here. The story of the
+boy who ate a watch passed out of general knowledge and remark; he was
+known to have been a drummer at the battle of Chadd's Ford, and to
+have buried his mother before the close of the war, at the Delaware
+fishing hamlet of Marcus Hook, amongst her Finnish progenitors.
+
+"But soon after the peace, the short, fat body and queer, merry Dutch
+face of Fithian Minuit were known all along the roads of Chester,
+Cecil, and Newcastle counties, by parts of the people of three States,
+as components of one of the least offensive, most industrious, and
+most lively and popular young chaps around the head of the Chesapeake.
+
+"He was respectful with the old and congenial with the young--always
+going and never tired, up early and late, of a chirruping sort of
+address and an equal temper, and while he appeared to be thrifty and
+money-making, he did all manner of good turns for the high and the
+humble; and, although everybody said he was the homeliest young man in
+the region, yet more village girls went to their front doors to see
+him than if he had been a showman coming to town to do feats of magic.
+He was not unintelligent either, and could play on the violin, compute
+accounts equal to the best country book-keeper, and as he was of
+religious turn, although attached to no particular denomination, the
+meeting-houses on every side, hardly excepting the Quakers themselves,
+delighted to see him drive up on Sundays and tell an anecdote to the
+children and sing a little air, half-hymn sort, half stave, but always
+given with a good countenance, which apologized for the worldly notes
+of it. If any severe interpreter of Christian amusements took the
+people to task for tolerating such a universal and desultory
+character, there were others to rise up and ask what evil or
+passionate word or act of sorry behavior in Fithian Minuit could be
+instanced. The severe Francis Asbury himself raised the question once
+on the Bohemia Manor amongst the Methodists, and got so little support
+that he charged young Minuit with the possession of some devilish art
+or spell to entrap the people; but Fithian once, when the good
+itinerant's horse broke down on the road, met Mr. Asbury, won his
+affections, and mended his big silver watch.
+
+"This mending of clocks, watches, and every description of
+time-keepers was the occupation of Minuit. He had picked up the art,
+some said, from a Yankee in the army at the close of the war, and
+certainly no man of his time or territory had such good luck with
+timepieces. Residing in the little village of Christina (by the
+pretentious called Christi-anna, and by the crude, with nearer
+rectitude, called Crist_ene_), Fithian kept a snug little shop full of
+all manners and forms of clocks, dials, sand-glasses, hour-burning
+candles, water-clocks, and night tapers. He had amended and improved
+the new Graham clock, called the 'dead scapement,' or 'dead-beat
+escapement' (the origin of our modern word _dead-beat_, signifying a
+man who does not meet his engagements, whereas the original
+'dead-beat' was the most faithful engagements-keeper of its time.
+Perhaps a dead-beat nowadays is a time-server; for this would be a
+correct derivation). From this shop the young Minuit, in a plain but
+reliable wagon, with a nag never fast and never slow, and indifferent
+to temperatures, travelled the country for a radius of forty
+miles--not embarrassed even by the Delaware, which he crossed once a
+month, and attended fully to the temporal and partly to the spiritual
+needs of all the Jerseymen betwixt Elsinborough and Swedesboro.
+
+"Over the door of Minuit's whitewashed cabin on the knoll of Christina
+was the sign of a jovial, fat person, bearing some resemblance to
+himself, in the centre of whose stomach stood a clock inscribed, 'My
+time is everybody's.' Past this little shop went the entire long
+caravan and cavalcade by land between the North and South,
+stage-coaches, mail-riders, highwaymen, chariots, herdsters, and
+tramps; for Christina bridge was on the great tide-water road and at
+the head of navigation on the Swedish river of the same name, so that
+here vessels from the Delaware transferred their cargo to wagons, and
+a portage of only ten miles to the Head of Elk gave goods and
+passengers reshipment down the Chesapeake. This village declined only
+when the canal just below it was opened in 1829 and a little railway
+in 1833. It was nearly a century and a half old when Minuit set his
+sign there, before General Washington went past it to be inaugurated.
+From Fithian's window the pleasant land was seen spread out below him
+beyond the Christina; and the Swedish, Dutch, and English farms smiled
+from their loamy levels on sails which moved with scarcely perceptible
+motion through the narrow dykes planted with greenest willows. Before
+his door the teamsters, ill-tempered with lashing and swearing at
+their teams in the ruts of Iron Hill, schoolboys from Nottingham,
+millers' men from Upper White Clay, and bargemen and stage passengers,
+recovered temper to see the sign of the great paunch with a timepiece
+set so naturally in it indicating the hour of dinner. Within they
+found the clock-maker, with face beaming as if reflected from a
+watch-case, working handily amongst a hundred ticking pieces, of which
+he looked to be one. There were large sundials for the outer walls of
+barns and farm-houses, very popular in the Pennsylvania hills;
+sand-glasses for the Peninsula, where it cost nothing to fill them;
+and hour-burning candles, much affected by the Chesapeake gentry,
+which gave at once light and time. There were ancient striking clocks,
+such as the monks may have used to disturb them for early prayers,
+which, with a horrible rattle of wheels and clash of heavy weights,
+hammered the alarm. There were the tremendous watches of river
+captains who had aspired to go to sea, and old crutch escapement
+watches which Huygens himself had perhaps handled in Holland. The
+window was filled with trains of wheels and pinions, snails and racks,
+crystals, and faces and watches, cackling at each other. There were
+striking clocks which rung chimes or rocked like little vessels on
+apparent billows, or started off with notes like grasshoppers. A
+hundred of the most musical tree-frogs shut up in a piano might give a
+feeble notion of the tunes and thrummings assembled in this shop. It
+was the same day or night, and the power of Fithian Minuit over
+time-keepers was nearly miraculous. He appeared to be able to smile an
+old watch into action. Transferred to his hand, some spent and rusty
+sentinel, long silent and useless, seemed to feel the warmth of the
+mender and resumed the round of duty. He would buy from the old estate
+halls on the Sassafras and the Chester rivers, tall, solemn clocks,
+dead to the purpose of their creation, their stately learned faces
+lost to former automatic expressions or waggery, and when exposed to
+the infectious influences of his shop, a gurgle of sound as of the
+inhalation of air into their lungs had been heard, according to some
+people, and next day the carcass of the clock would be found resonant
+and its faculties recovered. One day the great patriots, John
+Dickinson and Cæsar Rodney, riding past Christina together, stopped
+for dinner, and sent their watches in to be cleaned meantime.
+
+"'Minuit,' said Rodney, 'you are a devil with a time-keeper!'
+
+"'Nay, Minuit,' said Dickinson, 'thou art the gentlest custodian of
+time in our parts. I would some one could regulate these States and
+times like thee.'
+
+"The country round resorted to Minuit for repairs, but he generally
+came himself along the roads fortuitously about the time anybody's
+dials stood still. He was almost equal as a weather prophet to his
+fame as a mechanic, and as his broad, fat face, blue eyes, and portly
+body passed some farmer's gate, the cheery cry would go up, perhaps:
+
+"'Make hay--the wind's right!' or again: 'Time enough, farmer, with
+another pair of hands. But it's coming from the east!'
+
+"Had it been possible to suggest any superstition about a man
+universally popular, people would have said that this henchman of time
+and minute-hand of diligence drew his power from doubtful sources.
+Further north, where there was less superstition than amongst these
+mingled unspiritualized populations, Minuit might have been burnt as a
+wizard. A little doctor in the Deutsch hills, who once prescribed for
+the clock-mender, reported that his pulse had a metallic beat, and,
+looking suddenly up, he saw, where Minuit's face had been, a round
+clock face looking down and ticking at him. This doctor was a
+worthless fellow, however, and loose of tongue. Minuit, it was
+observed, never used a tuning-fork in church, like all leaders of
+religious music, but cast his eyes down a moment towards his heart,
+and tapped his foot, and then, as if catching the pitch somewhere from
+within, he raised the tune and carried it forward with an exquisite
+sense of rhythm.
+
+"A very old man and a cripple, who lived across the way from Minuit's,
+affected to observe extraordinary changes in his stature according to
+the weather changes, elongating as the temperature rose, and in very
+cold weather sinking into himself; this man also observed, on the day
+of a solar eclipse, that for the period there was nothing at all in
+the place where the clock-mender's head had been except a ring of
+light which enlarged as the disk of the sun was released. But who
+could rely upon the vagaries of an old man, who could do nothing but
+make memoranda out of his window upon the doings of his neighbors?
+
+"If anybody knew more than that Fithian Minuit was an obliging,
+neighborly man, and a model for mechanics, it must have been the
+subject of his romance. He was related to have told all that he knew
+upon the mystery of his being to his clergyman, and there is nothing
+now to confirm the gossip; for the preacher himself has gone to sleep
+in the old Shrewsbury graveyard in Maryland.
+
+"At Port Penn, where the last island in the channel of the lower
+Delaware now raises its flaming beacon, and the belated collier steers
+safely by Reedy Island light, lived the daughter of an old West India
+and coasting captain, who would permit his chronometers to be repaired
+and cleaned by nobody but Minuit. His cottage stood where now there is
+a broad and sandy street leading to a wooden pier and to
+bathing-houses on a pleasure beach. The few people near at hand were
+pilots, captains of bay craft, and grain-buyers; although the Dutch
+and Swedish farms, alternating with long marshes, musical with birds,
+had lined the wide Delaware at this point many a year. In calm, sunny
+weather, the broad beauty of the river and its low gold and emerald
+shores, with bulky vessels swinging up on the slow full tide, combined
+the sceneries of America and the Netherlands; but when a gale blew
+over the low shores, scattering the reed-birds like the golden pollen
+of the marsh lilies, and cold white gulls succeeded, diving and
+careening like sharks of the sky, the ships and coasters felt no
+serenity in these wide yeasty reaches of the Delaware bay, and they
+labored to drop anchor behind the natural breakwater of Reedy Island.
+There, clustering about as thickly in that olden time as they now seek
+from all the ocean round the costly shelter of Henlopen breakwater,
+coaster and pirate, fisherman and slaver, sent up the prayer a
+beneficent government has since granted in the fullest measure, for a
+perfect Coast Survey and a vigilant Lighthouse Board.
+
+"The daughter of Captain Lum was named Lois, and she was the junior of
+Fithian Minuit by several years, a slender, beautiful girl, with hair
+and eyes of the softest brown, and household ways, daughterly and
+endearing.
+
+"The old sea-captain, who made five voyages a year to the nearer
+Indies, and sent ashore to Port Penn as he passed, returning, the best
+of rum and the freshest of tropical fruits, looked with a jealous eye
+upon any possible suitor to his daughter, and had, perhaps,
+embarrassed her prospects for a younger protector, if such she had
+ever wished. But he loved to see the clock-maker come to the cottage,
+who had never shown partiality for any woman, while popular with all.
+
+"'Minuit,' he used to say, 'the best man on watch by land or sea, thou
+North Star; look to my girl as to my chronometer, and I'll pay thee
+twice the cost of thy time!'
+
+"It was the captain's delight, while ashore, to have every timepiece,
+stationary or portable, taken apart in the presence of his daughter
+and himself, while he told his sailor yarns, and Lois stood ready to
+serve his punch, or pass to the fat, smooth-faced, cheerful Minuit the
+pieces of mechanism: brass gimbals, chronometer-boxes, wheels and
+springs, ship-glasses, compasses, the manifold parts of little things
+by which men grope their way out of sight of land, hung between a
+human watch and the crystal shell of the embossed heaven. Chronometers
+were with Minuit attractive and yet awe-giving subjects. The legend of
+his childhood, well forgotten by all else, said that he had swallowed
+a chronometer, so small that a sea-captain could swim with it in his
+mouth. And now the sailors of all the navies cruised by the aid of
+clumsy watches, big as house-clocks, which to look at made Minuit
+smile with pity.
+
+"'Captain Lum,' he said aloud, on the eve of a voyage in the winter
+season, 'I have often yearned to go to sea. The sight of it makes me a
+little wild. I think I could guess my way over it and about it, by
+inherent reckoning.'
+
+"He saw the pair of white hands holding something before him tremble a
+little, and he looked up. The spiritual face of Lois was looking at
+his with wistful apprehension and interest. If ever his pulse beat out
+of time it was now--for in that exchange of glances he felt what she
+did not understand--that he was beloved.
+
+"Pain and joy, not swiftly, but softly, filled Minuit--pain, because
+he had loved this girl and wished never to have her know it, but would
+keep it an unbreathed, a holy mystery; and joy, like any lover's
+recognizing himself in the dear heart he had never importuned.
+
+"Next day the good ship Chirpland came off Port Penn. The jolly
+captain saying adieu to Minuit, clasped his hand.
+
+"'I saw thy look and my daughter's yesterday,' he said. 'It is weak of
+me to deny her a man like thee, thou sailor's friend. My ship is old.
+These coasts are dangerous. Nights and days come when we get no sight
+of lights ashore or in heaven. If thy chronometer fail, fail not thou,
+but be to her repairer and possessor!'
+
+"The discovery and the trust embarrassed Minuit, but he had never
+denied the request of any man. His time, as his sign affirmed, was
+everybody's. Yet a thrill, a twang, a twinge of delicious fear passed
+through him now. He loved this girl dearly, but he feared to love at
+all. He had now both the parental and the womanly recognition, and his
+days were lonely even with his garrulous timepieces, but he felt a
+lonelier sense of the possibility of turning her affection to awe.
+Those queer legends of his birth, his affinity for fixed luminaries
+and motions, and his conscious knowledge that he stood in some way
+related to spheres and orbits, and the laws of revolution and period,
+had never disturbed his mind in its calculations. But if he did stand
+exceptional in these respects to his fellow-men, might another and a
+beloved one comprehend what he himself did not? Yet the kindly regard
+of his neighbors, the composure of a conscience well consulted, and
+the hope that he was worthy of human love, made him resolve to keep
+the captain's admonition, though he hoped the occasion to obey it
+might never arrive.
+
+"In the absence of the good ship, however, love could not be deceived.
+It spoke in waitings and longings, and in tender glances and
+considerateness. She knew the rattle of his carriage-wheels, and he
+could feel her in the air like the breath of a beautiful day soon to
+appear in distance. Time, toward which he stood in such natural
+harmony, was dearer that it contained this passion and life more
+exquisite, and himself more questionable for it all.
+
+"It was a stormy winter. Ships strewed the coast between Hatteras and
+Navesink, and the capes of the Delaware received many a tattered
+barque. The ice poured down and wedged itself between Reedy Island and
+the shores, and crushed to pieces many that had escaped the ocean
+gales. One night in a raging storm the door of Captain Lum's cabin was
+thrown open, and a sailor appeared fresh from the water. He bore in
+his hand a chronometer, which Minuit recognized in a moment, and he
+drew his arm for the first time around the maiden's form.
+
+"'The Chirpland went down on Five Fathom Shoal, and the captain stood
+by her. He bade us return his chronometer, and say that he perished in
+the assurance that his daughter was left to the guidance of another
+fully as sure.'
+
+"'My child,' said Minuit, 'I accept thee wholly, sharing thy griefs!
+Weep, but on the breast of one who loves thee!'
+
+"The village of Christina rejoiced when its broad-faced, dimpled
+friend came home with a bride so fair and well-descended. They dressed
+the sign before his door with flowers. Only the groom wore an anxious
+face as he led her into his tidy home, now for the first time blessed
+with a mistress.
+
+"The night of the nuptials came softly down, as nowhere else except
+upon the skies of the Delaware and Chesapeake, and Minuit was happy.
+The thrumming clocks in the shop below mingled their tones and
+tickings in one consonant chorus, scarcely heard above the long drone
+and low monotonies of the insects in the creeks and woods, which
+assisted silence. The husband slept, how well beloved he could not
+know.
+
+"In the dreams of the night he was awakened. In the pale moonshine he
+saw his wife, clad in her garments of whiteness, standing by his bed
+all trembling.
+
+"'Tell me,' she said, 'what it is that I hear? I have listened till I
+am afraid. As I lay in this room perfectly silent, with my head, my
+husband, nearest your heart, I felt the ticking of a watch. At first
+it was only curious and strange. Now it haunts me and terrifies me. I
+am a simple girl, new and nervous to this wedded life. Is this noise
+natural? What is it?'
+
+"Minuit trembled also.
+
+"'Lois, my bride, my heaven!' he said. 'Oh! pity me, who have tried to
+pity all and make all happy, if I cannot myself explain away the cause
+of your alarm. I have kept myself lonely these many years, aware that
+I was not like other men, but that my heart--no evil monitor to
+me--gave a different sound. There is nothing in its beat, my wife, to
+make you fear it. Return and lay your head upon it, and you will hear
+it say this only, if you listen with faith: _love_!'
+
+"Thus the watch-maker turned superstition to assurance, and the
+admonition of his heart was a source of joy instead of fear to the
+listener at its side. It ticked a few bright years with constancy, and
+was the last benediction of the world to her ere she was ushered into
+that peace which passeth understanding.
+
+"At the death of his wife Minuit felt a deeper sense of his
+responsibility to time, and the finite uses of it expanded to a
+cheerful conception of the infinite. The country round was generally
+settled by a religious people, and the many meeting-houses of
+different sects had his equal confidence and sympathy. Pursuing his
+craft with unwearied diligence, and delighting the homestead with his
+violin as of old, a more pensive and wistful expression replaced his
+smile, and love withdrawn beckoned him toward it beyond the boundaries
+of period. Hard populations, which would not listen to preachers,
+heard with delight the amiable warnings of this friendly man, and as
+his own generation grew older, a new race dawned to whom he appeared
+in the light of a pure-spirited evangelist. 'Improve the time! watch
+it! ennoble it! It is a part of the beautiful and perpetual circle of
+everlasting duty. It is to the great future only the little disk of a
+second-hand, traversed as swiftly, while the great rim of heaven
+accepts it as a part of the eternal round!' Such was the burden of his
+sermon.
+
+"He could ride all along the roads, and hear his missionaries
+preaching for him wherever a clock struck, or a dial on the gable of a
+great stone barn propelled its shadows. His tracts were in every
+farmer's vest pocket. Whatever he made he consecrated with a paragraph
+of counsel.
+
+"The old sign faded out. The clock-maker's sight grew dim, but his
+apprehensions of the everlasting love and occupation were clearer and
+more confident to the end.
+
+"One day they found him in the graveyard of the London Tract, by the
+side of the spot where his wife was interred, worn and asleep at the
+ripe age of three-score.
+
+"The mill teams and the farm wagons stopped in the road, and the
+country folks gathered round in silence.
+
+"'Run down at last,' said one. 'If there are heavenly harps and bells,
+he hears them now!'"
+
+And there they hear the ticking, the preaching of this faithful life,
+under the old stone, sending up its pleasant message yet. The stone is
+perishing like a broken crystal, but the memory of the diligent and
+useful man beneath it rings amongst the holy harmonies of the country.
+Though dead, he yet speaketh!
+
+
+
+
+THE IMP IN NANJEMOY.
+
+
+    Dull in the night, when the camps were still,
+    Thumped two nags over Good Hope Hill;
+    The white deserter, the passing spy,
+    Took to the brush as the pair went by;
+    The army mule gave over the chase;
+    The Catholic negro, hearing the pace,
+    Said, as they splashed through Oxon Run:
+    "Dey ride like de soldiers who speared God's Son!"
+    But when Good Friday's bells behind
+    Died in the capital on the wind,
+    He who rode foremost paused to say:
+      "Herold, spur up to my side, scared boy!
+    A word has rung in my ears all day--
+      Merely a jingle, 'Nanjemoy.'"
+
+    "Ha!" said Herold, "John, why that's
+    A little old creek on the river. Surratt's
+    Lies just before us. You halt on the green
+    While I slip in the tavern and get your carbine!"
+    The outlaw drank of the whiskey deep,
+    Which the tipsy landlord, half asleep,
+    Brought to his side, and his broken foot
+    He raised from the stirrup and slashed the boot.
+    "Lloyd," he cried, "if some news you invite--
+    Old Seward was stabbed in his bed to-night.
+    Lincoln _I_ shot--that long-lived fox--
+    As he looked at the play from the theatre box;
+    And it seemed to me that the sound I heard,
+      As the audience fluttered, like ducks round decoy,
+    Was only the buzz of a musical word
+      That I cannot get rid of--'Nanjemoy.'"
+
+    "Twenty miles we must ride before day,
+    Cross Mattawoman, Piscataway,
+    If in the morn we would take to the woods
+    In the swamp of Zekiah, at Doctor Mudd's!"
+    "Quaint are the names," thought the outlaw then,
+    "Though much I have mingled with Maryland men!
+    I have fever, I think, or my mind's o'erthrown.
+    Though scraped is the flesh by this broken bone,
+    Every jog that I take on this road so lonely,
+      With thoughts, aye bloody, my mind to employ,
+    I can but say, over and over, this only--
+      The drowsy, melodious 'Nanjemoy.'"
+
+    Silent they galloped by broken gates,
+    By slashes of pines around old estates;
+    By planters' graves afield under clumps
+    Of blackjack oaks and tobacco stumps;
+    The empty quarters of negroes grin
+    From clearings of cedar and chinquopin;
+    From fodder stacks the wild swine flew,
+    The shy young wheat the frost peeped through,
+    And the swamp owl hooted as if she knew
+      Of the crime, as she hailed: "Ahoy! Ahoy!"
+    And the chiming hoofs of the horses drew
+      The pitiless rhythm of "Nanjemoy."
+
+    So in the dawn as perturbed and gray
+    They hid in the farm-house off the way,
+    And the worn assassin dozed in his chair,
+    A voice in his dreams or afloat in the air,
+    Like a spirit born in the Indian corn--
+    Immemorial, vague, forlorn,
+    And disembodied--murmured forever
+    The name of the old creek up the river.
+    "God of blood!" he said unto Herold,
+    As they groped in the dusk, lost and imperilled,
+    In the oozy, entangled morass and mesh
+    Of hanging vines over Allen's Fresh:
+    "The chirp of birds and the drone of frogs,
+    The lizards and crickets from trees and bogs
+    Follow me yet, pursue and ferret
+      My soul with a word which I used to enjoy,
+    As if it had turned on me like a spirit
+      And stabbed my ear with its 'Nanjemoy.'"
+
+    Ay! Great Nature fury or preacher
+    Makes, as she wists, of the tiniest creature--
+    Arming a word, as it floats on the mind,
+    With the dagger of wrath and the wing of the wind.
+    What, though weighted to take them down,
+    Their swimming steeds in the river they drown,
+    And paddle the farther shore to gain,
+    Chased by gunboats or lost in rain?
+    Many a night they try the ferry
+      And the days in haggard sleep employ,
+    But every raft, or float, or wherry,
+      Drifts up the tide to Nanjemoy.
+
+    "Ho! John, we shall have no more annoy,
+    We've crossed the river from Nanjemoy.
+    The bluffs of Virginny their shadows reach
+    To hide our landing upon the beach!"
+    Repelled from the manse to hide in the barn,
+    The sick wretch hears, like a far-away horn,
+    As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy,
+    The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y."
+    All day it follows, all night it whines,
+    From the suck of waters, the moan of pines,
+    And the tread of cavalry following after,
+    The flash of flames on beam and rafter,
+    The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon,
+    Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon
+    Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten,
+      And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy
+    The dying words of the dark assassin,
+      A wandering murmur, like "Nanjemoy."
+
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF UTIE.
+
+
+The reception at Secretary Flake's was at its height. Bland Van, the
+President of the nation, had departed with his boys; the punch-bowl
+had been emptied nine times; and still the cry from our republican
+society was, "Fill up!"
+
+A pair of young men, unacquainted with each other, pressed at the same
+time to the punch-bowl, and Jack, the chief ladler, turning from the
+younger, a clerk in civil dress, helped the elder, a tall naval
+officer, to a couple of glasses. The clerk, young Utie, who was
+somewhat flushed, addressed the chief ladler and remarked:
+
+"You dam nigger, didn't you see my glass?"
+
+"See it, sah? Yes! I've seen it seval times afo, dis evening."
+
+Black Jack then received the current allowance of curses for his color
+and his impudence, all of which he took meekly, till the officer,
+Lieutenant Dibdo, interrupted on the negro's behalf.
+
+"It's none o' yo affair, I reckon!" cried Utie sullenly.
+
+"The man had no intention of slighting you," said Dibdo. "You have
+been drinking too much, boy, and your coarseness is coming out."
+
+A fresh crowd of thirsty people pressing up at this point gave Jack
+his opportunity to cry: "Room around de punch-bowl!"
+
+And the disputants were separated and squeezed by the promenading
+tides into different rooms.
+
+The officer presently forgot all about it, but not so young Utie, who
+was partly drunk, entirely vain, not a gentleman by nature, and
+outraged that anybody had dubbed him "a boy." He sought the side of a
+fine young girl, the daughter of the chief of the bureau where he was
+employed, and with whom he was in love. She was attired in the free
+costume of republican receptions--bare arms, a low dress giving ample
+display to the whitest shoulders in the room, and fine natural hair
+dressed with flowers. Every gentleman who passed her during the
+evening had looked his homage freely--old beaux, dignitaries,
+officers, foreign deputies, _roués_--and as she had been two or three
+winters in that kind of society, nothing discomposed her.
+
+"Robert," she said, with part of a glance, as Utie rejoined her, "you
+go to the punch-bowl too much. You reflect upon me, sir. Besides, I
+heard you quarrelling with that handsome officer. I am dying to know
+him. Who is he?"
+
+Utie looked viciously up, anger and jealousy inflaming his heated
+face, for, although he had no engagement with Miss Rideau, he
+conceived himself her future suitor. But some rash words that he said
+against the officer were scarcely heard by the self-possessed beauty
+of official society, because, just then, the young officer and a
+friend were approaching them. She dropped her eyes when she met
+Lieutenant Dibdo's bold glance of admiration, perhaps in order not to
+be privy to the more searching look with which, like a gentleman of
+the world, he ran over the fine points of her plump body as he passed.
+But young Utie, seeing the offender of a moment ago taking such ardent
+and leisurely survey of the girl under his care, turned pale with
+hate. The officer did not notice him at all, absorbed in the fine
+colors, eyes, and proportions of Miss Rideau, and this further
+outraged Utie who--to his credit be it said--had only modest thoughts
+for her. When he saw, however, that she looked after the manly figure
+and naval gilt of him of the profane eyes, as if to return his
+admiration, the intoxicated boy dropped an oath.
+
+"I will horsewhip that powder-monkey!" he said.
+
+"Robert," said the girl placidly, "you won't. You have no horse and no
+horsewhip, but you have been drinking. Go from me, sir! Some one else
+shall see me home to-night."
+
+"I will kill the man who takes my place! Do you dare to speak that way
+to me?"
+
+He had raised his voice, in his rage, so that some others heard it.
+There was a little pause of pressing people, for that was a chivalrous
+age as to the manner of men to women, and the young officer, just then
+returning, availed himself of a pretty girl's dilemma to say:
+
+"May I assist you, miss? I presume you are not in very agreeable
+company."
+
+"Thank you, sir," answered Miss Rideau. "I would be obliged to have
+some one find my aunt for me; she is here somewhere."
+
+"Will you accept a stranger's arm?"
+
+"In this misfortune, I will."
+
+Dibdo took off the pretty girl, and one of his naval companions,
+looking after him, exclaimed, "What a genius Dib. is with the ladies!"
+But the companion, feeling a trembling, unsteady hand upon his arm,
+turned about and met young Utie's desperate face. "I want to know the
+name of that fellow!" said Utie.
+
+"That is Charles Dibdo," said the naval companion, "lieutenant of the
+United States frigate Fox, and I recommend you, my boy, to address
+_him_ in a civil tone. For me, I never mind a drunken man."
+
+Thoroughly demonized now, young Robert Utie turned blindly about for
+some implement of revenge. He found it in Tiltock, a fellow-clerk, a
+novitiate and a ninny, who was visible in the crowd.
+
+"Tiltock, are you a man of honor?"
+
+"I hope so, Bob."
+
+"Can you carry a challenge?"
+
+"Oh yes! I guess so, to 'blige a ole friend."
+
+"Can you write it?"
+
+"I'm afraid not."
+
+"Then take it by word of mouth. That scoundrel there, Lieutenant
+Dibdo, has insulted a lady, and me too. I must have his blood. Follow
+him up, and meet me at Gadsby's with his answer."
+
+Full of self-importance at this first and safe opportunity to stand
+upon what is known as "the field of honor," Tiltock kept the
+lieutenant in his eye, and took him finally aside and demanded a
+meeting in the name of Utie. The naval officer answered that he had
+simply relieved a lady from a drunken boy; but Tiltock, in the
+dramatic way common to halcyon old times, refused to accept either
+"drunken" or "boy" as terms appropriate to "the code," and pressed for
+an answer. In five minutes the naval officer replied, through his
+naval companion, that having ascertained Mr. Utie to be a gentleman's
+son, and he as an United States officer not being able to decline a
+challenge, the latter was accepted. The weapons were to be pistols,
+the place the usual ground at Bladensburg, and the time the afternoon
+of the next day.
+
+There was a good deal of drinking and boasting at the hotels that
+night, Utie and Tiltock telling everybody, as a particular secret,
+that there was to be "an 'fah honah," otherwise a "juel," at
+"Bladensburg, sah!" The gin-drinking, cock-fighting, sporting element
+of the town was aroused, and Utie and Tiltock were invited on all
+sides to imbibe to the significant toast of "The Field." Very noisy,
+very insolent, nuisances indeed, these two mere lads--the offspring of
+a vain and ignorant social period of which some elements yet
+remain--borrowed the money to hire a carriage, and at midnight they
+set out with some associates by the old, rutty, clay road for the
+Maryland village of Bladensburg. That night they caroused until
+Nature, despite her revolt, put them to bed. In the morning, with a
+swollen and sallow face, dry hair, unsteady hands, aching eyes and
+dim vision, Robert Utie awoke to the recollection of his folly and his
+rashness, and he realized the critical period which he had provoked.
+His clerkship lost, his self-pride poignant, his pockets nearly empty,
+his respectable career irretrievably terminated, his sweetheart
+insulted, and his life in danger! There was no escape either from
+despair or fate. Tiltock was strutting about below stairs with a
+drunken old doctor, misnamed a surgeon, who deposited behind the bar a
+rusty case of surgical instruments, and who took a deep potation to
+the toast of "The fawchuns of waw." The Bladensburg people were well
+aware of the occasion, and the old tavern was surrounded by loafers
+and gossips, many of whom were boys who had walked out from the city
+as we go to prize-fights in our day. To fill up the time a dog-fight
+and a chicken-fight were improvised by the enterprising stable-boys in
+the back yard, on the green slopes of the running Branch. While
+Tiltock strutted out of town at an imposing pace to examine "The
+Field," Robert Utie retired to his room, sought with an emetic to
+relieve his stomach, and then sat down to write some letters and an
+epitaph. The paper was thin, and the pen and ink matched it, but the
+drunken boy's eyes marred more than all; for suddenly the secret
+fountains of his lost youth were touched as by the prick of his pen,
+and the drops gushed out upon the two words he had written:
+
+"Dear mother--"
+
+Not his sweetheart, who was nothing to him now; not his "honor," which
+had been only vain-glory and deceit; not any thing but this earliest,
+everlasting faith which is ours forever, whether we be steadfast or go
+astray: the tie of home, of childhood, and of our mother's prayer and
+kiss--this was the soft reproach which glided between a wasted youth
+and the "field of valor" he had tempted. He wept. He sobbed. He threw
+himself upon the bed, and pressing his temples into the ragged quilt,
+felt the panorama of childhood pass across his mind like something
+cool, sorrowful, and compassionate. The sickness _she_ had cured, the
+bad words _she_ had taken from his undutiful lips, the whipping she
+had saved him from at the cost of her deceit, the lie she had never
+told _him_, the tears he had found her shedding upon her knees when
+first he had been drinking, the money he had never given her out of
+his salary but had spent with idlers, his ruined soul which to that
+mother's thought was pure as a baby's still, and watched by all the
+angels of God: these were admonitions from the green meadows of
+childhood. Before was the barren field of honor.
+
+How short is the struggle betwixt youth and selfishness, that sum of
+all diseases and crimes; that selfishness out of which wars arise and
+hell is habitated!
+
+A poor, overworked Christian negro, a slave in the tavern, hearing the
+sobbing of Robert Utie and aware that one of the duellists occupied
+that room, lifted the latch, and wakened the wretched boy from his
+remorse.
+
+"Young moss," he said, "doan you fight no juels! Oh! doan do it, for
+de bressed Lord's sake! It's nuffin but pride and sin. Yo's only a
+pore, spilt boy, but you got a soul, young moss! Doan you go git kilt
+in dat ar bloody gully wha' so many gits hurt amoss to deff!"
+
+Utie arose from the dream of home, and kicked the poor slave out of
+the room. He then drank, speculated upon his chances, practised with
+an imaginary pistol at the wall, and meditated running away,
+alternately, until Tiltock's business-step rang in the hall.
+
+"Bob," he said, "we've picked you a beautiful piece of ground, and the
+other party's waiting. It's the most popular juel of the season."
+
+They walked up the sandy village street, under the old hip-roofed
+houses, crossed the Branch bridge, and proceeded a quarter of a mile
+on the road to Washington. There, where a rivulet crossed the road
+amongst some bushes, they descended by a path into a copse, and on to
+a green meadow-space cleared away by former rain freshets. Farm boys,
+town boys, and intruders of all sorts were lurking near. The field of
+honor resembled a gypsy camp.
+
+Lieutenant Dibdo's companion came up to Tiltock and said that his
+friend did not wish to fight, and would make any manly apology, even
+though unconscious of offence, if the challenge was withdrawn. The
+crowd was ardent for the fight, and Tiltock, who was punctilious about
+honor, particularly where he could cut a safe figure, repelled the
+compromise, as "unwarranted by the code." He knew as much about the
+code as about honor, and more about both than about getting a living.
+
+"Then," said the lieutenant, "I am authorized to say that my principal
+will take Mr. Utie's first fire. Let him improve the generous chance
+as he will. The second time we will make business of it."
+
+The interlopers fell back. The word was given: "Ready--Aim--Fire!"
+Robert Utie, sustained by braggadocio, that quality which makes
+murderers die on the scaffold heroically, fired full at the body of
+Lieutenant Dibdo. That officer fired into the air and remained unmoved
+and unharmed.
+
+"Is another shot demanded?"
+
+"Yes," said Tiltock, "our honor is not yet satisfied."
+
+He waved the crowd back in an imperious way--they having rushed in
+after the first shot--and he gave the word himself like a dramatic
+reading.
+
+Robert Utie looked, and this time with a livid, sobered face, into the
+open pistol of the man he had provoked, the professional officer of
+death. The fine, cool face behind the pistol was concise, grave, and
+eloquent now as a judge's pronouncing the last sentence of the law.
+The next instant the boy was biting and clawing at the ground in
+mortal agony. The impatient crowd rushed in. A faint voice was heard
+to gasp for what some said was "water" and some thought was "mother."
+Then a figure with a dissipated face a little dignified by death, and
+with some of the softness of childhood glimmering in it, like the
+bright footfall of the good angel whose mission was done and whose
+flight was taken--this figure lay upon its back amongst the bushes,
+under the sunshine, peeped at by distant hills, contemplated by idlers
+as if it were the body of a slain game-chicken, and the drunken
+"surgeon" was idiotically feeling for its heart.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Tiltock with a flourish, "we are all witnesses that
+every thing has been honorably conducted."
+
+The city had its little talk. The newspapers in those days were models
+of what is called high-toned journalism, and printed nothing on purely
+personal matters like duels when requested to respect the feelings of
+families. As if "the feelings of families" were not the main cause of
+duels! There was a mother somewhere, still clinging with her prayers
+to the footstool of God, hoping for the soul of her boy even after
+death and wickedness. This was all, except the revolution of the
+world, and the wedding in due time upon it of Lieutenant Dibdo and
+Miss Rideau. It was what was called a romantic wedding.
+
+
+
+
+LEGEND OF FUNKSTOWN.
+
+
+I.
+
+    Nick Hammer sat in Funkstown
+      Before his tavern door--
+    The same old blue-stone tavern
+      The wagoners knew of yore,
+    When the Conestoga schooners
+      Came staggering under their load,
+    And the lines of slow pack-horses
+      Stamped over the National Road.
+
+    Nick Hammer and son together,
+      Both blowing pipe-smoke there,
+    Like a pair of stolid limekilns,
+      In the blue South Mountain air;
+    And the mills of the Antietam,
+      Grinding the Dunker's wheat
+    So oldly and so slowly,
+      Groaned up the deserted street.
+
+    "What think'st thou, Nick, my father?"
+      Said Nick, the old man's twin.
+    "This whole year thou art silent.
+      Let a little speech begin.
+    Thou think'st the bar draws little;
+      That the stables are empty yet,
+    And the growing pride of Hagerstown,
+      Thou can'st not that forget."
+
+    "Thou liest, Nick, my little boy;
+      For Hager's bells I hear
+    Like the bells of olden travel,
+      Forgot upon mine ear.
+    In a wonderful thing once asked him
+      Thy dear old daddy is sunk--
+    I have sot here a year and wondered
+      Who the devil was Mr. Funk!"
+
+II.
+
+    "A year ago I was smoking,
+      When a strange young fellow came by.
+    He was taking notes on paper,
+      And the rum in his'n was _rye_.
+    Says he: 'I'm a writin' a hist'ry'--
+      'Twas then I thought he was drunk--
+    'And I want to see your graveyard,
+      And the tomb of your founder, Funk!'
+
+    "I think if he'd sot there, sonny,
+      I'd looked at him a week;
+    But he wanished tow'rd the graveyard,
+      Before your daddy could speak.
+    Directly back he tumbled,
+      Before I had quit my stare,
+    And he says: 'I'm disappinted!
+      No Funk is buried in there.'
+
+    "'The Funks is all up-country'--
+      That's all I could think to say,
+    'There never was Funks in Funkstown,
+      And there ain't any Funks to-day.'
+    'Why man,' he says, 'the city
+      That stands on Potomac's shores
+    Was settled by Funk, the elder,
+      Who afterward settled yours!
+
+    "'The Carrols, they bust him yonder;
+      Old Hager, he bust him here;
+    But my heart will bust till I find him,
+      And make a sketch of his bier.
+    Oh shame on the Funkstown spirit
+      That in Maryland does dwell!
+    _He_ wouldn't consent to be buried
+      Where you can keep a hotel.'"
+
+III.
+
+    "There's John Stocklager, daddy,"
+      Said young Nick, thinking much;
+    "A hundred years he's settled
+      Amongst the mountain Dutch.
+    Ask _him_!" "Nay, young Nick Hammer,
+      You young fellows run too fast:
+    I shall set out here a thinking,
+      And maybe Funk'll go past!"
+
+IV.
+
+    He drank and smoked and pondered,
+      And deep in the mystery sunk;
+    And the more Nick Hammer wondered
+      The duller he grew about Funk.
+    The wagoners talked it over,
+      And a new idea to trace
+    Enlivened the dead old village
+      Like a new house built in the place.
+
+V.
+
+    One day in June two wagons
+      Came over Antietam bridge
+    And a tall old man behind them
+      Strode up the turnpike ridge.
+    His beard was long and grizzled,
+      His face was gnarled and long,
+    His voice was keen and nasal,
+      And his mouth and eye were strong.
+
+    One wagon was full of boxes
+      And the other full of poles,
+    As the weaver's wife discovered
+      While the weaver took the tolls.
+    Two young men drove the horses,
+      And neither the people knew;
+    But young Nick asked a question
+      And that old man looked him through.
+
+    A little feed they purchased,
+      And their teams drank in the creek,
+    And to and fro they travelled
+      As silently for a week--
+    Went southward laden heavy,
+      And northward always light,
+    And the gnarled old man aye with them,
+      With the long beard flowing white.
+
+    From Sharpsburg up to Cavetown
+      The story slowly rolled--
+    That old man knew the mountains
+      Were filled with ore of gold.
+    The boxes held his crucibles;
+      'Twas haunted where he trod;
+    And every shafted pole he brought
+      Was a divining rod!
+
+    And none knew whence he came there,
+      Nor they his course who took,
+    Down the road to Harper's Ferry,
+      In a shaggy mountain nook;
+    But Nick the Sire grew certain,
+      While from his eye he shrunk,
+    That old man was none other
+      Than the missing Mr. Funk:
+
+    The famous city-builder
+      Who once had pitched upon
+    The sunny ledge of Funkstown,
+      And the site of Washington.
+    Again he was returning
+      To the Potomac side,
+    To found a temple in the hills
+      Before he failed and died!
+
+    And Nick laughed gently daily
+      That he alone had guessed
+    The mystery of the elder Funk
+      That had puzzled all the rest.
+    And younger Nick thought gently:
+      "Since that chap asked for Funk
+    There's been commotion in this town,
+      And daddy's always drunk."
+
+VI.
+
+    But once the ring of rapid hoofs
+      Came sudden in the night,
+    And on the Blue Ridge summits flashed
+      The camp-fire's baleful light.
+    Young Nick was in the saddle,
+      With half the valley men,
+    To find that old man's fighting sons
+      Who kept the ferry glen.
+
+    And like the golden ore that grew
+      To his divining rod,
+    The shining, armed soldiery
+      Swarmed o'er the clover sod;
+    O'er Crampton's gap the columns fought,
+      And by Antietam fords,
+    Till all the world, Nick Hammer thought,
+      At Funkstown had drawn swords.
+
+VII.
+
+    Together, as in quiet days
+      Before the battle's roar,
+    Nick Hammer and his one-legg'd son
+      Smoked by the tavern door.
+    The dead who slept on Sharpsburg Heights
+      Were not more still than they;
+    They leaned together like the hills,
+      But nothing had to say;
+
+    Save once, as at his wooden stump
+      The young man looked awhile,
+    And damned the man who made that war--
+      He saw Nick Hammer smile.
+    "My little boy," the old man said,
+      "Think long as I have thunk--
+    You'll find this war rests on the head
+      Of that 'air Mister Funk!"
+
+
+
+
+JUDGE WHALEY'S DEMON.
+
+
+In the little town of Chester, near the Bay of Chesapeake, lived an
+elegant man, with the softest manners in the world and a shadow
+forever on his countenance. He bore a blameless character and an
+honored name. He had one son of the same name as his own, Perry
+Whaley. This son was forever with him, for use or for pleasure; they
+could not be happy separated, nor congenial together. A destiny seemed
+to unite them, but with it also a baleful memory. The negroes
+whispered that in the boy's conception and birth was a secret of
+shame; he was not this father's son, and his mother had confessed it.
+
+That mother was gone--fled to a distant part of the world with her
+betrayer--and the divorce was recorded while yet young Perry Whaley
+was a babe. But the boy never knew it: his origin reposed in the
+sensitive memory of his father only, and every day the father looked
+at the son long and distantly, and the son at the father with a most
+affectionate longing.
+
+"Papa," he would say, "can't you try to love me? Do I disobey you? I
+am sure I am always unhappy out of your sight."
+
+The father could not do without that boy, but could only hate him. "My
+son," he would reply, "you are obedient, but a demon! I could not love
+you if I would!"
+
+"Never mind then, father, I can wait. There is plenty of time in life
+to make you love me!"
+
+Judge Whaley--for he had been on the bench--was the highest example in
+Maryland of honor and pride. A General of militia, often in the
+Legislature, and once or twice a Senator at Washington, he had all
+the shattered sensibilities of a proud man wounded in the soul. Age
+was coming untimely upon his high temples and shadowed countenance,
+and as he walked along the market-place and green court-house yard,
+polite to men, boys, and negroes, they said in low tones, "Pity such a
+real gentleman can't be happy!"
+
+In public affairs Judge Whaley was not silent: he led his party with
+intrepid utterances, and his prejudices, like his intellect, were
+strong; but though the election sometimes hung by a few votes, and his
+influence then gave every temptation on the part of low speakers and
+writers to allude to his domestic dishonor, the vile reminiscence was
+never mentioned. A profound respect for the man permeated society, and
+in his unsmiling way he was kind to whites and blacks. A slaveholder,
+and at the head of the principal slave-holding connection, and the
+particular champion in that region of slavery privileges, he would
+take his Bible and visit the cottages of his negroes and read to them
+even when sick of contagious fevers. He defended poor clients freely
+in the courts, and fought for the lives of free negroes under capital
+indictments. He was of the vestry of the aged Episcopal Church, which
+dominated the social influence of the town, and never omitted
+attendance on all the services, but with the shadow forever on his
+brow. Young Perry went everywhere with his father, and chattered and
+was active to oblige him, and sometimes by his boyish humor made a
+little light weaken the strong edges of that paternal shadow; but in a
+few minutes, looking up into the Judge's face, he would see that
+distant, accusing look returned again.
+
+A great desire sprang up in the boy's heart to be fully loved by his
+father. He looked at other boys and saw that they received from their
+fathers a treatment not more gentle, but more real, as if a deep well
+of feeling lay in those parents which could send up cool water or
+tears, either in disagreement or sympathy. Young Perry had his own
+horse and his negro, and was the only inhabitant, besides the Judge,
+of the old black brick, square, colonial house on the brink of the
+river--that house whence the light had gone in lurid flight when the
+young wife, in the bravado of her shame, departed forever.
+
+Judge Whaley was able, with his intellectual sympathy, to observe that
+his boy was apt and right-minded.
+
+Perry read law precociously, and liked it. He was the best juvenile
+debater in the little old college on the slight hill overlooking the
+town. His appearance was good, and he had a cheerful nature; yet
+nowhere, among beautiful girls or riding companions, gunning on the
+river, crabbing on the bridge, or skating on the meadows, was he half
+so happy as with his father.
+
+"Well, Perry," the Judge would say, "how is my demon to-day--what is
+he studying now?"
+
+"Studying you, papa; I don't understand you."
+
+"The time will come, alas for you!" exclaimed the Judge.
+
+"Do I displease you in any thing I do?"
+
+"No, my son."
+
+"Do you believe I love you?"
+
+"Yes, I do believe it. I wish, Perry, it could be returned."
+
+The son, under the influence of this discouraging confidence, became
+serious and melancholy. He would take his gun on his shoulder and wade
+out into the meadow marshes, as if for game, and there would be seen
+by other gunners sitting on some old pier or perched on some worm
+fence, looking straight up at the sky, as if it might answer the
+riddle of his father's hate and his own unreciprocated affection. He
+would also, on rainy or cold days, when the inmates could not stir
+abroad, mount his horse and ride to the almshouse beyond the town
+mill, and, taking a pleasant story or ballad from his pocket, read to
+the huddled paupers, as well as to the keeper's family, attracted by
+his pleasant condescension. By degrees the boy's face also took the
+shadow worn by his father.
+
+"Oh, if they could only love!" remarked the old people around the
+court-house; "or if they only could admit the real love between them!"
+
+The Judge never admitted it; that seemed to be a part of his religion,
+a duty to himself, if painful, and the son never woke nor retired to
+rest without searching in that paternal shadow for the kindly gleam of
+awakened love, yet ever kissed the shadow only, and a brow that was
+cold.
+
+One Christmas Day the river was frozen--a rare event in that genial
+latitude, and hearing that wild geese were flying down toward the bay
+creeks and coves, the Judge took his gun and a negro and set off,
+without waiting for Perry, who was not immediately to be found. An
+hour later the boy returned and heard of his father's departure, and
+started on horseback to overtake the carriage. He followed the track
+beyond the mill and almshouse, and across the heads of several
+peninsulas or necks leading into the wide tidal river. A few frosted
+persimmons hung yet to their warty branches; the hulls of last
+autumn's black walnuts were beneath the spreading boughs; old orchards
+of peach-trees where the tints of green and bud smouldered in pink
+contrast to the oft-blackened and sapless branches, set off the purple
+beads of the haw on the bushes along the lanes. Fish-hawks, flying
+across the sky, felt the shadow of the flocks of wild ducks flying
+higher; and rabbits crossed the road so boldly in the face of Perry
+Whaley, that once a raccoon, limping across a cornfield like a lame
+spaniel, turned too and took both barrels of Perry's gun without other
+fright or injury than slightly to hurry its pace. As the young man
+heard the crows chatter around the corn-shocks and the mocking-bird in
+some alder-thicket answer and sauce the catbird's scream, he said to
+himself:
+
+"Every thing is attached by an inner chord to something else, and that
+other thing, free-hearted, carols or quarrels back--except father to
+me. Can I not, too, find something to love me? There is Marion, the
+Doctor's daughter, with the chestnut curls falling all round her
+neck--she loves me, I know; but until I gain my father's love I cannot
+think of woman!"
+
+The pine-trees above his head murmured rather than moaned, as if they
+strongly sympathized with him and would presently make loud and angry
+cause against his enemies. "What is it," asked Perry of his
+unsuspecting mind, "which makes my father so unappeasable? What is
+there in me which broods upon his just and honorable life, and which
+he cannot drive away though he tries? Has he some learned
+superstition, some religious vow or mistaken sacrifice?"
+
+Perry turned down a lane and then into the bed of a frozen brook, and
+coming in sight of the broad river, espied his father, gun in hand,
+stealthily creeping under a load of brush and twigs which the Judge's
+negro had piled about his back and head, to conceal his figure from a
+flock of ducks that were bathing and diving in an open place of deep
+water, to which the ice had not extended.
+
+The gliding brush heap, by slow and flitting advances, had progressed
+about to within gunshot of the scarce suspecting fowls, and Perry and
+the negro, from different sides of the cove, watched with the keenest
+interest--when suddenly, with very little noise, the ice gave way and
+Judge Whaley had sunk in deep water, loaded down with heavy gunning
+boots, shot-belt, overcoat and gun. The negro stood paralyzed a
+minute and then fell upon his knees, unknowing what to do. A sense of
+joy started in Perry Whaley's breast as strong as his apprehensive
+fears. He might be made the instrument of saving that beloved life,
+and dissipating the spell of its indifference!
+
+Nothing but this ardent passion saved Perry himself from drowning. He
+had crossed the cove ere yet the impulse of parental recognition had
+taken form, and throwing a rein from the carriage around the negro
+man's armpits, and seizing a long fence-rail, ran rapidly across,
+pulling both toward the point of danger.
+
+Judge Whaley had been a powerful man and an accomplished sportsman;
+and still as resolute as in youth, struggled with all intelligence for
+his life. He sank to the bottom on first breaking through the ice,
+then reaching upward made two or three powerful efforts to catch the
+rim of the ice-field and sank again in each endeavor, weighted down
+with leather and iron. He had sunk to rise no more when Perry reached
+the edge of the field, placed the end of the rail over the abyss and
+planted the negro's weight upon it, and then he dived, head foremost,
+into the freezing salt depths--where the tide was running--and with
+the carriage rein looped in his right hand. Before he could lay hand
+upon his father, that desperate man had seized him by the hair and
+drawn his head to the bottom, and every instant Perry felt that his
+remainder of breath was almost run unless he could break that iron
+hold. Even in that instant of agony, with death painting its awful
+pageantry on his interior sight, Perry felt a gladder kind of destiny;
+that perhaps the arms of a father's love were around him, and in
+another sphere, already about to dawn, the shadow might depart from
+that kind face and unyearning heart.
+
+But with a sense of more human dutifulness, Perry recalled his
+residuum of perception. It was necessary to break that drowning man's
+grapple upon his hair, and taking the only way, if cruel, to assist
+his father, the young man struck the elder's knuckles with his
+clinched fist. As they released the rein was thrown about Judge
+Whaley's shoulders and run through the buckle, and as his rescuer,
+almost exhausted, swam upward, he made the rein fast to his ankle and
+seized hold of the rail. Here occurred another agonizing delay. The
+negro could not pull the rail in, between his own fears and the double
+burden; the young man was exhausted and cramped with cold, and every
+instant his father, still submerged, was drowning. At this moment
+when the renewed probability of death brought no compensations of a
+tender sentiment, it pleased the tide to whirl Judge Whaley's body
+inwards, directly beneath the ice-field, and he being now insensible,
+if alive at all, the negro clutched it effectually. In the awakened
+pain and hope of that minute, Perry Whaley supported himself along the
+piece of rail to the solid ice, and assisted to draw his father from
+the water, and then swooned dead. They lay together, the unwelcome son
+and the repelling father, under the universal pity of the great eye of
+Heaven, on the natal day of Him who came into the world also
+fatherless, but not disowned.
+
+A neighboring farmer sent one of his boys to Chester for the doctor,
+and by rubbing and restoratives, both the Judge and his son were
+brought back to circulation and pulsation. Perry soon recovered, but
+Judge Whaley was saved only with the greatest difficulty. It was
+nightfall in the hospitable farm-house before he was able to see or
+speak, and then, a little drunken with the spirits which had been
+administered, he asked in a whisper:
+
+"Who saved my life?"
+
+"Who but your son Perry?" answered the cheerful Doctor Voss. "You were
+both wrapped together for a long while in the bottom of the cove!"
+
+"My son!" exclaimed Judge Whaley, scarcely understanding the reply.
+"Who is my son?"
+
+"Here, father! We are both alive. Thank God!"
+
+"_My_ son?" muttered Judge Whaley. "Brave son! Who is it?"
+
+"Why, Perry Whaley!" answered the good housewife. "His arms are around
+your neck. Those warm kisses were his!"
+
+The sick man glared about him till his eye fell on the boy.
+
+"Ha!" he whispered. "By you. Had I awakened in heaven would you have
+been there, too?"
+
+The Judge sank back into a moment's insensibility, and the son sat
+there sobbing piteously.
+
+Though saved from the wave Judge Whaley had a long following spell of
+fever, in which his son nursed him for many weeks, and once the spark
+of life seemed to have fled; the Judge's pulse stopped still, and
+while they were at solemn prayer--the rector of the Episcopal Church
+reading from his book--Perry cried: "He still lives. It is the
+medicine he needs!"
+
+After the second resuscitation Dr. Voss remarked: "It is not often,
+Judge Whaley, that a man's life is twice saved by his son!"
+
+Tears were no longer in Perry's eyes; he had heard his father in
+delirium constantly repeat his name. After the Judge's recovery he
+placed in Perry's pocket a fine English watch, and gave him a pair of
+horses and a stylish wagon.
+
+"Hereafter," he said, "you shall take charge of the property. My son,
+look about you and find a wife! In your character you are deserving of
+a good one, for I fear the affection you are seeking can never arise
+in my heart enough to satisfy you. Gratitude and respect are always
+here, my son, but love has been a stranger to me these many years. I
+wish you to marry while I live, and be happy in some good woman's
+affection. I may die and you may not become my heir! There is the
+doctor's beautiful daughter; she has my decided approval!"
+
+"If it is your wish, father, I will marry."
+
+The day Perry Whaley was admitted to the bar of Kent County on motion
+of his father, he stopped with his pair of horses at Doctor Voss's
+house, and asked Miss Marion to take a drive. She was a peerless
+brunette, whose dark brown curls taking the light upon their
+luxuriance seemed the rippling of water from the large amber wells of
+her eyes. In childhood she had looked with admiration on his straight,
+trim figure and manly courtesy, and hoped that she might find favor in
+his sight. For this she had put by the scant opportunities in a small,
+old, unvisited town, to be wedded to her equals, and the whispered
+imputation that there was a taint in Perry Whaley's blood made no
+impression upon her wishes. Her younger sisters were gone before her,
+but true to the impetuous tendencies of her childhood she waited for
+Perry, indulging the dream that she was destined to be his wife.
+
+The happy, supreme opportunity had come. They took the road over the
+river drawbridge into another county; the frost was out of the ground,
+and the loamy road invited the horses to their speed until the breath
+of spring raised in Marion's cheeks the color that dressed the budding
+peach orchards which spread over the whole landscape, as if Nature was
+in maternity and her rosy breasts were full of milk.
+
+"Do you like these horses, Marion?" said Perry Whaley, when they had
+gone several miles. "If you do you can drive them as long as you
+live."
+
+She laughed, more because it was the feminine way than in her feeling.
+
+"Drive them alone?"
+
+"Only when you do not want me to go."
+
+"Then it will seldom be alone, Perry."
+
+They both breathed short in silence, the happy silence of youth's
+desire and assent, until Perry said, "You are sure you love me, then?"
+
+"Must I be frank, Perry?"
+
+"As much as ever in your life!"
+
+"I am very sure. I loved you in my childhood--no more now than then,
+except that the growth of love has strengthened with my strength."
+
+"Marion," said the young man with a thoughtful face, "if I have not
+long ago recognized this fidelity, which, to be also frank with you, I
+have suspected--not because of any desert of mine, but love is like
+the light which we distinctly feel even with our eyes shut--it has
+been because with all my soul I was laboring for my father's love
+first. You have seen the shadow on his brow? How it came there I do
+not know. I have thought that with my wife to light the dark chambers
+of our old house, a triple love would bloom there, and what he has
+called the demon in me would disappear beneath your beautiful
+ministrations. Be that angel to both of us, and as my wife touch the
+fountain of his tears and make his noble heart embrace me!"
+
+Marion Voss felt a great sense of trouble. "Is it possible," she
+thought, "that Perry has never suspected the cause of that shadow on
+the Judge's life? Perhaps not! It would have been cruel to tell Perry,
+but crueller, perhaps, to let him grow to manhood in unchallenged
+pride and find it out at such a critical time." The rest of the ride
+passed in endearments and the engagement vow was made.
+
+"My dear one," said Marion, as they rolled on the bridge at Chester,
+and the few lights of the town and of the vessels and the single
+steamboat descended into the river, "had you not better have an
+understanding with your father on the subject of his affection?
+Perhaps you have talked in riddles. Something far back may have
+disturbed your mutual faith. Whatever it is, nothing shall break my
+promise to you. I will be your wife, or no man's. But the shadow that
+is on Judge Whaley's face I fear no wife can drive away."
+
+These words disturbed young Perry Whaley, as he drove his horses into
+the hotel stable and slowly pursued his way across the public plot or
+area, past the old square brick Methodist church, already lighted
+brightly for a special evening service, though it was a week-day. He
+passed next the small, echoing market-house and the Episcopal church,
+and court-house yard. Every thing he saw had at that moment the
+appearance of something so very vivid and real that it frightened him.
+Yonder was the spot where, with other boys, he had burned tar-barrels
+on election nights; up a lane the jail where he had seen the prisoners
+flatten their noses against the bars to beg tobacco; a tall Lombardy
+poplar at a corner stood stolid except at its summit, where a portion
+of the foliage whispered with a freshening sound. How still; as if
+every thing was in suspense like him--the favorite of the old town
+for so many years, and soon to become the possessor of its most
+beautiful and virtuous woman!
+
+He sounded the knocker at the door of the square, solid brick mansion,
+built while all acknowledged the King of Britain here, and in whose
+threshold General Washington had stood more than once. His father
+admitted him directly into a prim, wainscoted room with a
+square-angled stairway in the corner leading above; a thick rag carpet
+was on the floor; the furniture was mahogany and hair-cloth; on the
+wall were portraits of the Whaleys or Whalleys, back to that regicide
+who fled from the vengeance of King Charles's sons, and, escaping many
+perils in New England, lived unrecognized on this peninsula.
+
+Judge Whaley had lighted a large oil lamp, and its shade threw the
+flame upon his strong magisterial face, wherein grief and
+righteousness seemed as highly blent as in some indigent republican
+Milton or Pym.
+
+"My father," said Perry Whaley with the tender tone habitual to him,
+"I have consulted your wishes as well as my desire. Marion Voss will
+be my wife."
+
+"It is well, my son," replied Judge Whaley, placing upon his nose his
+first pair of silver spectacles. "You are entitled to so much beauty
+and grace on every ground of a dutiful youth and agreeable person, and
+of talents which will make both of you a comfortable livelihood."
+
+"Father, with so great a change of relations before me, I desire to
+obtain your whole confidence."
+
+Perry's voice trembled; the Judge sat still as one of the brazen
+andirons where the wood burned with a colorless flame in the
+fireplace. The father took off the spectacles and laid them down.
+
+"Confidence in what respect, Perry?"
+
+The young man walked to his father and knelt at his knee and clasped
+his hand. Even then Perry saw the shadow gather in that kind man's
+brow, as if he perceived the demon in his son.
+
+"Before I make a lady my wife, father, I want every mystery of my
+life related. I have always heard that my mother died. Where is she
+buried?"
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"She is not dead," said Judge Whaley, without any inflection, "except
+to me."
+
+"Not dead, father?" asked the son, with throbbing temples. "Oh, why
+have I been so deceived? Were you unhappy?"
+
+"I thought I was happy," said the Judge huskily; "that was long my
+impression."
+
+"And my mother--was she, too, happy when you were so?"
+
+"No."
+
+The young man rose and walked to the wainscot and back again. "Dear
+father, I see the origin of the shadow upon your brow. Why was I not
+told before? Perhaps the son of two unhappy parents might have brought
+them together again, if for no other congenial end, than that he was
+their only son!"
+
+The Judge raised his eyes to the imploring eyes of the younger man.
+The shadow never was so deep upon his brow as Perry saw it now; it was
+the shadow of a long inured agony intensified by a dread judicial
+sympathy.
+
+"You are not my son!" he said.
+
+Perry's mouth opened, but not to articulate. He stretched out his
+hands to touch something, and that only which he could not reach
+struck and stunned him; he had fallen senseless to the floor.
+
+When Perry returned to knowledge he was lying upon the carpet, a cloak
+under his head, and his father, walking up and down, stooped over him
+frequently to look into his face with a tender, yet suffering
+interest. The young man did not move, and only revealed his
+wakefulness at last by raising his hand to check a relieving flow of
+tears.
+
+"My dear boy," finally said Judge Whaley, himself shedding tears, "I
+had supposed that you already knew something of the tragedy of my
+life."
+
+"Never," moaned Perry.
+
+"Then, forgive me; I should myself have gradually told you the tale;
+it might have come up with your growth, inwoven like a mere ghost
+story. Did no playmate, no older intimate, not one of your age
+striving for the bar, ever whisper to you that I had been deceived,
+and that you, my only comfort, were the fruit of the deception?"
+
+"No, sir." Perry's tears seemed to dry in the recollection. "We were
+both gentlemen--at least, after we reached this world. No one ever
+insulted me nor you! I humbly thank God that, discredited as I may
+have been, my conduct to all was so considerate that no one could
+obtrude such a truth upon me. Is it the truth? O father!--I must call
+you so! it is the only word I know--is this, at last, one of the
+dreadful visions of diseased sleep or of insanity? Who am I? What was
+my mother? I can bear it all, for now I have seen why you never loved
+me."
+
+Perry, pale as death and still of feeble brain, had arisen as he spoke
+and made this imploration with only the eloquence of haggard
+forgetfulness. The Judge took Perry's hands and supported him.
+
+"My son, have I not earned the name of father? Yes, I have plucked the
+poison-arrow from my heart and sucked its venom. I have taken the
+offspring of my injurer and warmed it in my bosom. Every morning when
+you arose I was reminded of my dishonor. Every night when we kissed
+good-night, I felt, God knows, that I had loved my enemies and done
+good to them which injured me!"
+
+The young man, looking up and around in the impotence of expression,
+saw the portraits of the dead Whaleys in unbroken lineal
+respectability, bending their eyes upon him--the one, the only
+impostor of the name!
+
+"Perry," continued the Judge, "I am not wholly guilty of keeping you
+blind. I have told you many times that between us was a gap, a rift of
+something. I have sometimes said, as your artless caresses, mixed
+with the bitter recollection of your origin, almost dispossessed my
+reason, that you were 'my demon.'"
+
+"Yes, father; but I was so anxious to love you that I never brooded on
+that. I see it all! Every repulse comes back to me now. You have
+suffered, indeed, and been the Christian. But I must hear the tale
+before I depart."
+
+"Depart! Where?"
+
+"To find my mother, if she lives. To find my name! I cannot bear this
+one. It would be deceit."
+
+"Not even the name of My Son?"
+
+"Alas! no. Just as I am I must be known. My putative father, if he
+lives, must give me another name."
+
+"Thank God, Perry, he is dead!"
+
+"But not his name. I can make honorable even my--"
+
+"Say it not!" exclaimed the Judge, placing his hand upon Perry's
+mouth. "Pure as all your life has been, you shall not degrade it with
+such a word. Oh, my son!--my orphan son!--dear faithful prattler
+around my feet for all these desolate and haunted years, I have
+doubted for your sake every thing--that wedlock was good, that pride
+of virtuous origin was wise, that human jealousy was any thing but a
+tiger's selfishness. I did not sow the seed that brought you forth;
+too well I know it! Yet grateful and fair has been the vine as if
+watered by the tears of angels; and when I sleep the demon in you
+fades, and then, at least, your loving tendrils find all my nature an
+arbor to take you up!"
+
+"Would to God!" said Perry bitterly, "that in the sleep of everlasting
+death we laid together. O my God! how I have loved you--father!"
+
+The Judge enfolded the young man in his arms and like a child Perry
+rested there. The lamp, previously burning very low, went out for want
+of oil, as the old man nursed like his own babe the serpent's
+offspring, not his own but another's untimely son, bred on the honor
+of a husband's name. As they sat in the perfect darkness of the old
+riverside mansion, Judge Whaley told his tale.
+
+He had neglected to marry until he had become of settled legal and
+business habits, and more than forty-five years of age when he chose
+for a wife a young lady who professed to admire and love him. They had
+no children. The wife was a coquette, and began to woo admiration
+almost as soon as the nuptials were done. Judge Whaley thought nothing
+ill of this; he was in the heyday of his practice and willing to let
+one so much his junior enjoy herself. Among his law students was a
+young man from South Carolina, of brilliant manners and insidious
+address. This person had already become so intimate with Mrs. Whaley
+as to draw upon the Judge anonymous letters notifying him that he was
+too indifferent, to which letters he gave no attention, only bestowing
+the more confidence and freedom upon her, when, happily, as it was
+thought, the wife showed signs of maternity. Perry was born, to the
+joy of his father. The young mother, however, hastened to recover her
+health and gayety. The favor she expressed for the student's society
+was revived and not opposed by her husband. Judge Whaley returned
+unexpectedly one day to his residence; he came upon a scene that in an
+instant destroyed faith and rendered explanation impossible. His wife
+was false. The student passionately avowed himself her seducer. The
+Judge went through the ordeal like a magistrate.
+
+"Take her away with you," he said. "That is the only reparation you
+can do her, until she is legally divorced, and after that, if
+necessary, I will give her an allowance, but she cannot rest under
+this roof another night. It has been the abode of chaste wives since
+it was builded. My honor is at stake. This day she must go. Make her
+your wife and let neither ever return."
+
+They departed by carriage, unknown to any, and never had returned.
+But a few weeks after they disappeared a letter was received by Judge
+Whaley, admonishing him that his son was the offspring of the same
+illegal relations. It was signed and written by his wife. The wretched
+man debated whether he should send the infant to an asylum or keep it
+upon his premises. Through procrastination, continued for twenty
+years, the child had derived all the advantages of legitimacy, and
+still the demon of the husband's peace was the test of the gentleman's
+religion.
+
+As this story had proceeded toward its final portions, the young man
+had detached himself from his father's arms. When Judge Whaley
+concluded in the darkness he waited in vain for a response. The old
+man lighted the lamp and peered about the room wistfully. Perry was
+gone.
+
+That night, in the happiness of her engagement, Marion Voss had a glad
+unrest, which her mother noticed. "Dear," said the mother, "let us go
+over to the Methodist church. It is one of their protracted meetings
+or revivals, as they call it. If Perry comes he will know where to
+find us, as I will leave word."
+
+The Methodists were second in social standing, but a wide gap
+separated them from the slave-holding and family aristocracy, who were
+Episcopalians. The sermon was delivered by one of their most powerful
+proselytizers, an old man in a homespun suit, high shoulders, lean,
+long figure, and glittering eyes. He was a wild kind of orator,
+striking fear to the soul, dipping it in the fumes of damnation,
+lifting it thence to the joys of heaven. Terrible, electrical
+preaching! It was the product of uncultured genius and human
+disappointment. Marion sat in awe, hardly knowing whether it was
+impious or angelic. In a blind exordium the old zealot commanded those
+who would save their souls to walk forward and kneel publicly at the
+altar, and make their struggle there for salvation.
+
+The first whom Marion saw to walk up the dimly lighted aisle and kneel
+was Perry Whaley. All in the church saw and knew him, and a
+thunderous singing broke out, in which religious and mere
+denominational zeal all threw their enthusiasm.
+
+"Judge Whaley's son--Episcopalian--admitted to the bar
+to-day--wonderful!"
+
+Marion heard these whispers on every hand; and as the singing ceased,
+and the congregation knelt to pray, Marion's mother saw her turning
+very pale, and silently and unobserved led her out of the
+meeting-house.
+
+It was one o'clock in the morning when Judge Whaley heard Perry enter
+the door. He was preceded by the beams of a lamp, as his step came
+almost trippingly up the stairs. The Judge looked up and saw the face
+of his demon, streaked with recent tears and shaded with dishevelled
+hair, but on it a look like eternal sunshine.
+
+"Glory! glory! glory!" exclaimed the young man hoarsely. He rushed
+upon his aged friend, and kissed him in an ecstacy almost violent.
+
+"My boy! Perry! What is it? You are not out of your mind?"
+
+"No! no! I have found my father, our father!"
+
+"Who is it?" asked the Judge, with a rising superstition, as if this
+were not his orphan, but its preternatural copy; "you have found your
+father? What father?"
+
+"God!" exclaimed young Perry, his countenance like flame. "My father
+is God and He is love!"
+
+The town of Chester and the whole country had now a serious of rapid
+sensations. Judge Whaley and his son were turned lunatics, and behaved
+like a pair of boys. Marion Voss had broken her engagement with Perry
+Whaley because he insisted that he was not the Judge's son. Young
+Perry was exhorting in the Methodist church, and studying and starving
+himself to be a preacher. The Methodists were wild with social and
+denominational triumph: the Episcopalians were outraged, and meditated
+sending Perry to the lunatic asylum. Finally, to the great joy of
+nervous people, the last sensation came--Perry Whaley had left
+Chester to be a preacher.
+
+Judge Whaley now grew old rapidly, and meek and careless of his
+attire. In an old pair of slippers, glove-less and abstracted, he
+crossed the court-house green, no longer the first gentleman in the
+county in courteous accost and lofty tone. He read his Bible in the
+seclusion of his own house, and fishermen on the river coming in after
+midnight saw the lamp-light stream through the chinks of his shutters,
+and said: "He has never been the same since Perry went away." But he
+read in the religious papers of the genius and power of the absent
+one, roving like a young hermit loosened, and with a tongue of flame
+over the length and breadth of the country, producing extraordinary
+excitement and adding thousands to his humble denomination.
+
+On Christmas Day the Judge was sitting in his great room reading the
+same mystic book, and listening, with a wistfulness that had never
+left him, to every infrequent footfall in the street. There came a
+knock at the door. He opened it, and out of the darkness into which he
+could not see came a voice altered in pitch, but with remembered
+accents in it, saying:
+
+"Father, mother has come home!"
+
+Stepping back before that extraordinary salutation, Judge Whaley saw a
+man come forward leading a woman by the hand. The Judge receded until
+he could go no farther, and sank into his chair. The woman knelt at
+his feet; older, and grown gray and in the robes of humility, yet in
+countenance as she had been, only purified, as it seemed, by suffering
+and repentance, he saw his wife of more than twenty years before.
+
+Looking up into the face of the son he had watched so long for, the
+old man saw a still more wonderful transformation. The elegant young
+gentleman of a few months before was a living spectre, his bright eyes
+standing out large and consumptive upon a transparent skin, and
+glittering with fanaticism or excitement.
+
+"Perry Whaley," said the woman firmly, but with sweetness, "it is
+twenty-two years since I left this house with hate of me in your heart
+and a degraded name; I was in thought and act a pure woman, though the
+evidence against me was mountain-high. My sin was that of many
+women--flirtation. Nothing more, before my God! I trifled with one of
+your students, a reckless and hot-blooded man, and inspired him with a
+tyrannous passion. He swore if I would not fly with him to destroy me.
+One day, the most dreadful of my life, he heard your foot upon the
+stairs ascending to my chamber, and threw himself into it before you
+and avowed himself your injurer. Then rose in confirmation of him
+every girlish folly; I saw myself in your mild eyes condemned, in this
+community long suspected, and by my own family discarded for your
+sake. Where could I go but to the author of my sorrows? He became my
+husband and I am a widow."
+
+Judge Whaley stretched out his hand in the direction of his eyes, not
+upon the old wife at his feet, but toward his son, who had settled
+into a chair and closed his eyes as if in tired rapture.
+
+"Hear me but a moment more," said the kneeling woman. "I was the slave
+of an ever-jealous maniac; but my heart was still at this fireside
+with your bowed spirit, and this our son. My husband told me that the
+way to recover the child was to claim it as his. His motive, I fear,
+was different--to place me on record as confessedly false and prevent
+our reunion forever. But I was not wise enough to see it. I only
+thought you would send my son to me. I waited in my lonely home in
+Charleston years on years. He came at last, but not too late; my
+frivolous soul, grown selfish with vanity and disappointment, bent
+itself before God through the prayers of our son. I am forgiven, Perry
+Whaley. _I have felt it!_"
+
+The old man did not answer, but strained his eyes upon his son. "See
+there!" he slowly spoke, "Perry is dying. Famished all these years for
+human love, this excess of joy has snapped the silver cord. Wife,
+Mary, we have martyred him."
+
+It was the typhoid fever which had developed from Perry's wasting
+vitality. He sank into delirium as they looked at him, and was carried
+tenderly to his bed. Marion Voss came to nurse him with his mother.
+She, too, after Perry's departure, had grown serious and followed his
+example, and was a Methodist. The young zealot sank lower and lower,
+despite science or prayers. Both churches prayed for him. Negroes and
+whites united their hopes and kind offices. One morning he was of
+dying pulse, and the bell in the Episcopal church began to toll. At
+the bedside all the little family had instinctively knelt, and Perry's
+mother was praying with streaming eyes, committing the worn-out nature
+to Heavenly Love, when suddenly Judge Whaley, who had kept his hand on
+Perry's pulse, exclaimed:
+
+"It beats! He lives again. The stimulant, Marion!"
+
+Father and son had rescued each other's lives. One day as Perry had
+recovered strength, Judge Whaley said:
+
+"My son, are you a minister, qualified to perform marriages?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When you are ready and strong, will you marry your mother and me
+again?"
+
+"Very soon," said Perry; "but not too soon. Here is Marion waiting for
+me, as she has waited, like Rachel for Jacob, these many years. I
+shall preach no more, dear father, except as a layman. I see by your
+eyes that the demon is no longer in our home, and the remainder of my
+life will be spent in returning to you the joy my presence for years
+dispelled."
+
+"O Perry, my patient son," exclaimed the father, "they who entertain
+angels unawares have nothing to look to with regret--except
+unkindness."
+
+
+
+
+A CONVENT LEGEND.
+
+
+    The General Moreau, that pure republican,
+      Who won at Hohenlinden so much glory,
+    And by Bonaparte hated, crossed the sea to be free.
+      And brought to the Delaware his story.
+    World-renowned as he was, unto Washington he strayed.
+      Where Pichegru, his friend, had contended,
+    And to Georgetown he rode, in search of a church,
+      To confess what of good he offended.
+
+    The Jesuits' nest beckoned up to the height
+      Where pious John Carroll had laid it,
+    And the General knelt at the cell but to tell
+      His offence; yet or ever he said it,
+    A voice in the speech of his Bretagny home,
+      From within, where the monk was to listen,
+    Exclaimed like a soldier: "Ah me! _mon ami_,
+      Take my place and a sinful one christen!
+
+    "For mine was the band that brought exile to you;
+      Cadoudal, the Chouan, my master,
+    Broke my sword and my heart, and I lost when I crost,
+      Both honor and love to be pastor.
+    A knight of the king and my lady at court,
+      At the call of Vendée the despised,
+    Into Paris I stole with a few, one or two,
+      As assassins, to murder disguised.
+
+    "On the third of Nivose, in the narrowest street,
+      And never a traitor one to breathe it,
+    We prepared to blow up Bonaparte with a cart,
+      And a barrel of powder beneath it.
+    He came like a flash, dashing by, but behind,
+      Poor folks and his escort in feather,
+    And the child that we put, _sans_ remorse, by the horse,
+      Were torn all to pieces together."
+
+    "To the guillotine both of my comrades were sent,
+      But the Church, saving me for the tonsure,
+    Hid me off in the wilds, and my dame, to her shame,
+      To be _Père_ sold me out from a _Monsieur_;
+    And now she is clad in the silk of the court,
+      And I in the wool of confessor,--
+    Hate me not, ere hence you go, Jean Victor Moreau!
+      And with France be my fame's intercessor!"
+
+    "Limoelan! priest! is it you that I hear
+      In this convent by Washington's river?
+    Ah! France, how thy children are hurled round the world,
+      Like the arrows from destiny's quiver!
+    Take shrift for thy crime! Be thou pardoned with peace,
+      Poor exile of Breton, my brother!"
+    And the cannon of Dresden Moreau gave release,
+      The bells of the convent the other.
+
+
+
+
+CRUTCH, THE PAGE.
+
+
+I.--CHIPS.
+
+The Honorable Jeems Bee, of Texas, sitting in his committee-room half
+an hour before the convening of Congress, waiting for his negro
+familiar to compound a julep, was suddenly confronted by a small boy
+on crutches.
+
+"A letter!" exclaimed Mr. Bee, "with the frank of Reybold on it--that
+Yankeest of Pennsylvania Whigs! Yer's familiarity! Wants me to appoint
+one U--U--U, what?"
+
+"Uriel Basil," said the small boy on crutches, with a clear, bold, but
+rather sensitive voice.
+
+"Uriel Basil, a page in the House of Representatives, bein' an infirm,
+deservin' boy, willin' to work to support his mother. Infirm boy wants
+to be a page, on the recommendation of a Whig, to a Dimmycratic
+committee. I say, gen'lemen, what do you think of that, heigh?"
+
+This last addressed to some other members of the committee, who had
+meantime entered.
+
+"Infum boy will make a spry page," said the Hon. Box Izard, of
+Arkansaw.
+
+"Harder to get infum page than the Speaker's eye," said the orator,
+Pontotoc Bibb, of Georgia.
+
+"Harder to get both than a 'pintment in these crowded times on a
+opposition recommendation when all ole Virginny is yaw to be tuk care
+of," said Hon. Fitzchew Smy, of the Old Dominion.
+
+The small boy standing up on crutches, with large hazel eyes swimming
+and wistful, so far from being cut down by these criticisms, stood
+straighter, and only his narrow little chest showed feeling, as it
+breathed quickly under his brown jacket.
+
+"I can run as fast as anybody," he said impetuously. "My sister says
+so. You try me!"
+
+"Who's yo' sister, bub?"
+
+"Joyce."
+
+"Who's Joyce?"
+
+"Joyce Basil--_Miss_ Joyce Basil to you, gentlemen. My mother keeps
+boarders. Mr. Reybold boards there. I think it's hard when a little
+boy from the South wants to work, that the only body to help him find
+it is a Northern man. Don't you?"
+
+"Good hit!" cried Jeroboam Coffee, Esq., of Alabama. "That boy would
+run, if he could!"
+
+"Gentlemen," said another member of the committee, the youthful
+abstractionist from South Carolina, who was reputed to be a great poet
+on the stump, the Hon. Lowndes Cleburn--"gentlemen, that boy puts the
+thing on its igeel merits and brings it home to us. I'll ju my juty in
+this issue. Abe, wha's my julep?"
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Chairman of Committee, Jeems Bee, "it 'pears to
+me that there's a social p'int right here. Reybold, bein' the only
+Whig on the Lake and Bayou Committee, ought to have something if he
+sees fit to ask for it. That's courtesy! We, of all men, gentlemen,
+can't afford to forget it."
+
+"No, by durn!" cried Fitzchew Smy.
+
+"You're right, Bee!" cried Box Izard. "You give it a constitutional
+set."
+
+"Reybold," continued Jeems Bee, thus encouraged, "Reybold is (to speak
+out) no genius! He never will rise to the summits of usefulness. He
+lacks the air, the swing, the _pose_, as the sculptors say; he won't
+treat, but he'll lend a little money, provided he knows where you
+goin' with it. If he ain't open-hearted, he ain't precisely mean!"
+
+"You're right, Bee!" (General expression.)
+
+"Further on, it may be said that the framers of the govment never
+intended _all_ the patronage to go to one side. Mr. Jeffson put _that_
+on the steelyard principle: the long beam here, the big weight of
+being in the minority there. Mr. Jackson only threw it considabul more
+on one side, but even he, gentlemen, didn't take the whole patronage
+from the Outs; he always left 'em enough to keep up the courtesy of
+the thing, and we can't go behind _him_. Not and be true to our
+traditions. Do I put it right?"
+
+"Bee," said the youthful Lowndes Cleburn, extending his hand, "you put
+it with the lucidity and spirituality of Kulhoon himself!"
+
+"Thanks, Cleburn," said Bee; "this is a compliment not likely to be
+forgotten, coming from you. Then it is agreed, as the Chayman of yo'
+Committee, that I accede to the request of Mr. Reybold, of
+Pennsylvania?"
+
+"Aye!" from everybody.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Bee, "as we wair all up late at the club last
+night, I propose we take a second julep, and as Reybold is coming in
+he will jine us."
+
+"I won't give you a farthing!" cried Reybold at the door, speaking to
+some one. "Chips, indeed! What shall I give you money to gamble away
+for? A gambling beggar is worse than an impostor! No, sir!
+Emphatically no!"
+
+"A dollar for four chips for brave old Beau!" said the other voice.
+"I've struck 'em all but you. By the State Arms! I've got rights in
+this distreek! Everybody pays toll to brave old Beau! Come down!"
+
+The Northern Congressman retreated before this pertinacious mendicant
+into his committee-room, and his pesterer followed him closely,
+nothing abashed, even into the privileged cloisters of the committee.
+The Southern members enjoyed the situation.
+
+"Chips, Right Honorable! Chips for old Beau. Nobody this ten-year has
+run as long as you. I've laid for you, and now I've fell on you. Judge
+Bee, the fust business befo' yo' committee this mornin' is a
+assessment for old Beau, who's away down! Rheumatiz, bettin' on the
+black, failure of remittances from Fauqueeah, and other casualties by
+wind an' flood, have put ole Beau away down. He's a institution of his
+country and must be sustained!"
+
+The laughter was general and cordial amongst the Southerners, while
+the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object;
+tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eves,
+but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee
+just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie,
+set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness.
+His skin was that of an old _roué's_, patched up and calked, but the
+features were those of a once handsome man of style and carriage.
+
+He wore what appeared to be a cast-off spring overcoat, out of season
+and color on this blustering winter day, a rich buff waistcoat of an
+embossed pattern, such as few persons would care to assume, save,
+perhaps, a gambler, negro buyer, or fine "buck" barber. The assumption
+of a large and flashy pin stood in his frilled shirt-bosom. He wore
+watch-seals without the accompanying watch, and his pantaloons, though
+faded and threadbare, were once of fine material and cut in a style of
+extravagant elegance, and they covered his long, shrunken, but
+aristocratic limbs, and were strapped beneath his boots to keep them
+shapely. The boots themselves had been once of varnished kid or fine
+calf, but they were cracked and cut, partly by use, partly for
+comfort; for it was plain that their wearer had the gout, by his
+aristocratic hobble upon a gold-mounted cane, which was not the least
+inconsistent garniture of his mendicancy.
+
+"Boys," said Fitzchew Smy, "I s'pose we better come down early.
+There's a shillin', Beau. If I had one more sech constituent as you, I
+should resign or die premachorely!"
+
+"There's a piece o' tobacker," said Jeems Bee languidly, "all I can
+afforde, Beau, this mornin'. I went to a chicken-fight yesterday and
+lost all my change."
+
+"Mine," said Box Izard, "is a regulation pen-knife, contributed by the
+United States, with the regret, Beau, that I can't 'commodate you with
+a pine coffin for you to git into and git away down lower than you
+ever been."
+
+"Yaw's a dollar," said Pontotoc Bibb; "it'll do for me an' Lowndes
+Cleburn, who's a poet and genius, and never has no money. This buys me
+off, Beau, for a month."
+
+The gorgeous old mendicant took them all grimly and leering, and then
+pounced upon the Northern man, assured by their twinkles and winks
+that the rest expected some sport.
+
+"And now, Right Honorable from the banks of the Susquehanna, Colonel
+Reybold--you see, I got your name; I ben a layin' for you!--come down
+handsome for the Uncle and ornament of his capital and country. What's
+yore's?"
+
+"Nothing," said Reybold in a quiet way. "I cannot give a man like you
+any thing, even to get rid of him."
+
+"You're mean," said the stylish beggar, winking to the rest. "You hate
+to put your hand down in yer pocket, mightily. I'd rather be ole Beau,
+and live on suppers at the faro banks, than love a dollar like you!"
+
+"I'll make it a V for Beau," said Pontotoc Bibb, "if he gives him a
+rub on the raw like that another lick. Durn a mean man, Cleburn!"
+
+"Come down, Northerner," pressed the incorrigible loafer again; "it
+don't become a Right Honorable to be so mean with old Beau."
+
+The little boy on crutches, who had been looking at this scene in a
+state of suspense and interest for some time, here cried hotly:
+
+"If you say Mr. Reybold is a mean man, you tell a story, you nasty
+beggar! He often gives things to me and Joyce, my sister. He's just
+got me work, which is the best thing to give; don't you think so,
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Work," said Lowndes Cleburn, "is the best thing to give away, and the
+most onhandy thing to keep. I like play the best--Beau's kind o'
+play."
+
+"Yes," said Jeroboam Coffee; "I think I prefer to make the chips fly
+out of a table more than out of a log."
+
+"I like to work!" cried the little boy, his hazel eyes shining, and
+his poor, narrow body beating with unconscious fervor, half suspended
+on his crutches, as if he were of that good descent and natural spirit
+which could assert itself without bashfulness in the presence of older
+people. "I like to work for my mother. If I was strong, like other
+little boys, I would make money for her, so that she shouldn't keep
+any boarders--except Mr. Reybold. Oh! she has to work a lot; but she's
+proud and won't tell anybody. All the money I get I mean to give her;
+but I wouldn't have it if I had to beg for it like that man!"
+
+"O Beau," said Colonel Jeems Bee, "you've cotched it now! Reybold's
+even with you. Little Crutch has cooked your goose! Crutch is right
+eloquent when his wind will permit."
+
+The fine old loafer looked at the boy, whom he had not previously
+noticed, and it was observed that the last shaft had hurt his pride.
+The boy returned his wounded look with a straight, undaunted, spirited
+glance, out of a child's nature. Mr. Reybold was impressed with
+something in the attitude of the two, which made him forget his own
+interest in the controversy.
+
+Beau answered with a tone of nearly tender pacification:
+
+"Now, my little man; come, don't be hard on the old veteran! He's
+down, old Beau is, sence the time he owned his blooded pacer and dined
+with the _Corps Diplomatique_; Beau's down sence then; but don't call
+the old feller hard names. We take it back, don't we?--we take _them_
+words back?"
+
+"There's a angel somewhere," said Lowndes Cleburn, "even in a
+Washington bummer, which responds to a little chap on crutches with a
+clear voice. Whether the angel takes the side of the bummer or the
+little chap, is a p'int out of our jurisdiction. Abe, give Beau a
+julep. He seems to have been demoralized by little Crutch's last."
+
+"Take them hard words back, Bub," whined the licensed mendicant, with
+either real or affected pain; "it's a p'int of honor I'm a standin'
+on. Do, now, little Major!"
+
+"I shan't!" cried the boy. "Go and work like me. You're big, and you
+called Mr. Reybold mean. Haven't you got a wife or little girl, or
+nobody to work for? You ought to work for yourself, anyhow. Oughtn't
+he, gentlemen?"
+
+Reybold, who had slipped around by the little cripple and was holding
+him in a caressing way from behind, looked over to Beau and was even
+more impressed with that generally undaunted worthy's expression. It
+was that of acute and suffering sensibility, perhaps the effervescence
+of some little remaining pride, or it might have been a twinge of the
+gout. Beau looked at the little boy, suspended there with the weak
+back and the narrow chest, and that scintillant, sincere spirit
+beaming out with courage born in the stock he belonged to. Admiration,
+conciliation, and pain were in the ruined vagrant's eyes. Reybold felt
+a sense of pity. He put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a
+dollar.
+
+"Here, Beau," he said, "I'll make an exception. You seem to have some
+feeling. Don't mind the boy!"
+
+In an instant the coin was flying from his hand through the air. The
+beggar, with a livid face and clinched cane, confronted the
+Congressman like a maniac.
+
+"You bilk!" he cried. "You supper customer! I'll brain you! I had
+rather parted with my shoes at a dolly shop and gone gadding the hoof,
+without a doss to sleep on--a town pauper, done on the vag--than to
+have made been scurvy in the sight of that child and deserve his words
+of shame!"
+
+He threw his head upon the table and burst into tears.
+
+II.--HASH.
+
+Mrs. Tryphonia Basil kept a boarding-house of the usual kind on
+Four-and-a-Half Street. Male clerks--there were no female clerks in
+the Government in 1854--to the number of half a dozen, two old bureau
+officers, an architect's assistant, Reybold, and certain temporary
+visitors made up the table. The landlady was the mistress; the slave
+was Joyce.
+
+Joyce Basil was a fine-looking girl, who did not know it--a fact so
+astounding as to be fitly related only in fiction. She did not know
+it, because she had to work so hard for the boarders and her mother.
+Loving her mother with the whole of her affection, she had suffered
+all the pains and penalties of love from that repository. She was
+to-day upbraided for her want of coquetry and neatness; to-morrow, for
+proposing to desert her mother and elope with a person she had never
+thought of. The mainstay of the establishment, she was not aware of
+her usefulness. Accepting every complaint and outbreak as if she
+deserved it, the poor girl lived at the capital a beautiful scullion,
+an unsalaried domestic, and daily forwarded the food to the table, led
+in the chamberwork, rose from bed unrested and retired with all her
+bones aching. But she was of a natural grace that hard work could not
+make awkward; work only gave her bodily power, brawn, and form. Though
+no more than seventeen years of age, she was a superb woman, her chest
+thrown forward, her back like the torso of a _Venus de Milo_, her head
+placed on the throat of a Minerva, and the nature of a child moulded
+in the form of a matron. Joyce Basil had black hair and eyes--very
+long, excessive hair, that in the mornings she tied up with haste so
+imperfectly, that once Reybold had seen it drop like a cloud around
+her and nearly touch her feet. At that moment, seeing him, she
+blushed. He plead, for once, a Congressman's impudence, and without
+her objection, wound that great crown of woman's glory around her
+head, and, as he did so, the perfection of her form and skin, and the
+overrunning health and height of the Virginia girl, struck him so
+thoroughly that he said:
+
+"Miss Joyce, I don't wonder that Virginia is the mother of
+Presidents."
+
+Between Reybold and Joyce there were already the delicate relations of
+a girl who did not know that she was a woman, and a man who knew she
+was beautiful and worthy. He was a man vigilant over himself, and the
+poverty and menial estate of Joyce Basil were already insuperable
+obstacles to marrying her, but still he was attracted by her
+insensibility that he could ever have regarded her in that light of
+marriage. "Who was her father, the Judge?" he used to reflect. The
+Judge was a favorite topic with Mrs. Basil at the table.
+
+"Mr. Reybold," she would say, "you commercial people of the Nawth
+can't hunt, I believe. Jedge Basil is now on the mountains of Fawquear
+hunting the plova. His grandfather's estate is full of plova."
+
+If, by chance, Reybold saw a look of care on Mrs. Basil's face, he
+inquired for the Judge, her husband, and found he was still shooting
+on the Occequan.
+
+"Does he never come to Washington, Mrs. Basil?" asked Reybold one day,
+when his mind was very full of Joyce, the daughter.
+
+"Not while Congress is in session," said Mrs. Basil. "It's a little
+too much of the _oi polloi_ for the Judge. His family, you may not
+know, Mr. Reybold, air of the Basils of King George. They married into
+the Tayloze of Mount Snaffle. The Tayloze of Mount Snaffle have Ingin
+blood in their veins--the blood of Poky-huntus. They dropped the name
+of Taylor, which had got to be common through a want of Ingin blood,
+and spelled it with a E. It used to be Taylor, but now it's Tayloze."
+
+On another occasion, at sight of Joyce Basil cooking over the fire,
+against whose flame her moulded arms took momentary roses upon their
+ivory, Reybold said to himself: "Surely there is something above the
+common in the race of this girl." And he asked the question of Mrs.
+Basil:
+
+"Madame, how was the Judge, your husband, at the last advices?"
+
+"Hunting the snipe, Mr. Reybold. I suppose you do not have the snipe
+in the North. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its
+bill is only shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire,
+to perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Jedge and
+myself were young, before his land troubles overtook us, we went to
+the springs with our own silver and carriages, Mr. Reybold."
+
+Looking up at Mrs. Basil, Reybold noticed a pallor and flush
+alternately, and she evaded his eye.
+
+Once Mrs. Basil borrowed a hundred dollars from Reybold in advance of
+board, and the table suffered in consequence.
+
+"The Judge," she had explained, "is short of taxes on his Fawquear
+lands. It's a desperate moment with him." Yet in two days the Judge
+was shooting blue-winged teal at the mouth of the Accotink, and his
+entire indifference to his family set Reybold to thinking whether the
+Virginia husband and father was any thing more than a forgetful
+savage. The boarders, however, made very merry over the absent
+unknown. If the beefsteak was tough, threats were made to send for
+"the Judge," and let him try a tooth on it; if scant, it was suggested
+that the Judge might have paid a gunning visit to the premises and
+inspected the larder. The daughter of the house kept such an even
+temper, and was so obliging within the limitations of the
+establishment, that many a boarder went to his department without
+complaint, though with an appetite only partly satisfied. The boy,
+Uriel, also was the guardsman of the household, old-faced as if with
+the responsibility of taking care of two women. Indeed, the children
+of the landlady were so well behaved and prepossessing that, compared
+with Mrs. Basil's shabby _hauteur_ and garrulity, the legend of the
+Judge seemed to require no other foundation than offspring of such
+good spirit and intonation.
+
+Mrs. Tryphonia Basil was no respecter of persons. She kept boarders,
+she said, as a matter of society, and to lighten the load of the
+Judge. He had very little idea that she was making a mercantile matter
+of hospitality, but, as she feelingly remarked, "the old families are
+misplaced in such times as these yer, when the departments are filled
+with Dutch, Yankees, Crackers, Pore Whites, and other foreigners." Her
+manner was, at periods, insolent to Mr. Reybold, who seldom protested,
+out of regard to the daughter and the little Page; he was a man of
+quite ordinary appearance, saying little, never making speeches or
+soliciting notice, and he accepted his fare and quarters with little
+or no complaint.
+
+"Crutch," he said one day to the little boy, "did you ever see your
+father?"
+
+"No, I never saw him, Mr. Reybold, but I've had letters from him."
+
+"Don't he ever come to see you when you are sick?"
+
+"No. He wanted to come once when my back was very sick, and I laid in
+bed weeks and weeks, sir, dreaming, oh! such beautiful things. I
+thought mamma and sister and I were all with papa in that old home we
+are going to some day. He carried me up and down in his arms, and I
+felt such rest that I never knew any thing like it, when I woke up,
+and my back began to ache again. I wouldn't let mamma send for him,
+though, because she said he was working for us all to make our
+fortunes, and get doctors for me, and clothes and school for dear
+Joyce. So I sent him my love, and told papa to work, and he and I
+would bring the family out all right."
+
+"What did your papa seem like in that dream, my little boy?
+
+"Oh! sir, his forehead was bright as the sun. Sometimes I see him now
+when I am tired at night after running all day through Congress."
+
+Reybold's eyes were full of tears as he listened to the boy, and,
+turning aside, he saw Joyce Basil weeping also.
+
+"My dear girl," he said to her, looking up significantly, "I fear he
+will see his great Father very soon."
+
+Reybold had few acquaintances, and he encouraged the landlady's
+daughter to go about with him when she could get a leisure hour or
+evening. Sometimes they took a seat at the theatre, more often at the
+old Ascension Church, and once they attended a President's reception.
+Joyce had the bearing of a well-bred lady, and the purity of thought
+of a child. She was noticed as if she had been a new and distinguished
+arrival in Washington.
+
+"Ah! Reybold," said Pontotoc Bibb, "I understand, ole feller, what
+keeps you so quiet now. You've got a wife onbeknown to the Kemittee!
+and a happy man I know you air."
+
+It pleased Reybold to hear this, and deepened his interest in the
+landlady's family. His attention to her daughter stirred Mrs. Basil's
+pride and revolt together.
+
+"My daughter, Colonel Reybold," she said, "is designed for the army.
+The Judge never writes to me but he says: 'Tryphonee, be careful that
+you impress upon my daughter the importance of the military
+profession. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother married into
+the army, and no girl of the Basil stock shall descend to civil life
+while I can keep the Fawquear estates.'"
+
+"Madame," said the Congressman, "will you permit me to make the
+suggestion that your daughter is already a woman and needs a father's
+care, if she is ever to receive it. I beseech you to impress this
+subject upon the Judge. His estates cannot be more precious to his
+heart, if he is a man of honor; nay, what is better than honor, his
+duty requires him to come to the side of these children, though he be
+ever so constrained by business or pleasure to attend to more worldly
+concerns."
+
+"The Judge," exclaimed Mrs. Basil, much miffed, "is a man of
+hereditary ijees, Colonel Reybold. He is now in pursuit of
+the--ahem!--the Kinvas-back on his ancestral waters. If he should hear
+that you suggested a pacific life and the grovelling associations of
+the capital for him, he might call you out, sir!"
+
+Reybold said no more; but one evening when Mrs. Basil was absent,
+called across the Potomac, as happened frequently, at the summons of
+the Judge--and on such occasions she generally requested a temporary
+loan or a slight advance of board--Reybold found Joyce Basil in the
+little parlor of the dwelling. She was alone and in tears, but the
+little boy Uriel slept before the chimney-fire on a rug, and his pale,
+thin face, catching the glow of the burning wood, looked beautified as
+Reybold addressed the young woman.
+
+"Miss Joyce," he said, "our little brother works too hard. Is there
+never to be relief for him? His poor, withered body, slung on those
+crutches for hours and hours, racing up the aisles of the House with
+stronger pages, is wearing him out. His ambition is very interesting
+to see, but his breath is growing shorter and his strength is frailer
+every week. Do you know what it will lead to?"
+
+"O my Lord!" she said, in the negrofied phrase natural to her
+latitude, "I wish it was no sin to wish him dead."
+
+"Tell me, my friend," said Reybold, "can I do nothing to assist you
+both? Let me understand you. Accept my sympathy and confidence. Where
+is Uriel's father? What is this mystery?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"It is for no idle curiosity that I ask," he continued. "I will appeal
+to him for his family, even at the risk of his resentment. Where is
+he?"
+
+"Oh, do not ask!" she exclaimed. "You want me to tell you only the
+truth. He is _there_!"
+
+She pointed to one of the old portraits in the room--a picture fairly
+painted by some provincial artist--and it revealed a handsome face, a
+little voluptuous but aristocratic, the shoulders clad in a martial
+cloak, the neck in ruffles and ruffles, also and a diamond in the
+shirt bosom. Reybold studied it with all his mind.
+
+"Then it is no fiction," he said, "that you have a living father, one
+answering to your mother's description. Where have I seen that face?
+Has some irreparable mistake, some miserable controversy, alienated
+him from his wife? Has he another family?"
+
+She answered with spirit:
+
+"No, sir. He is my father and my brother's only. But I can tell you no
+more."
+
+"Joyce," he said, taking her hand, "this is not enough. I will not
+press you to betray any secret you may possess. Keep it. But of
+yourself I must know something more. You are almost a woman. You are
+beautiful."
+
+At this he tightened his grasp, and it brought him closer to her side.
+She made a little struggle to draw away, but it pleased him to see
+that when the first modest opposition had been tried she sat quite
+happily, though trembling, with his arm around her.
+
+"Joyce," he continued, "you have a double duty: one to your mother and
+this poor invalid, whose journey toward that Father's house not made
+with hands is swiftly hastening; another duty toward your nobler
+self--the future that is in you and your woman's heart. I tell you
+again that you are beautiful, and the slavery to which you are
+condemning yourself forever is an offence against the creator of such
+perfection. Do you know what it is to love?"
+
+"I know what it is to feel kindness," she answered after a time of
+silence. "I ought to know no more. You goodness is very dear to me. We
+never sleep, brother and I, but we say your name together, and ask God
+to bless you."
+
+Reybold sought in vain to suppress a confession he had resisted. The
+contact of her form, her large dark eyes now fixed upon him in
+emotion, the birth of the conscious woman in the virgin and her
+affection still in the leashes of a slavish sacrifice, tempted him
+onward to the conquest.
+
+"I am about to retire from Congress," he said. "It is no place for me
+in times so insubstantial. There is darkness and beggary ahead for all
+your Southern race. There is a crisis coming which will be followed by
+desolation. The generation to which your parents belong is doomed! I
+open my arms to you, dear girl, and offer you a home never yet
+gladdened by a wife. Accept it, and leave Washington with me and with
+your brother. I love you wholly."
+
+A happy light shone in her face a moment. She was weary to the bone
+with the day's work, and had not the strength, if she had the will, to
+prevent the Congressman drawing her to his heart. Sobbing there, she
+spoke with bitter agony:
+
+"Heaven bless you, dear Mr. Reybold, with a wife good enough to
+deserve you! Blessings on your generous heart. But I cannot leave
+Washington. I love another here!"
+
+III.--DUST.
+
+The Lake and Bayou Committee reaped the reward of a good action.
+Crutch, the page, as they all called Uriel Basil, affected the
+sensibility of the whole committee to the extent that profanity almost
+ceased there, and vulgarity became a crime in the presence of a child.
+Gentle words and wishes became the rule; a glimmer of reverence and a
+thought of piety were not unknown in that little chamber.
+
+"Dog my skin!" said Jeems Bee, "if I ever made a 'pintment that give
+me sech satisfaction! I feel as if I had sot a nigger free!"
+
+The youthful abstractionist, Lowndes Cleburn, expressed it even
+better. "Crutch," he said, "is like a angel reduced to his bones. Them
+air wings or pinions, that he might have flew off with, being a pair
+of crutches, keeps him here to tarry awhile in our service. But,
+gentlemen, he's not got long to stay. His crutches is growing too
+heavy for that expandin' sperit. Some day we'll look up and miss him
+through our tears."
+
+They gave him many a present; they put a silver watch in his pocket,
+and dressed him in a jacket with gilt buttons. He had a bouquet of
+flowers to take home every day to that marvellous sister of whom he
+spoke so often; and there were times when the whole committee, seeing
+him drop off to sleep as he often did through frail and weary nature,
+sat silently watching lest he might be wakened before his rest was
+over. But no persuasion could take him off the floor of Congress. In
+that solemn old Hall of Representatives, under the semicircle of gray
+columns, he darted with agility from noon to dusk, keeping speed upon
+his crutches with the healthiest of the pages, and racing into the
+document-room; and through the dark and narrow corridors of the old
+Capitol loft, where the House library was lost in twilight. Visitors
+looked with interest and sympathy at the narrow back and body of this
+invalid child, whose eyes were full of bright, beaming spirit. He
+sometimes nodded on the steps by the Speaker's chair; and these spells
+of dreaminess and fatigue increased as his disease advanced upon his
+wasting system. Once he did not awaken at all until adjournment. The
+great Congress and audience passed out, and the little fellow still
+slept, with his head against the Clerk's desk, while all the other
+pages were grouped around him, and they finally bore him off to the
+committee-room in their arms, where, amongst the sympathetic watchers,
+was old Beau. When Uriel opened his eyes the old mendicant was looking
+into them.
+
+"Ah! little Major," he said, "poor Beau has been waiting for you to
+take those bad words back. Old Beau thought it was all bob with his
+little cove."
+
+"Beau," said the boy, "I've had such a dream! I thought my dear
+father, who is working so hard to bring me home to him, had carried me
+out on the river in a boat. We sailed through the greenest marshes,
+among white lilies, where the wild ducks were tame as they can be. All
+the ducks were diving and diving, and they brought up long stalks of
+celery from the water and gave them to us. Father ate all his. But
+mine turned into lilies and grew up so high that I felt myself going
+with them, and the higher I went the more beautiful grew the birds.
+Oh! let me sleep and see if it will be so again."
+
+The outcast raised his gold-headed cane and hobbled up and down the
+room with a laced handkerchief at his eyes.
+
+"Great God!" he exclaimed, "another generation is going out, and here
+I stay without a stake, playing a lone hand forever and forever."
+
+"Beau," said Reybold, "there's hope while one can feel. Don't go away
+until you have a good word from our little passenger."
+
+The outstretched hand of the Northern Congressman was not refused by
+the vagrant, whose eccentric sorrow yet amused the Southern
+Committeemen.
+
+"Ole Beau's jib-boom of a mustache 'll put his eye out," said Pontotoc
+Bibb, "ef he fetches another groan like that."
+
+"Beau's very shaky around the hams an' knees," said Box Izard; "he's
+been a good figger, but even figgers can lie ef they stand up too
+long."
+
+The little boy unclosed his eyes and looked around on all those
+kindly, watching faces.
+
+"Did anybody fire a gun?" he said. "Oh! no. I was only dreaming that I
+was hunting with father, and he shot at the beautiful pheasants that
+were making such a whirring of wings for me. It was music. When can I
+hunt with father, dear gentlemen?"
+
+They all felt the tread of the mighty hunter before the Lord very near
+at hand; the hunter whose name is Death.
+
+"There are little tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They
+twitter and run into the surf and back again, and am I one of them? I
+must be; for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to
+me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen!
+Will the Speaker turn me out if I play with the beach birds just once?
+I'm only a little boy working for my mother."
+
+"Dear Uriel," whispered Reybold, "here's Old Beau, to whom you once
+spoke angrily. Don't you see him?"
+
+The little boy's eyes came back from far-land somewhere, and he saw
+the ruined gamester at his feet.
+
+"Dear Beau," he said, "I can't get off to go home with you. They won't
+excuse me, and I give all my money to mother. But you go to the back
+gate. Ask for Joyce. She'll give you a nice warm meal every day. Go
+with him, Mr. Reybold! If you ask for him it will be all right; for
+Joyce--dear Joyce!--she loves you."
+
+The beach birds played again along the strand; the boy ran into the
+foam with his companions and felt the spray once more. The Mighty
+Hunter shot his bird--a little cripple that twittered the sweetest of
+them all. Nothing moved in the solemn chamber of the committee but the
+voice of an old forsaken man, sobbing bitterly.
+
+IV.--CAKE.
+
+The funeral was over, and Mr. Reybold marvelled much that the Judge
+had not put in an appearance. The whole committee had attended the
+obsequies of Crutch and acted as pall-bearers. Reybold had escorted
+the page's sister to the Congressional cemetery, and had observed even
+Old Beau to come with a wreath of flowers and hobble to the grave and
+deposit them there. But the Judge, remorseless in death as frivolous
+in life, never came near his mourning wife and daughter in their
+severest sorrow. Mrs. Tryphonia Basil, seeing that this singular want
+of behavior on the Judge's part was making some ado, raised her voice
+above the general din of meals.
+
+"Jedge Basil," she exclaimed, "has been on his Tennessee purchase.
+These Christmas times there's no getting through the snow in the
+Cumberland Gap. He's stopped off thaw to shoot the--ahem!--the wild
+torkey--a great passion with the Jedge. His half-uncle, Gineral
+Johnson, of Awkinso, was a torkey-killer of high celebrity. He was a
+Deshay on his Maw's side. I s'pose you haven't the torkey in the Dutch
+country, Mr. Reybold?"
+
+"Madame," said Reybold, in a quieter moment, "have you written to the
+Judge the fact of his son's death?"
+
+"Oh yes--to Fawquear."
+
+"Mrs. Basil," continued the Congressman, "I want you to be explicit
+with me. Where is the Judge, your husband, at this moment?"
+
+"Excuse me, Colonel Reybold, this is a little of a assumption, sir.
+The Jedge might call you out, sir, for intruding upon his incog. He's
+very fine on his incog., you air awair."
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Reybold straightforwardly, "there are reasons why
+I should communicate with your husband. My term in Congress is nearly
+expired. I might arouse your interest, if I chose, by recalling to
+your mind the memorandum of about seven hundred dollars in which you
+are my debtor. That would be a reason for seeing your husband anywhere
+north of the Potomac, but I do not intend to mention it. Is he
+aware--are you?--that Joyce Basil is in love with some one in this
+city?"
+
+Mrs. Basil drew a long breath, raised both hands, and ejaculated:
+"Well, I declaw!"
+
+"I have it from her own lips," continued Reybold. "She told me as a
+secret, but all my suspicions are awakened. If I can prevent it,
+madame, that girl shall not follow the example of hundreds of her
+class in Washington, and descend, through the boarding-house or the
+lodging quarter, to be the wife of some common and unambitious clerk,
+whose penury she must some day sustain by her labor. I love her
+myself, but I will never take her until I know her heart to be free.
+Who is this lover of your daughter?"
+
+An expression of agitation and cunning passed over Mrs. Basil's face.
+
+"Colonel Reybold," she whined, "I pity your blasted hopes. If I was a
+widow, they should be comfoted. Alas! my daughter is in love with one
+of the Fitzchews of Fawqueeah. His parents is cousins of the Jedge,
+and attached to the military."
+
+The Congressman looked disappointed, but not yet satisfied.
+
+"Give me at once the address of your husband," he spoke. "If you do
+not, I shall ask your daughter for it, and she cannot refuse me."
+
+The mistress of the boarding-house was not without alarm, but she
+dispelled it with an outbreak of anger.
+
+"If my daughter disobeys her mother," she cried, "and betrays the
+Jedge's incog., she is no Basil, Colonel Reybold. The Basils repudiate
+her, and she may jine the Dutch and other foreigners at her pleasure."
+
+"That is her only safety," exclaimed Reybold. "I hope to break every
+string that holds her to yonder barren honor and exhausted soil."
+
+He pointed toward Virginia, and hastened away to the Capitol. All the
+way up the squalid and muddy avenue of that day he mused and wondered:
+"Who is Fitzhugh? Is there such a person any more than a Judge Basil?
+And yet there _is_ a Judge, for Joyce has told me so. _She_, at least,
+cannot lie to me. At last," he thought, "the dream of my happiness is
+over. Invincible in her prejudice as all these Virginians, Joyce Basil
+has made her bed amongst the starveling First Families, and there she
+means to live and die. Five years hence she will have her brood around
+her. In ten years she will keep a boarding-house and borrow money. As
+her daughters grow up to the stature and grace of their mother, they
+will be proud and poor again and breed in and out, until the race will
+perish from the earth."
+
+Slow to love, deeply interested, baffled but unsatisfied, Reybold made
+up his mind to cut his perplexity short by leaving the city for the
+county of Fauquier. As he passed down the avenue late that afternoon,
+he turned into E Street, near the theatre, to engage a carriage for
+his expedition. It was a street of livery-stables, gambling dens,
+drinking houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its
+sidewalks. The more pretentious _canaille_ of the city harbored there
+to prey on the hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance
+acquaintance of gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this
+street, just as the evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset,
+he saw something pass which made his heart start to his throat and
+fastened him to the spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping
+detection or pursuit, the figure of Joyce Basil flitted over the
+pavement and disappeared in a door about at the middle of this
+Alsatian quarter of the capital.
+
+"What house is that?" he asked of a constable passing by, pointing to
+the door she entered.
+
+"Gambling den," answered the officer. "It used to be old Phil
+Pendleton's."
+
+Reybold knew the reputation of the house: a resort for the scions of
+the old tide-water families, where hospitality thinly veiled the
+paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of
+Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the
+dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was
+cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some
+wretch whose villainy she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at
+the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro
+steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall;
+and, seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously as he
+let down a chain and opened the door.
+
+"Short cards in the front saloon," he said; "supper and faro back.
+Chambers on the third floor. Walk up."
+
+Reybold only tarried a moment at the gaming tables, where the silent,
+monotonous deal from the tin box, the lazy stroke of the markers, and
+the transfer of ivory "chips" from card to card of the sweat-cloth,
+impressed him as the dullest form of vice he had ever found. Treading
+softly up the stairs, he was attracted by the light of a door partly
+ajar, and a deep groan, as of a dying person. He peeped through the
+crack of the door, and beheld Joyce Basil leaning over an old man,
+whose brow she moistened with her handkerchief. "Dear father," he
+heard her say, and it brought consolation to more than the sick man.
+Reybold threw open the door and entered into the presence of Mrs.
+Basil and her daughter. The former arose with surprise and shame, and
+cried:
+
+"Jedge Basil, the Dutch have hunted you down. He's here--the Yankee
+creditor."
+
+Joyce Basil held up her hand in imploration, but Reybold did not heed
+the woman's remark. He felt a weight rising from his heart, and the
+blindness of many months lifted from his eyes. The dying mortal upon
+the bed, over whose face the blue billow of death was rolling
+rapidly, and whose eyes sought in his daughter's the promise of mercy
+from on high, was the mysterious parent who had never arrived--the
+Judge from Fauquier. In that old man's long waxed mustache, crimped
+hair, and threadbare finery the Congressman recognized Old Beau, the
+outcast gamester and mendicant, and the father of Joyce and Uriel
+Basil.
+
+"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of
+promise long departed, "Old Beau's passing in his checks. The chant
+coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the
+papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not
+one knows Old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in
+the last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's
+good name. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to
+keep the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my
+disguises. Thank God! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For
+his wife he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."
+
+"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"
+
+Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:
+
+"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome
+there--without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop
+of blood is in the girl. She loves you."
+
+A rattle arose in the sinner's throat. He made an effort, and
+transferred his daughter's hand to the Congressman's. Not taking it
+away, she knelt with her future husband at the bedside and raised her
+voice:
+
+"Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember him!"
+
+
+
+
+HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.
+
+(_See note at end of poem._)
+
+
+I.--THE MANOR.
+
+    "My corn is gathered in the bins,"
+      The Lord Augustin Herman said;
+    "My wild swine romp in chincapins;
+    Dried are the deer and beaver skins;
+      And on Elk Mountain's languid head
+      The autumn woods are red.
+
+    "So in my heart an autumn falls;
+      I stand a lonely tree unleaved;
+    And to my hermit manor walls
+    The wild-goose from the water calls,
+      As if to mock a man bereaved:
+      My years are nearly sheaved.
+
+    "Go saddle me the Flemish steed
+      My brother Verlett gave to me,
+    What time his sister did concede
+    Her dainty hand to hear me plead!
+      Poor soul! she's mouldering by the sea
+      And I with misery."
+
+    The slave man brought the wild-maned horse
+      All wilder that with stags he grazed--
+    Bred from the seed the knightly Norse
+    Rode from Araby. Like remorse
+      The eyes in his gray forehead blazed,
+      As on his lord he gazed.
+
+    "Now guard ye well my lands and stock;
+      Slack not the seine, ply well the axe;
+    The eagle circles o'er the flock;
+    The Indian at my gates may knock:
+      The firelock prime for his attacks;
+      I ride the sunrise tracks."
+
+    Swift as a wizard on a broom,
+      The strong gray horse and rider ran,
+    Adown the forest stripped of bloom.
+    By stump and bough that scarce gave room
+      To pass the woodman's caravan,
+      Rode the Bohemian.
+
+    "Lord Herman, stay," the brewer cried,
+      "And Huddy's friendly flagon clink!"
+    And martial Hinoyossa spied
+    The horseman, moving with the tide
+      That ebbed from Appoquinimink,
+      Nor stopped to rest or drink.
+
+    "Where rides old Herman?" Beekman mused;
+      "That railing wife has turned his head."
+    "He keeps the saddle as he used,
+    In younger days, when he enthused
+      Three provinces," Pierre Alricks said,
+      "And mapped their landscapes spread."
+
+    Broad rose Zuydt River as the sail
+      Above his periauger flew;
+    Loud neighed the steed to snuff the gale;
+    But Herman saw not, swift and pale,
+      Two carrier pigeons, winging true
+      North-east, across the blue.
+
+    They quit the cage of Stuyvesant's spy,
+      And lurking Willems' message bore:
+    ("This morn rode Herman rapid by,
+    Tow'rd Amsterdam, to satisfy
+      Yet wider titles than he tore
+      From shallow Baltimore!")
+
+II.--REPLEVIN.
+
+    The second sunset at his back
+      From Navesink Highlands threw the shade
+    Of horse and Herman, long and black,
+    Across the golden ripples' track,
+      Where with the Kills the ocean played
+      A measured serenade;
+
+    There where to sea a river ran,
+      Between tall hills of brown and sand,
+    A mountain island rose to span
+    The outlet of the Raritan,
+      And made a world on either hand,
+      Soft as a poet planned:
+
+    Fair marshes pierced with brimming creeks,
+      Where wild-fowl dived to oyster caves;
+    And shores that swung to wooded peaks,
+    Where many a falling water seeks
+      The cascade's plunge to reach the waves,
+      And greenest farmland laves:
+
+    Deep tide to every roadstead slips,
+      And many capes confuse the shore,
+    Yet none do with their forms eclipse
+    Yon ocean, made for royal ships,
+      Whose swells on silver beaches roar
+      And rock forevermore.
+
+    Old Herman gazed through lengthening shades
+      Far up the inland, where the spires,
+    Defined on rocky palisades,
+    Flung sunset from their burnished blades,
+      And with their bells in evening choirs
+      Breathed homesick men's desires:
+
+    "New Amsterdam! 'tis thine or mine--
+      The foreground of this stately plan!
+    To me the Indian did assign
+    Totem on totem, line on line--
+      Both Staten and the groves that ran
+      Far up the Raritan.
+
+    "By spiteful Stuyvesant long restrained,
+      Now, while the English break his power,
+    Be Achter Kill again regained
+    And Herman's title entertained,
+      Here float my banner from my tower,
+      Here is my right, my hour!"
+
+III.--THE SQUATTERS.
+
+    He scarce had finished, when a rush,
+      Like partridge through the stubble, broke,
+    And armed men trod down the brush;
+    A harsh voice, trembling in the hush,
+      As it must either stab or choke,
+      Imperiously spoke:
+
+    "Ye conquered men of Achter Kill,
+      Whose farms by loyal toil ye got,
+    True Dutchmen! give this traitor will--
+    And he is yours to loose or kill--
+      All that ye have he will allot
+      Anew--field, cradle, cot.
+
+    "Years past, beyond our Southern bounds,
+      On States' commission sent by me,
+    He mapped the English papists' grounds,
+    And like a Judas, o'er our wounds,
+      Our raiment parted openly:
+      This is the man ye see!
+
+    "Yet followed by my sleepless age,
+      Fast as he rode my pigeons sped--
+    Straight as the ravens from their cage,
+    Straight as the arrows of my rage,
+      Straight as the meteor overhead
+      That strikes a traitor dead."
+
+    They bound Lord Herman fast as hate,
+      And bore him o'er to Staten Isle;
+    Behind him closed the postern gate,
+    And round him pitiless as fate,
+      Closed moat and palisade and pile:
+      "Thou diest at morn," they smile.
+
+IV.--STUYVESANT.
+
+    Morn broke on lofty Staten's height,
+      O'er low Amboy and Arthur Kill;
+    And ocean dallying with the light,
+    Between the beaches leprous white,
+      And silent hook and headland hill,
+      And Stuyvesant had his will;
+
+    One-legged he stood, his sharp mustache
+      Stiff as the sword he slashed in ire;
+    His bald crown, like a calabash,
+    Fringed round with ringlets white as ash,
+      And features scorched with inner fire;
+      Age wore him like a briar.
+
+    "Bring the Bohemian forth!" he cried;
+      "Old man, thy moments are but few."
+    "So much the better, Dutchman! bide
+    Thy little time of aged pride,
+      Thy poor revenges to pursue--
+      Thy date is hastening, too.
+
+    "No crime is mine, save that I sought
+      A refuge past thy jealous ken,
+    And peaceful arts to strangers taught,
+    And mine own title hither brought,
+      Before the laws of Englishmen,
+      A banished denizen.
+
+    "Yet that thy churlish soul may plead
+      A favor to a dying foe,
+    I'll ask thee, Stuyvesant, ere I bleed,
+    Let me once more on my gray steed
+      Thrice round the timbered _enceinte_ go:
+      Fire, when I tell thee so!"
+
+    "What freak is this?" quoth Stuyvesant grim.
+      Quoth Herman, "'Twas a charger brave--
+    Like my first bride in eye and limb--
+    A wedding-gift; indulge the whim!
+      And from his back to plunge, I crave,
+      A bridegroom, in her grave."
+
+    Then muttered the uneasy guard:
+      "We rob an old man of his lands,
+    And slay him. Sure his fate is hard,
+    His dying plea to disregard!"
+      "Ride then to death!" Stuyvesant commands;
+      "Unbind his horse, his hands!"
+
+V.--THE LEAP.
+
+    The old steed darted in the fort,
+      And neighed and shook his long gray mane;
+    Then, seeing soldiery, his port
+    Grew savage. With a charger's snort,
+      Upright he reared, as young again
+      And scenting a campaign.
+
+    Hard on his nostrils Herman laid
+      An iron hand and drew him down,
+    Then, mounting in the esplanade,
+    The rude Dutch rustics stared afraid:
+      "By Santa Claus! he needs no crown,
+      To look more proud renown!"
+
+    Lame Stuyvesant, also, envious saw
+      How straight he sat in courteous power,
+    Like boldness sanctified by law,
+    And age gave magisterial awe;
+      Though in his last and bitter hour,
+      Of knightliness the flower.
+
+    His gray hairs o'er his cassock blew,
+      And in his peak'd hat waved a plume;
+    A horn swung loose and shining through
+    High boots of buckskin, as he drew
+      The rein, a jewel burst to bloom:
+      The signet ring of doom.
+
+    'Thrice round the fort! Then as I raise
+      This hand, aim all and murder well!'
+    His head bends low; the steed's eyes blaze,
+    But not less bright do Herman's gaze,
+      As circling round the citadel,
+      He peers for hope in hell.
+
+    Fast were the gates; no crevice showed.
+      The ramparts, spiked with palisades,
+    Grew higher as once round he rode;
+    The arquebusiers prime the load,
+      And drop to aim from ambuscades;
+      No latch, no loophole aids.
+
+    But one small hut its chimney thrust
+      Between the timbers, close as they;
+    Twice round and with a desperate trust
+    Lord Herman muttered: "die I must:
+      _There_, CHARGE!" and spurred through beam and clay--
+      "By heaven! he is away!"
+
+VI.--THE KILLS.
+
+    In clouds of dust the muskets fire,
+      And volleying oaths old Stuyvesant from:
+    "Turn out! In yonder Kills he'll mire,
+    Or drown, unless the fiends conspire.
+      Mount! Follow! Still he must succumb--
+      That tide was never swum."
+
+    Through hut and chimney, down the ditch
+      And up the bank, plunge horse and man;
+    And down the Kills of bramble pitch,
+    Oft-stumbling, those old gray knees which,
+      Hunting the raccoon, led the van;
+      Now, limp yet game he ran.
+
+    But cool and supple, Herman sat,
+      His mind at work, his frame the horse's,
+    And knew with each pulsation, that
+    Past foe and fen, past crag, and flat,
+      And marsh, the steed he nearer forces
+      To the broad sea's recourses.
+
+    "Old friend," he thought, "thou art too weak
+      To try the Kills and drown, or falter,
+    The while from shore their marksmen seek
+    My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake
+      I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter
+      Be mine, I must not palter--
+
+    "Thou diest, though my marriage-gift:
+      I still can swim. Poor Joost, adieu!"
+    Ere ceased the heartfelt sigh he lift,
+    The prospect widened: all adrift,
+      The salty sluice burst into view,
+      Where grappling tides fought through,
+
+    And sucked to doom the venturous bear,
+      And from his ferry swept the rower--
+    How wide, how terrible, how fair!
+    Yet how inspiriting the air--
+      How tempts the long salt grass the mower!
+      How treacherous the shore!
+
+    Far up the right spread Newark Bay,
+      To lone Secaucus wooded rock;
+    Nor could the Kill von Kull convey
+    Passaic's mountain flood away:
+      In Arthur Kill the surges choke,
+      The wild tides interlock.
+
+    O'er Arthur Kill the Holland farms
+      Their gambril roofs, red painted, show;
+    Beyond the newer Yankee swarms--
+    His cider-presses spread their arms.
+      Before, the squatter; back, the foe;
+      And the dark waters flow.
+
+    As that salt air the stallion felt,
+      He whimpers gayly, as if still is
+    Upon his sight his native Scheldt,
+    Or Skagger Rack, or Little Belt,--
+      Their waving grass and silver lilies,
+      Where browsed the amorous fillies.
+
+    And o'er the tide some lady nags
+      Blew back his challenge. Scarce could Herman
+    Hold in his seat. "By John of Prague's
+    True faith!" he thought, "thy spirit lags
+      Not, Joost! Thy course thyself determine!"
+      And plunges like a merman.
+
+    Leander's spirit in the steed
+      Inspired his stroke, not Herman's fear;
+    And fast the island shores recede,
+    Fast rise the rider's spirits freed,
+      The golden mainland draws more near--
+      "O gallant horse! 'tis here!"
+
+VII.--ELUSION.
+
+    Across the Kills the muskets crack--
+      "Ha! ha!" Lord Herman waves his beaver:
+    "Die of thy spleen ere I come back,
+    Old Stuyvesant!" With a noise of wrack
+      The fort blew up of his aggriever!--
+      But not without retriever.
+
+    For from the smoke two pigeons fly,
+      One south, one westward, separating,
+    And straight as arrows crossed the sky,
+    With silent orders ("_He must die_
+      _Who comes hereafter. Lie in waiting!_")
+      Their snowy pinions freighting.
+
+    They warn the men of Minisink;
+      They warn the Dutchmen of Zuydt River.
+    Now speed to Jersey's farther brink,
+    Old horse, old master, ere ye shrink!--
+      Or ambushed fall ere moonrise quiver,
+      On paths where ye shall shiver.
+
+    On went the twain till past the ford
+      That red-walled Raritan led over,
+    And lonely woodland shades explored.
+    Unarmed with firelock or with sword,
+      Free-hearted rode the forest rover,
+      Of all wild kind the drover:
+
+    Fled deer and bear before his coming,
+      The wild-cat glared, the viper hissed;
+    And died the long day's insect-drumming.
+    Where things of night began their humming,
+      And witchly phantoms went to tryst,
+      Was Herman exorcist.
+
+    "No land so tangled but my eye
+      Can map its confines and its courses;
+    Yet on life's map who can espy
+    Where hides his foe--where he shall die?"
+      So Herman said, and his resources
+      Resigned unto his horse's.
+
+    All night the steed instinctive travelled--
+      His weary rider wept for him--
+    Through unseen gulfs the whirlwind ravelled,
+    Up moonlit beds of streamlets gravelled,
+      Till halting every bleeding limb,
+      He stands by something dim,
+
+    And will not stir till morning breaks.
+      "What is't I see, low clustering there,
+    Beyond those broadening bays and lakes,
+    That yonder point familiar makes?--
+      Is it New Amstel, lowly fair,
+      And this the Delaware?"
+
+VIII.--THE ECHO.
+
+    Lord Herman hugged his horse with pride;
+      He raised his horn and blew so loudly,
+    That more than echoes back replied:
+    Horns answered louder; horsemen cried,
+      And muskets banged, as if avowedly
+      On Stuyvesant's errand proudly!
+
+    "Die, traitor; fleér! though thou 'scape
+      Our ambush on thy devil's racer,
+    Caught here upon this marshy cape,
+    Thy bones the muskrat's brood shall scrape,
+      The sturgeon suck--Death thy embracer!"
+      So shouts each sanguine chaser.
+
+    To die in sight of Amstel's walls,
+      And gallant Joost to die beside him?--
+    O foolish blast, such fate that calls!
+    O river that the heart appalls!
+      Dear Joost may live. And _they_ bestride him?
+      "By hell! none else shall ride him!
+
+    "My steed, thy limbs like mine are sore!
+      Few years are left us ere the billows
+    Roll over both. Come but once more,
+    And to the bottom or the shore,
+      Bear me and thee to happy pillows,
+      Or 'neath the water willows!"
+
+    He strokes old Joost. He bends him low.
+      He winds his horn and laughs derision.
+    One spring!--they've cleared the bog and sloe,
+    And down the ebb tide buoyant go--
+      That stately tide. So like a vision
+      Of home, to Norse and Frisian,
+
+    Where full a league spread Maas and Rhine,
+      And in the marsh the rice-birds twitter;
+    The long cranes pasture and the kine
+    Loom lofty in the misty shine
+      Of dawn and reedy islands glitter:
+      Yet death all where is bitter.
+
+    Ere out of range a volley peals,
+      But greed too great made aye a blunder.
+    His horse Lord Herman's self conceals,
+    Yet once his horse and he go under,
+      And rise again. No wound he feels.
+      They hold their fire in wonder!
+
+    Short of the mark the bullets splash:
+      "Now drown thee, wizard! at thy pleasure,"
+    The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash.
+    He answers not; for o'er the plash
+      Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure
+      Of breath's fast wasting treasure.
+
+IX.--PEGASUS.
+
+    The sighs when dying comrades fall,
+      Struck by the foe, are only sad;
+    They leaped the ditch and climbed the wall,
+    And shared the purpose of us all;
+      The fame they have; the joy they had:
+      "Rest in thy tracks, brave lad!"
+
+    But thou, poor beast! unknown to fame,
+      Whose heart is reached while ours is bounding,
+    Amidst the victory's acclaim--
+    By thee we kneel with more of shame,
+      That bore us through the fight resounding,
+      And dumbly took our wounding!
+
+    Lord Herman saw the blood drops seethe,
+      The nag's neck droop, the nostril bubble,
+    And loosed the bridle from his teeth;
+    Yet swam the old legs underneath,
+      Invincibly. The gap they double;
+      But further swim in trouble.
+
+    And lovely Nature stretched her aid,
+      Her sympathetic tow and eddy;
+    The oars of air with azure blade,
+    And silent gravities persuade
+      And waft them onward, slow and steady--
+      On duteous deeds aye ready.
+
+    High leaped the perch. The hawk screamed joy.
+      Under Joost's belly musically
+    The ripples broke. Bright clouds convoy
+    The brute that man would but destroy,
+      And all instinctive agents rally
+      Strong and medicinally.
+
+    In vain! The gurgling waters suck
+      That old life under. Herman swimming
+    Seized but the horse tail. Like a buck
+    Breasting a lake in wild woods' pluck,
+      Joost rose, the glaze his bright eyes dimming,
+      And blood his sockets brimming.
+
+    Then voices speak and women cry.
+      The treading feet find soil to stand.
+    Above them the green ramparts lie,
+    And twixt their shadows and the sky,
+      The wondering burghers crowd the strand,
+      And Herman help to land:
+
+    "Now to Newcastle's English walls,
+      Hail, Herman! and thy matchless stud!"
+    Joost staggers up the bank and falls,
+    And dying to his master crawls.
+      Yields up his long solicitude,
+      And spills his veins of blood.
+
+    In Herman's arms his neck is prest,
+      With martial pride his dark eye glazes;
+    He feels the hand he loves the best
+    Stroke fondly, and a chill of rest,
+      As if he rolled in pasture daisies
+      And heard in winds his praises:
+
+    "O couldst thou speak, what wouldst thou say?
+      I who can speak am dumb before thee.
+    Thine eyes that drink Olympian day
+    Where steeds of wings thy soul convey,
+      With pride of eagles circling o'er thee:
+      Thou seest I adore thee!
+
+    "Bound to thy starry home and her
+      Who brought me thee and left earth hollow!
+    An honored grave thy bones inter,
+    And painting shall thy fame confer,
+      Ere in thy shining track I follow,
+      Thou courser of Apollo!"
+
+NOTE TO HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.[1]
+
+The singular incident of this poem was published in 1862, in Rev. John
+Lednum's "Personal Rise of Methodism," and in the following words:
+
+"It is said that the Dutch had him (Herman) a prisoner of war, at one
+time, under sentence of death, in New York. A short time before he was
+to be executed, he feigned himself to be deranged in mind, and
+requested that his horse should be brought to him in the prison. The
+horse was brought, finely caparisoned. Herman mounted him, and seemed
+to be performing military exercises, when, on the first opportunity,
+he bolted through one of the large windows, that was some fifteen feet
+above ground, leaped down, swam the North River, ran his horse through
+Jersey, and alighted on the bank of the Delaware, opposite Newcastle,
+and thus made his escape from death and the Dutch. This daring feat,
+tradition says, he had transferred to canvas--himself represented as
+standing by the side of his charger, from whose nostrils the blood was
+flowing."--Page 277.
+
+Such a singular and improbable story attracted great local attention,
+and in 1870, Francis Vincent, publishing his "History of Delaware,"
+wrote: "The author found this incident in both Lednum and Foot, and
+has seen a copy of this painting. It is in the possession of James R.
+Oldham, Esq., of Christiana Bridge, the only male descendant of Herman
+in Delaware State. He is the seventh in descent from Augustin
+Herman."--Page 469.
+
+In 1875, Rev. Charles P. Mallery, of Chesapeake City, a part of the
+Bohemia Manor, wrote in the Elkton (Md.) _Democrat_ as follows:
+"Herman resided on the Manor for more than twenty years, during which
+time he once rode to New York on the back of his favorite horse, to
+reclaim his long-neglected possessions there. He found his land
+occupied by squatters.... They secured him, as they thought, for the
+night; but he soon found means to escape by leaping his horse through
+a forced opening, swimming the North River, and continuing his flight
+through New Jersey until he reached the shore opposite Newcastle,
+where he swam his horse across the Delaware and was safe.... Dr.
+Spotswood, of Newcastle, told me that there was a tradition in his
+town that the horse was buried there." Augustin Herman made the first
+drawing of New Amsterdam, and early maps of Maryland and New England.
+He was the first speculator in city real estate in America.
+
+[Footnote 1: The Bohemia Manor is a tract of 18,000 acres of the best
+land on the Delaware peninsula. It was granted to Augustine Herman,
+Bohemian, whose tombstone, now lying in the yard of Richard Bayard, on
+the site of Herman's park, bears date 1661. He received the manor for
+making an early map of Maryland, and granted a part of the land to the
+sect of Labadists. In the course of a century it became the homestead
+of Senator Richard Bassett, heir of the last lord of the manor, and of
+his son-in-law, Senator James A. Bayard, the first. Herman was the
+principal historic personage about the head of the Chesapeake, and was
+Peter Stuyvesant's diplomatist to New England as well as Maryland. The
+argument he made for the priority of the Dutch settlement on the
+Delaware was the basis of the independence of Delaware State. The
+legend of his escape from New York is told in several local books and
+newspapers, and it was the subject of one of his paintings, as he was
+both draughtsman and designer. G. A. T.]
+
+In 1876 I visited the relics of Herman on the Manor, and observed the
+topography and foliage. I then undertook to put this legend into
+verse, but struck a short, ill-accommodating stanza, in which I
+nevertheless persevered until the tale was told. I found that Herman
+had bought, in 1652, "the Raritan Great Meadows and the territory
+along the Staten Island Kills from Ompoge, or Amboy, to the Pechciesse
+Creek, and a tract on the south side of the Raritan, opposite Staten
+Island" (see Broadhead, page 537). It at once occurred to me to put
+the seat of Herman's capture by squatters on this property, and to
+take Staten Island's bold scenery as a contrast to that of the head of
+the Chesapeake, whence Herman had ridden. He could, besides, more
+reasonably swim the Kills than the North River with a horse, as a
+gentle prelude to swimming the Delaware.
+
+One year before buying the above property (see Broadhead's "History of
+New York," page 526), Peter Stuyvesant vindictively persecuted Herman,
+Lockerman, and others, who retired to Staten Island to brood. These
+men belonged to "the popular party." I therefore had a hint to make
+Stuyvesant himself the incarcerator of Herman in a fort, and the most
+available period seemed to be subsequent to the capture of Dutch New
+York by the English, but before the Dutch settlements on the Delaware
+were yielded. Stuyvesant surrendered New York September 8th, 1664. It
+was not until October 10th that Newcastle on the Delaware surrendered.
+The theory of the poem is that Herman, hearing New York to be English,
+like Maryland where he resided, repaired to his possessions.
+Stuyvesant rallies the squatters against him and makes use of a fort
+on Staten Island, not yet noticed by the English, as Herman's place of
+punishment. On Herman's escape this fort is blown up. When Herman
+returns to Newcastle, it is no longer Dutch, but English. Four days is
+the time of the action. The device of the carrier pigeons is possibly
+an anachronism, and also the age of Herman. I have aimed to make the
+story reasonable, if not creditable.
+
+
+
+
+KIDNAPPED.
+
+
+A celebrated apostle of the Methodist sect, on the Eastern shore of
+Maryland, was the Rev. Titus Bates. He had been twenty-six years
+engaged in the ministry, and was now a bronzed, worn, failing man,
+consumed by the zeal of his order, but still anxious to continue his
+work and die at his post. Like all his tribe, he was an itinerant,
+moving from town to town every second year--these towns being his
+places of abode, while his fields of labor were called "circuits," and
+comprised many houses of worship scattered through the surrounding
+district. He had chosen his wife with reference to his vocation, and
+she was equally earnest with himself. She attended the sick, prayed
+with the dying, taught Sabbath-schools, and organized religious
+meetings among the women. They had but one son, Paul, an odd, silent
+little fellow, who was thought to be more bashful than bright; but his
+parents loved him tenderly, and argued the highest usefulness from his
+still, sober, thoughtful habits. He was of a singularly dark
+complexion, with fine black eyes and curling hair, and he was now old
+enough to ride to and fro with his father upon the long pastoral
+journeys.
+
+Paul's sixth birthday occurred on a raw Sunday in December. He had
+been promised, as a special treat on that occasion, a visit to
+Hogson's Corner, an old meeting-house near the bay-side, twenty miles
+distant. His mother woke him at an early hour, and, while he
+breakfasted, the gray pony Bob came to the door in the "sulky." His
+mother bade him to be a good boy, and kissed him; he took his seat
+upon a stool at his father's feet, and watched the stone parsonage
+fade quickly out of sight. The last houses of the town vanished; they
+passed some squalid huts of free negroes; and when, after an hour,
+they came to a grim, solitary hill, the snow began to fall. It beat
+down very fast, whitening the frozen furrows in the fields, making
+pyramids of the charred stumps, and bleaching the sinuous
+"worm-fences" which bordered the road. After a while, they found a
+gate built across the way, and Paul leaped out to open it. The snow
+was deep on the other side, and the little fellow's strength was taxed
+to push it back; but he succeeded, and his father applauded him. Then
+there were other gates; for there were few public highways here, and
+the routes led through private fields. It seemed that he had opened a
+great many gates before they came to the forest, and then Paul wrapped
+his chilled wet feet in the thick buffalo hide, and watched the dreary
+stretches of the pines moan by, the flakes still falling, and the
+wheels of the sulky dragging in the drifts. The road was very lonely;
+his father hummed snatches of hymns as they went, and the little boy
+shaped grotesque figures down the dim aisles of the woods, and
+wondered how it would be with travellers lost in their depths. He was
+not sorry when they reached the meeting-house--a black old pile of
+planks, propped upon logs, with a long shelter-roof for horses down
+the side of the graveyard. A couple of sleighs, a rough-covered
+wagon, called a "dearbourn," and several saddled horses, were tied
+beneath the roof. Two very aged negroes were seen coming up one of the
+cross-roads, and the shining, surging Chesapeake, bearing a few pale
+sails, was visible in the other direction. Some boors were gossiping
+in the churchyard, slashing their boots with their riding-whips; one
+lean, solemn man came out to welcome the preacher, addressing him as
+"Brother Bates;" and another led the sulky into the wagon-shed, and
+treated Bob to some ears of corn, which he needed very much.
+
+Then they all repaired to the church, which looked inside like a
+great barn. The beams and shingles were bare; some swallows in the
+eaves flew and twittered at will; and a huge stove, with branching
+pipes, stood in the naked aisle. The pews were hard and prim, and
+occupied by pinch-visaged people; the pulpit was a plain shelf, with
+hanging oil-lamps on either side; and over the door in the rear
+projected a rheumatic gallery, where the black communicants were boxed
+up like criminals. A kind old woman gave Paul a ginger-cake, but his
+father motioned him to put it in his pocket; and after he had warmed
+his feet, he was told to sit in the pew nearest the preacher on what
+was called the "Amen side." Then the services began, the preacher
+leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the old ladies joining in
+at the wrong places. But after a while a venerable negro in the
+gallery tuned up, and sang down the shrill swallows with natural
+melody. The prayers were long, and broken by ejaculations from the
+pews. The text was announced amid profound silence, after everybody
+had coughed several times, and then the itinerant launched into his
+sermon. At first it was dry and argumentative, then burdened with
+divisions and quotations, but in the end he closed the great book, and
+made one of those fierce, feeling appeals--brimming with promises of
+grace and threatenings of hell--in words so homely that all felt them
+true, while the wild, interpolated cries of the believers thrilled and
+terrified the young.
+
+Little Paul heard with pale lips these grim, religious revelations,
+and his child's fancy conjured up awful pictures of worlds beyond the
+grave. He wondered that the birds dared riot in the roof: the sky in
+the gable window was full of cloudy marvels; and the snow beat under
+the door, like a shroud blown out of one of the churchyard tombs. The
+closing prayer was said at last, the unconverted walked away, but five
+or six communicants remained to tell their experience in the
+class-meeting. Paul's father gave him permission to go into the yard
+if he liked, and the boy got into the sulky, beneath the buffalo, and
+heard the sobs and hymns floating dismally on the wind. Grim shapes
+thronged his mind again, wherein the Bible stories were mingled with
+tales of ghosts and strange nursery fables. They chased each other in
+and out, generating others as they went, and then came drowsiness, and
+Paul slept.
+
+The class-meeting lasted an hour. It was very fervent and
+demonstrative; and when it was over the kind old lady who had given
+Paul the gingerbread asked the preacher home to dinner. She said that
+roasted turkey, wild duck, and pumpkin-pie were waiting for them; and
+Mr. Bates thought fondly what a treat it would be for Paul on his
+birthday. He was to preach again that afternoon, seven miles away, and
+so moved briskly toward the sulky.
+
+"The poor fellow is asleep," said the preacher, seeing that the
+curling head was not thrust up at his approach. "I wonder of what he
+dreams?" He drew near as he spoke. Old Bob was munching his corn
+sedately; the sulky had a saucy air; the robe nestled in the front,
+with the tiny stool peeping from a corner; but Paul was not there. The
+preacher called aloud; the horses raised their ears in reply, and the
+wheels crackled in the frozen crust. He called again; some
+sleigh-bells jingled merrily, and then the pines moaned. He looked
+into the other vehicles; he watched for the little foot-tracks in the
+snow; he ran back to the old church, and searched beneath every pew.
+
+"Brethren--sisters," he cried, "I cannot find my boy!" and his voice was
+tremulous. They gathered round him and some said that Paul had ridden
+away with the worldly lads; others, that he was hiding mischievously.
+But one silent bystander looked into the drifts, and traced four great
+boot-marks close to the sulky. He followed them across the road into the
+pines, and out into the road again, where they were lost in the
+multitude of impressions. "Brother," he faltered, "God give you
+strength! your boy has been stolen--kidnapped!"
+
+The old man staggered, but the kind old lady caught him, and as he
+leaned upon her shoulder his face grew hard and blanched; then he
+removed his hat, and his gray hair streamed over his gaunt features.
+"Let us pray!" he said.
+
+The preacher plodded to his next appointment as if he had still a
+child, and his sermon was as full and straightforward. He announced
+his bereavement from the pulpit when he had done, and the whole
+country was alarmed and excited. He bore the tidings to his desolate
+home, and his stricken wife heard it with a stern resignation.
+Thenceforward he preached more of the burning pit, and less of the
+golden city; his eyes were full of fierce light, and his visage grew
+long and ghastly. He denied himself all joys and comforts; his prayers
+rang in the midnight through the gloomy parsonage; and he toiled in
+the ministry as if reckless of life, and anxious to lose it in his
+Master's service. The end came at last; the world closed over the grim
+couple, and they hoped through the grave's portal to find their child.
+
+When Paul awoke from his nap in the sulky, he found himself far in the
+forest, and moving swiftly forward. A huge negro, with bloodshot eyes,
+was transferring him to an evil-looking white man, and he struggled in
+the latter's arms, crying for his papa.
+
+The negro drew a long knife from his breast and flourished it before
+Paul's face. "Hold um jaw, or I kill um dead!" he muttered. "Got um
+grave dug out yer."
+
+"O yer young yerlin!" said the other man, boxing Paul's ears, "yer
+don't know yer own father, don't yer? I'm yer parpa!"
+
+"You are not," cried Paul. "Where are you taking me? Where is the
+church, and the sulky, and old Bob?"
+
+The negro drove his knife so close to Paul's throat that the boy
+flinched and shrieked.
+
+"You dare to say fader to anybody," yelled the negro, "and I cut yo'
+heart out! You dare to tell yer name, or yer fader's name, or wha yo
+come from, and I cut yo' eyes out! I cut yo' heart and eyes out--do
+yo' yar?"
+
+The lad was cowed into cold, tearless terror; he shrank from the
+glittering edge, and trembled at the giant's murderous expression. He
+thought they had brought him to this lonely spot to slay him, and he
+embraced silence as the only chance for his young life. He wondered if
+this were not one of his wild imaginings, or if it had not something
+to do with the punishment pronounced in the morning's fierce sermon.
+
+The two men came to a ruined cabin after awhile; it was buried in deep
+shade; the logs were worm-eaten, and the clay chimney had fallen down.
+They climbed by a creaking ladder into the loft and laid Paul upon a
+ragged bed. A young negro woman and her child were there, and the boy
+saw that her foot was shackled to the floor, for the chain rattled as
+she moved. They gave him a piece of beef and a corn-cake, and
+stripping him of his tidy clothes, dressed him in the coarse blue
+drilling worn by slaves. The two men drank frequently from the same
+bottle, talking in low tones, and after a time both of them lay down
+and slept. The woman dandled her child to and fro, for it moaned
+painfully, and the pines without made a deep dirge. No birds trilled
+or screamed in this desert place, but a roaring as of loud waters was
+borne now and then on the twilight; it was the bay close below them,
+making thunder upon the beach.
+
+When Paul woke from his second sleep he was on the deck of a vessel.
+The shore lay beneath him, and the waves heaved behind. It was night;
+the snow-flakes still filtered through the profound darkness, and the
+wind whistled in the rigging. A red lantern moved along the beach;
+some voices were heard speaking together, and one of them said:
+"Don't be afraid of the boy; I have sold lots paler than him. Lick him
+smartly if he gammons, and he'll tell no tales."
+
+Then they lifted the anchor aboard; the tide floated off the sloop;
+they were soon scudding before the wind under a freezing starlight.
+Two weary days passed over Paul, of travel by land and water. They
+came to the city of Richmond at last, and marched him with five other
+unfortunates to the common slave-pen. It was situated in a squalid
+suburb, surrounded by a high spiked wall, and entered by an office
+from which a watchman could observe the interior through two grated
+doors. The pen consisted of a paved area open to the sky, except on
+one side, where it was protected by a shelving roof, and of a jail or
+den. The latter was walled up in a corner, but its inmates could look
+out upon the area through a window in the door, and their savage
+features revealed at the bars so terrified Paul that he retreated to
+the opposite corner, afraid to look towards them. Now and then they
+howled and blasphemed; for two were delirious from drunkenness and one
+was desperate from rage, and as they moved like tigers to and fro,
+their irons clanked behind them, dragging on the stone floor. A number
+of women were huddled together beneath the roof, some as fair as Paul,
+others as black as ebony. Some had babes at their breasts, others had
+no regard for their offspring, but sat stolidly apart while their
+children cried for nourishment. In the open place a bevy of the
+coarser inmates were holding a rude dance, a large gray-haired man
+patted time or "juber" with his feet and hands, calling the figures
+huskily aloud; while the women, with bright turbans tied around their
+heads, grinned and screamed with glee as they followed the measure
+with their large, heavy shoes.
+
+Their efforts were directed not so much to grace as to strength, for
+some kept up the dance for a whole hour, divesting themselves of
+parcels of clothing as they proceeded, and breathing hard as if weary
+to exhaustion. The men applauded vociferously, coupling the names of
+the performers with wild ejaculations, but subsiding when the keeper
+appeared at the door occasionally to command less noise. Remote from
+the bacchanals crouched a serious group of negroes, who sang religious
+melodies, quite oblivious of their wild associates; and in still
+another quarter a humorous fellow was enlivening his constituents with
+odd sayings and stories. Paul's heart sank within him as he looked
+upon these scenes. A sense of his degradation rushed over his young
+mind, and he threw himself upon the stones with his head in his hands,
+and wept hot tears of bitterness. Henceforth he should be a creature,
+a thing, a slave! He must know no ambition but indolence, no bliss but
+ignorance, no rest but sleep, no hope but death! Long leagues must
+interpose between himself and his home; he should never kiss his
+mother again, or kneel with his father in the holiness of prayer. The
+recollections of his childhood would be crushed out by agonizing
+experiences of bondage; he would forget his name and the face of his
+friends, and at last preserve only the horrible consciousness that he
+was the chattel of his master!
+
+The uproar continued far into the night; one poor creature was
+delivered of a child in the hazy light of the morning. Paul was too
+young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him;
+but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of
+that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in
+the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had
+to look back upon--cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple
+melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one
+distinct and dreadful idea of gain--to be filched from that dusky
+bosom when its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble
+lips might lisp the accents of servility. Days and weeks passed over
+Paul, but he found no opportunity to tell his story. They kept him
+purposely that he might forget it, or feel the hopelessness of
+relating it. Other wretches came and went, till there remained none of
+the original inmates of his prison, and he learned to mingle with his
+coarse companions, joining sometimes in their gayety, and the high
+walls stood forever between his dreams and the sky till the sombre
+shadows were printed upon his heart.
+
+The boy's turn came at length. He climbed the auction block before the
+gaping multitude, and leaped to show his suppleness. They were pleased
+with his still serious manner, the paleness of his skin, his
+thoughtful eyes, and the shining ringlets of his hair. Bids were
+bandied briskly upon him, and the auctioneer rattled glibly of the
+rare lot to be sold.
+
+"Who owns the boy?" cried a bystander.
+
+"Colonel James Purnell, of the Eastern shore," answered the
+auctioneer. "His mother is a likely piece that will be in the market
+presently."
+
+Tears came to Paul's eyes, but he held down the great sob that started
+to his throat, and called lustily: "It is a wicked story! My father is
+white, and my mother is white! I am not a slave, and they have stolen
+me!"
+
+A loud, long laugh broke from the crowd, and the trader cracked a
+merry joke, which helped the pleasantry.
+
+"We may call that a 'white lie,'" he said; "but it is a peart lad, and
+the air with which he told it is worth a cool hundred! Going at four
+hundred dollars--four hundred," etc.
+
+The bidding recommenced. The article rose in esteem, and Paul was
+pushed from the block into the arms of a tall, angular person, who led
+him into the city. That afternoon he was placed in a railway carriage,
+and on the third night he was quartered in Mobile, at the dwelling of
+his purchaser. The tall person proved to be the agent of a rich old
+lady--a childless widow--who required a handsome, active lad, to wait
+upon her person, and make a good appearance in the drawing-room.
+
+She had many servants; but Paul was not compelled to associate with
+them, and his duties were light, though menial. When his mistress went
+out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms. He must stand
+behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peacock's feathers. He
+must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy
+her wants. She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been
+hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one. On the
+contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her
+marvellously. If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a
+child's strong yearning for something to love, he hid his grief from
+those about him, and sought that consolation which the world cannot
+take away in the simple prayers he had conned from his mother. He was
+a slave, but not a negro. His pleasures were not theirs, for he had
+quick intelligence, and he shrank from their loud, lewd glee. Their
+blood had thickened through generations of bondage, and trained in the
+harness of beasts, they had become creatures of draught. His had
+rippled bright and brisk through generations of freedom, and a year
+could not drag him to their level. He had learned to read and write,
+and it was his habit to stand at the window in his leisure moments,
+adding to his information from some pleasant book; but his mistress
+supposed that he was looking at the pictures merely, till one day,
+entering the dining-room softly, she heard him reading aloud. He had a
+sweet, boy's voice, which somewhat pacified the anger she felt at such
+presumption in a slave; and though at first rebuking him, she
+reconsidered the matter during the evening, and bade him read to her
+from a new novel. Henceforward Paul gained favor, and his mistress
+found it convenient to employ him as an amanuensis. She released him
+from menial duties, and gave him neat attire, and it was wonderful how
+well these accessories became him. He was unassuming, as before,
+submitting with patience to his lot; and at length he became
+indispensable to Mrs. Everett. Her attachment to books of fiction
+amounted to dissipation, and the part that he bore in their perusal
+filled his warm imagination till his fancies were brighter than
+romance--they became poetry. The one great grief of his life touched
+his whole face with a pensive melancholy, but he forebore to tell them
+his true history again, preferring to wait for some golden moment when
+he might be believed and emancipated.
+
+From the beginning Mrs. Everett's agent disliked him. Wait was a
+Northern adventurer, cool, courageous, and ambitious, who had settled
+in the South with the resolution of becoming rich, and he had pursued
+his purpose with steady inflexibility. He was not a bad man, but a
+bitter one, and Paul had in some sort divided Mrs. Everett's esteem
+from him. Previously he had been her sole and undisputed adviser, and
+as she was readily influenced, he hoped, in course of time, to be
+acceptable as her second husband. He was young and manly, and she was
+giddy and middle-aged. Her relatives held him in contempt, but he had
+proved his courage, and they did not care to cross him. But with the
+coming of Paul he had lost somewhat of her regard, and he had laid it
+to the boy's charge. Paul read his calm purpose in his keen eyes, and
+he shuddered at the thought of some day falling into his relentless
+hands. He labored to conciliate his enemy, but with little effect,
+until one afternoon, Wait told him to obtain permission from Mrs.
+Everett and come to the office. He dictated some ambiguous letters to
+Paul, and gave him many papers to burn, meanwhile inspecting a pair of
+long pistols which he took from a portmanteau. It was late in the
+afternoon when he had done, and then he bade Paul take the case of
+pistols, slip quietly into the street, and walk straight on till he
+was overtaken. He obeyed, not without suspicion, and when he reached
+the city limits found the agent, to his great surprise, seated in a
+carriage. Two other persons attended him, and one, who was bald and
+wore glasses, had a case of surgical instruments lying at his feet.
+Paul climbed to the driver's box, and they dashed along by the
+water-side, meeting a second carriage on their way. The last rays of
+sunset were streaming over the low landscape when both carriages
+stopped, their occupants dismounted, and Wait came to the front and
+reached up his hand to Paul.
+
+"Good-by, boy," he said in a tone of unwonted tenderness; "remain here
+a moment and you will see me again!"
+
+They filed along a dyke separating two swamps, and turning down to the
+beach, were hidden behind a line of cypress trees. For a few moments
+Paul only heard the roar of the surf, the noise of the distant town,
+and the short breathing of the sedate negro beside him. Then there
+were shouts, as of a person counting rapidly, and two reports so close
+that one seemed the echo of the other. A few minutes afterward the
+agent appeared, leaning upon the arms of his attendants. He was
+divested of coat and vest, and as he came nearer, bareheaded, Paul saw
+that his face was colorless and working as from deadly pain. His shirt
+was perforated close to the collar, and the blood flowing beneath had
+stained it to his waist, and dripped in a runnel from his boots. He
+fainted when he had taken his seat; and as the carriage rolled away,
+Paul looked back toward the duelling-ground, and beheld two men
+bearing upon their shoulders a stiff, straight burden, wrapped in a
+cloak.
+
+The second carriage passed him, driven swiftly, and it seemed to emit
+a chill draught upon Paul like the damp wind from a tomb; it was the
+presence of death, at whose very mention we grow cold.
+
+Wait had vindicated his courage, but at the expense of his life. He
+lingered on in agony many days; and Paul so pitied him that he stole
+into his darkened chamber and begged to do him kindnesses. The grim
+man lay implacable, waiting for death; but one night as he writhed
+with the dew upon his forehead, Paul heard him mutter, "My God! my
+mother!"
+
+The boy remembered a quaint text of Scripture: "Save me, O God! for
+the waters have come in unto my soul;" and he repeated it in the
+strong man's ear. "Go on," cried Wait, rising upon his elbow; "I have
+heard that before: tell me the rest."
+
+"I have the good book here," replied Paul. "I am sure it will be
+pleasant to you, sir, if you will let me read."
+
+"Do so, boy; I used to know it well. An old friend taught those
+strange words to me, but I have forgotten them now."
+
+Paul read some soothing and beautiful Psalms, which took his
+companion's mind back to his native mountains, and the white spire of
+the village church where he had worshipped with his mother. The hard
+lines melted in his face as he listened, but Paul fell upon a bitter
+verse, and the agent's conscience began to trouble him. He could not
+look into the boy's eyes, for they seemed to rebuke him, and at last
+he commanded Paul to stop.
+
+It was midnight. They heard the great clock in the hall strike twelve,
+and all the household slumbered.
+
+"Go to your mistress's room," said Wait; "tell her that I must see her
+_now_--she must come at once. The morning may never come to me. Go;
+God bless you!"
+
+He called Paul back when he had got to the door, and added
+falteringly:
+
+"My boy, do you say your prayers?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Would you mind thinking of me when you say them to-night?"
+
+"I do so every night, sir."
+
+"Good-night!"
+
+Paul heard the agent sobbing as he stole away; but when he knocked at
+Mrs. Everett's door she answered petulantly, and at first she refused
+to rise. She had little self-denial; it would pain her to enter a
+dying chamber; and she would have left Wait to perish, had not some
+strange passage from the romance entered her head of dead folk, with
+secrets on their minds, haunting the living. It would be very terrible
+to be haunted, and the old woman was frightened into obedience. When
+she returned her mind was disquieted, and she made Paul stay in her
+room to compose her with cheerful talk. Finally she fell asleep, and
+he hastened to the agent's chamber. It was very dark within, and he
+waited a moment that the other might recognize him. Wait seemed to be
+in deep slumber, though Paul could not hear him breathe; but as the
+lad ventured to place his head upon the quilt, it encountered a hand
+so cold and hard that it seemed to be marble. Paul knew that he need
+no longer remember his enemy in his prayers.
+
+What transpired between his mistress and her agent at this dying
+interview Paul could not surmise, but he believed that it concerned
+himself. He perceived that Mrs. Everett treated him more considerately
+afterward; and many times, as he looked up from a long silence, he
+found her regarding him inquisitively. She asked him strange questions
+once, bearing upon his early life, and he was almost encouraged to
+reveal the secret of his birth; but she seemed to divine his purpose,
+and changed the theme. Something troubled her, he knew; and when he
+applied himself to conciliate and cheer her, at those moments she
+suffered most. Had she loved the stern, ambitious man whose closed
+chamber still chilled her mansion? Was it because she was childless,
+and travelling graveward? Or did she cherish a mother's feeling for
+Paul, and wish that he was of her race, and worthy to be her son?
+Toward each of these theories he inclined, favoring the last, and
+finally he concluded that she did not love, but feared him. He had
+grown tall and manly. An individual beauty, rather of mind than of
+face, developed in him, and his mistress had been prodigal of favors,
+so that his dress and ornaments corresponded with his person. He
+might have ruled, rather than served in her dwelling; but content with
+the recognition of his equality, he maintained the same modest guise,
+and his mistress felt an uneasy pride in his promotion. One day he
+found her weeping, and when he spoke she answered bitterly:
+
+"Paul, you have ceased to love me; you are ungrateful; you wish to be
+free--you would leave me!"
+
+He responded pleasantly--for he had become familiar with such
+moods--that he had found a new romance which he would read. It was not
+a long story, but a thrilling one, and based upon the simple narrative
+of Joseph in bondage. The outline was true, the details were fabulous,
+and the old lady marvelled that a theme so trite could be so well
+embellished. He read far into the night, and she bade him leave the
+book upon her table, that she might peruse it again.
+
+"It is manuscript," he said, "and this is the only copy."
+
+"Why, Paul," she said, "how came you by it?"
+
+"I wrote it myself."
+
+Paul was indeed the author, having filled in the sorrows of his hero
+from his own experiences. Mrs. Everett was loud in its praises; she
+was sure that it indicated genius, and she lay awake that night
+meditating an act of charity and of justice. She would make a free man
+of Paul, and he should find in far lands that equality which he could
+not obtain in his own. They would journey together. He should have
+means and advantages, and become her protégé and heir. But the strong
+self-love defeated this resolve. If Paul were not bound to her by law,
+he might forsake her, and she could not bear to lose him, for he had
+become a part of her heart; but when she broached the matter, Paul
+gave his parole never to leave her without consent.
+
+He was still a slave, with the taint of a trampled race in his blood,
+and he said nothing to Mrs. Everett of his origin. They crossed the
+seas; they dwelt in pleasant places, beneath soft skies; and Paul grew
+in knowledge. But his patron was still harassed by some deep remorse.
+She hurried him from city to city like the fabled apostate, and at
+length fell sick in London, on the eve of their return to America.
+Paul gleaned from her ravings in delirium the cause of her unrest.
+Wait had made known to her on the night of his decease the secret of
+the young man's origin, and had conjured her to do justice to the lad.
+Her self-love had deterred her in consummating this duty, and
+conscience had therefore tortured her. She was enabled to reach New
+York, where she left the preacher's son the bulk of her property, and
+received his gratitude and forgiveness before she died.
+
+Paul was free--haunted no longer by premonitions of future suffering;
+and his first impulse was to return to the Eastern shore and discover
+his desolate parents. His recollections of them were imperfect. He
+preserved many trifling circumstances, though more important events
+were forgotten; but as he made his way to the old village his heart
+beat high. There were the negro quarters, the cornfields, the twisting
+fences, and, at last, the shady stone parsonage--recollections they
+seemed of objects beheld in a foggy dream. They directed him to the
+Methodist Church--a prim, square structure in the centre of the
+village--a tavern on one side, a court-house and market on the other;
+and when the sexton threw open a window, the bleared light fell upon a
+marble slab set in the wall:
+
+          "Near this spot lie the remains of
+               REV. TITUS BATES,
+      for two years Pastor of this Congregation,
+          and of PEGGY, his Wife.
+   'They have ceased from their labors, and their
+               works do follow them.'"
+
+Paul's hopes fell. He walked through the village friendless, and,
+impelled by his swift-coming fancies, strolled far into the suburbs.
+A crowd was collected round a squalid negro cabin, and, less by
+interest than by instinct, he bent his steps toward it.
+
+"What is the matter, friend?" he asked of a bystander.
+
+"The boys hez scented kidnappers to this shanty," answered the man;
+"and by doggy! they going to trap 'em!"
+
+The mob seemed to be fearfully incensed as Paul pushed close to the
+scene. There were said to be two of the man-stealers, both of whom had
+been very daring and successful. He heard their names called as Peter
+Gettis and Dave Goule, and the opinion was expressed that the
+first-named would not yield without a desperate struggle. The mob was
+hot and clamorous, and while a selected committee entered the den to
+search it, the rest brandished clubs and knives, and yelled for
+justice and blood. Word came at length that the kidnappers were
+concealed beneath the floor of the cabin; and at the hint, a score of
+stalwart fellows began to pull up the planks, while their associates
+formed a wide circle around, prepared to prevent escape.
+
+Finally, the cry arose: "Here they air! This is them! Drag 'em out!
+Whoo-oop!"
+
+The men within the cabin rushed through the doors and windows as if
+pursued, and a stalwart negro, with bloodshot eyes, almost naked, and
+flourishing a huge knife, staggered to the threshold, and glared
+fiercely round him.
+
+The circle stood firm; some were clubbing their cudgels, others
+lifting their blades, and here and there along the line rang out the
+click of a pistol.
+
+"Come, Pete," cried one of the ringleaders; "you're treed, Pete! Don't
+be a fool, but give yourself in."
+
+The negro gnashed his teeth, and his wild eyes glared like coals of
+fire.
+
+"Do you give me faih-play?" he bellowed, extending the knife.
+
+"Yes, Pete, yes," answered the multitude.
+
+"Then look heah," answered the wretch, drawing his knife across his
+throat. He staggered into the air like an ox, cursing as he came. They
+parted to avoid him, and as he reached a fence, a few rods from the
+cabin, he leaned upon it, and swaying to and fro, raised his horrible
+eyes to the sky.
+
+Paul recognized his ancient captor with a thrill and a silent prayer.
+Vengeance had come in His own good time, and Paul felt no bitterness
+toward the poor fellow, but prayed forgiveness for his slipping soul.
+
+The second offender burrowed so remotely that the mob could not drag
+him from his covert. They struck at him with knives, and hired dogs to
+creep beneath the logs and rend him, but in vain. At length one of the
+ringleaders obtained a torch, and the cabin was fired in several
+places. The flames spouted into the night, bursting from the small
+windows, and the roof fell in with a crash, scattering ashes and
+red-hot coals. They could hear the shriek of the victim now, and he
+was seen dancing among the fire-brands, for the blaze encircled him
+like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to
+overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked
+gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered
+together--the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands,
+and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the
+thunder of his executioners' huzzas.
+
+Paul did not reveal himself. He left the village stealthily, and
+journeyed northward. Years afterwards a name was added to the tablet
+in the old church:
+
+           "Here lie also the Remains of the
+                REV. PAUL BATES.
+             'He went about doing good.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE JUDGE'S LAST TUNE.
+
+
+    The Judge took down his fiddle,
+      And put his feet on the stove,
+    And heaved a sigh from his middle
+      That might have been fat, or love;
+    He leaned his head on the mantel,
+      And bent his ear to the strings,
+    And the tender chords awakened
+      The echoes of many things.
+
+    The Bar had enjoyed the measure,
+      The Bench and Senate had been
+    Amused at the simple pleasure
+      He drew from his violin;
+    But weary of power and duty,
+      He had laid them down with a sigh,
+    Exhausted of life the beauty,
+      And he fiddled he knew not why.
+
+    In the days when passion budded,
+      And she in the churchyard lain
+    Came over his books as he studied
+      With an exquisite pang of pain,
+    He played to his sons their mother's
+      Old favorites ere she wed;
+    Those tunes, like hundreds of others,
+      Were requiems of the dead.
+
+    They lay in the kirk's inclosure:
+      All three, in the shadows dim,
+    In a cenotaph's cynosure
+      That waited for only him,
+    Who sat with his fiddle tuning
+      On the spot where his fame was won,
+    On the empty world communing,
+      Without a wife or a son.
+
+    And he drew his bow so plaintive
+      And loud, like a human cry,
+    That the light of the shutter darkened
+      From somebody passing by.
+    A young man peeped at the pensive
+      Great man, so familiar known;
+    His features, if inoffensive,
+      Were like to the judge's own.
+
+    "Come in," cried the politician--
+      "Come not," his soul would have said--
+    "Thou bringest to me a vision
+      Of a sin ere thy mother wed,
+    When I, wild boy from college,
+      Her humble desert o'ercame,
+    And we hid the guilty knowledge
+      Beneath thy father's name."
+
+    The youth delayed no longer,
+      His sense of music strong,
+    Nor knew of his mother's wronger,
+      Nor that she had known a wrong;
+    Deep in the grave the secret
+      Her husband might never guess.
+    He stood before his father
+      With a loyal gentleness.
+
+    "What tune, fair boy, desirest
+      My old friend's worthy son?--
+    Say but what thou requirest,
+      And for father's sake 'tis done."
+    "Oh! Judge, our State's defender,
+      Whose life has all been power,
+    Play me the tune most tender,
+      When thou felt thy greatest hour!"
+
+    The old man thought a minute,
+      Irresolutely stirred,
+    As if his fiddle's humor
+      Changed like a mocking-bird;
+    Then, as his tears came raining
+      Upon the plaintive chords,
+    He played the invitation
+      To the sinner, of his Lord's.
+
+    "Come, poor and needy sinners,
+      And weak and sick, and sore,
+    The patient Jesus lingers
+      To draw you through the door."
+    It was a tune remembered
+      From old revival nights,
+    In crowded country churches,
+      Where dimly blew the lights.
+
+    And boys grew superstitious
+      To hear the mourners wail.
+    The great man, self-degraded,
+      So sighed his contrite tale
+    In notes that failed for sobbing,
+      To feel Heaven's sentence well,
+    That took away his Isaac
+      And blessed the Ishmael.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Low in the tomb of glory
+      The old man's ashes lie--
+    Unuttered this my story,
+      Unwritten to human eye;
+    And the young man, blessed and blessing,
+      Walks over the shady town,
+    The evil passions repressing,
+      And his head bent humbly down.
+
+    Perhaps he marvels why treasure
+      Of the judge to his credit is set,
+    And an old revival measure
+      Should have been the statesman's pet.
+    But he hears the invitation,
+      And sees the streaming eyes
+    Of the old man lost to the nation,
+      And forgiven beyond the skies.
+
+
+
+
+DOMINION OVER THE FISH.
+
+
+"A gift-book for Christmas. A poem preferred. Limited text, and
+profuse illustration." What should it be?
+
+As if by invocation, the Ancient Mariner rose before me! He stood in
+the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He
+lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped
+his oiled hat. "The reader for Spry, Stromboli, and Smith?"
+
+I had that honor, and handed him a chair. He sat in it after the
+manner of a flounder, concentrated his eye upon me like a star-fish,
+and produced a roll of manuscript with the fluttering claws of a
+lobster. Then he stirred and squirmed, like an elderly eel, looking
+distrustfully into the vestibule. I closed the door and begged to be
+informed of his business.
+
+"I have a great work for you," he said mysteriously, proffering his
+manuscript. As he leaned over to do this, I saw a shining something on
+the top of his head, but the thick white hair concealed it when he
+resumed his place. The manuscript smelled as if it had contained
+mackerel, and looked as if it had come from the bottom of the sea. I
+found, curiously enough, some fish-scales adhering to it, and its
+title very oddly confirmed these testimonies--"Five Years in the Great
+Deep."
+
+I glanced at the author with some surprise. He was the quaintest of
+mariners, and if I had met him leagues under the sea, I should have
+thought him in his proper element. His locks were like dry sea-weed;
+his cheeks were so swollen that they might have contained gills, but
+this was probably tobacco. When he wiped his nose with a handkerchief
+like a scoop-net, some shells and pebbles fell from his pocket, and
+his ears flapped like a pair of ventrals. I remarked as he pursued the
+lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a
+leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked
+as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I
+expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He
+might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved
+like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he might have
+lived in Billingsgate.
+
+"A good title for a fiction," I said encouragingly.
+
+"I never penned a line of fiction in my life," exclaimed my visitor
+sternly.
+
+Referring to the copy again, I saw that it purported to be the work of
+"Rudentia Jones, Fellow of the Palæontologic Society, Entomologist to
+the Institute for Harmonizing the Universes, and Ruler of Subaqueous
+Creation, excepting the Finny Mammalia."
+
+"Ah! I see," said I; "a capital title for a satire!"
+
+"Life is too grave, and science too sacred," replied my visitor, "for
+the indulgence of idle banterings. The work is mine; I am its hero;
+and it is all true." He wore so earnest a face, and looked so directly
+and intelligently at me, that I forebore to smile. "I have travelled
+in strange countries," he said; "Nature has been bountiful in her
+revelations to me, indeed; my experiences have been so individual,
+that I sometimes discredit them myself. I do not complain that others
+ridicule them."
+
+He spoke in the manner of one devoted to his species; and an easy
+dignity, which some trace to high birth and the consciousness of
+dominion, became him very naturally. The eldest of the admirals, or
+old Neptune himself, could not have seemed more kingly; but once or
+twice he started at a noise from the publishing-house, as if longing
+to get back to his legitimate brine. I told him to leave the
+manuscript in my hands for a fortnight, that I might form an opinion
+as to its claims for publication.
+
+"No!" he said quickly. "It is not a girl's romance, or a boy's poem,
+or the strollings of a man-errant: it is of such rare value that gold
+cannot purchase it; it is so priceless that I cannot own it myself; it
+is like the air, or the water, or the light, or the magnet--the
+property of all the peoples. It must not leave my sight. I must read
+it to you now!"
+
+He literally held me with his eye. He stood erect dilating, until he
+seemed to reach the height of a mainmast, as long and lank and brown
+as the subject of the veritable _rime_; and his ears, contracted,
+flapped like the pectorals of a flying-fish. It was uncertain whether
+he was going to fly or swim, or seize and shake me. I believed him to
+be either a lunatic or an apparition; but when the frenzy of the
+moment was over, he became a very harmless, kindly, and grave old
+gentleman, who begged my pardon for transgressing decorum in the
+enthusiasm for his "great work." He still smelled abominably of fish,
+but I could not take it into my heart to be harsh with this most
+pertinacious of authors.
+
+I had been but a short time in the service of Spry, Stromboli & Smith,
+and my nerves had not yet been exercised by sensitive and eccentric
+writers. I had led a vagabond career myself, and had frequent reason,
+in my incipient literary days, to be grieved with publishers'
+"readers;" and when promoted to the same exalted place, I resolved to
+be charitable, careful, and obliging--to do as I would be done by--to
+crush no delicate Keats, to enrage no Johnson, by slight, prejudice,
+or deprecation. But to suffer the infliction of a crack-brained old
+naturalist, repeating an interminable manuscript in my own office,
+went beyond my best resolve! Still there was little to do. It would be
+a paltry task to select a poem for illustration, and had not this
+same Ancient Mariner suggested an admirable one?
+
+"I can grant your request in part, Mr. Jones," I said at length; "you
+may read one hour; and if at the end of that period I do not think
+favorably of your article, you must promise to read no further."
+
+The old gentleman gave his parole at once, took a pair of great green
+spectacles from a sea-grass case, and blowing his nose again, rained
+pebbles and marine shells over the whole office. When he took the
+manuscript from my hand, I saw the shining something distinctly on the
+top of his head; and when he sat back to read, he was a perfect copy
+of a dry old king-fish, looking through a pair of staring, glaring,
+green eyes. Without more ado, and in a rippling kind of voice, as of
+the rushing of deep water, the old naturalist read the following
+introduction to a most wonderful manuscript:
+
+"At a very early period of my life I manifested an inclination for the
+study of the sciences. In my eighteenth year I submitted a theory of
+inter-stellar telegraphing to the Gymnotian Academy. It was my purpose
+to have placed the papers simultaneously before the scientific bodies
+of each of the seven planets in our constellation, but having no
+capital, the design failed, though I was complimented thereupon by the
+'Institute for Harmonizing the Universes,' and elected a contributing
+member of that society. For several years I petitioned annually for
+outfit and transportation to Scilly Islands,[2] on the Ecliptic
+Circle, where I purposed to develop my scheme of transferring a
+portion of our globe to the system of Orion. In this I was opposed by
+the Palæontologic Society, on the ground that some valuable fossils
+were presumed to be there; and Parliament, opining that my protests
+were subversive of the law of gravity, rejected them. A number of
+projects, each of which, I firmly believe, would have benefited my
+kind, and facilitated correspondence between all created beings,
+terminated unfortunately, and my relatives at length placed it out of
+my power to continue these philanthropic exertions. For some years I
+was denied the ear of man, and in the interval my hair grew gray and
+my body a trifle faint. But the lofty impulses of youth survived. My
+mind could not be imprisoned, and I held communication with the stars
+through the grating of my chamber in the still midnight. At last the
+relief came. I had long prayed for it! My deliverer was Sirius, the
+brightest of the celestial intelligences. He shone upon my window bars
+with an intense concentrated light, and they reddened and melted
+before daybreak. I fled to Glasgow in the month of April, 184-, and
+obtained a captain's clerkship on the whaler Crimson Dragon.
+
+[Footnote 2: This group of Scilly Islands is in the South Pacific; not
+off Land's End.]
+
+"We took in water at the Shetland Islands, and sailing north-westward,
+skirted the coast of Greenland, whence, cruising in a southerly
+direction, we lay off Labrador, and waited for our prey. Our crew was
+fifty men, all told. Our captain had been a whaler thirty-eight years,
+and had killed five hundred and six animals or eight more than the
+renowned Scoresby. We carried seven light-boats for actual service,
+and twenty-seven thousand feet, or more than five miles, of rope.
+Three men kept watch, day and night, in the 'crow's-nest,' at the
+maintop; but though we beat along the whole coast, through Davis'
+Strait, and among the mighty icebergs of Baffin's Bay, we saw no
+cetaceous creatures, save twice some floundering porpoises, and thrice
+a solitary grampus. With these beings I endeavored to open
+communication, but they made no intelligible responses. The stars also
+of this latitude failed to comprehend my signals, from which I
+concluded that they were less intelligent than those of more temperate
+skies. But with the animalcules of the sea I obtained most gratifying
+relations. A series of experiments with the _infusoria_ satisfied me
+that they were not loath to an exchange of information, and finally
+they followed the ship by myriads, so that all the waves were full of
+fire, which the sailors remarked; and fearful of being observed, I
+ceased my experiments for a time.
+
+"On the evening of the fifth Saturday of our cruise, I waited till the
+changing of the watch; then I stole noiselessly upon deck, and
+secreted myself behind a life-boat which hung at the side of the
+vessel. The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen
+sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow's-nest
+talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon. The
+Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the
+sea was alternately flame and shadow. The headlands of Labrador lay to
+the south--bare, boundless, precipitous; and to the east a glittering
+iceberg floated slowly towards us, like a palace of gold and emerald.
+The ship rolled calmly upon the long swells, the ripples plashing in
+low lulling monotone, and her hull and spars were reflected darkly
+beneath me. I drew a long gray hair from my temple, and subjected it
+to a gentle friction between my palm and finger; then I pricked my
+wrist, and leaning forward, placed it against my heart: five
+blood-drops--symbols of the five types of organized creation--fell
+simmering into the depths, and the scintillant hair, floating after
+them, described a true spiral. In an instant the Aurora grew bright to
+blindness; there was a rush of infinite stars, and a host of beautiful
+beings fluttered to the surface of the sea, within the shadow of the
+ship! A gull darted along the water, and in the far distance I heard
+the bellow of the huge Greenland whale. All animate nature had
+acknowledged my message; I had touched the nerve of the universes!
+
+"'Blow me if there warn't a whale, Ben!' said one of the men in the
+maintop.
+
+"'My eyes! but it wor like it,' replied the other.
+
+"Fearful of being remarked, I slipped below, a second time
+disappointed, but with such exultant feelings that I tried in vain to
+sleep. The intimacy of species and their common language, lost in the
+degeneracy of the first human beings, were about to be restored by me.
+Confusion had overcome the counsels of the countless things which had
+talked and dwelt together in the past, but science was about to win
+back from sin the great secret of communication. I should translate
+the scream of eagles and the cooing of doves; I should hear the gossip
+of my household kittens, and speak familiarly with the mighty
+hippopotami. The serpent should teach me his traditions, and the
+multitude of mollusks should develop the mysteries of their sluggish
+vitality; nay, the plurality of worlds should be demonstrated, and
+with the combined intelligences of all the systems, we should wrest
+the mysteries of life, matter, and eternity from their Divine
+repository!
+
+"I lay awake all night revelling in these anticipations, and at dawn
+was quite weak of body. It was now the Sabbath, and at nine o'clock
+all hands were summoned to the poop-deck for the customary worship. I
+lay upon a coil of rope, when the mate commenced to read the service,
+and a deep drowsiness came over me. The lesson was a part of the first
+chapter of Genesis--the weird history of creation. He had reached the
+twenty-eighth verse when I dropped asleep. It could have been only an
+instant's forgetfulness, for when I awoke he had not finished the
+reading of the same verse, but in that instant a vision had passed
+before me.
+
+"A female of marvellous beauty rose from the water. I had seen the
+long green locks, the eyes of azure, and the glossy neck--it was
+Tethys, the queen of the sea-nymphs. She was begotten of humidity in
+the remote beginning, and seemed even now cloudy and incorporeal.
+Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools, lay in the waves at her feet,
+projecting a spectrum of spray, in an arch, above her head.
+
+"'Man,' she said, or rather rippled, for it was like the even voice of
+waters, 'your love of nature, the boundlessness of your kindness, the
+daring of your speculation, the profoundness of your introspection,
+have made you one of us. Awake, and hear our decree!'
+
+"She melted into vapor, and disappeared. I opened my eyes. The crew
+were grouped about the deck, the mate was reading the lesson, the
+words which I heard were: 'Have dominion over the fish!'
+
+"'A fall! a fall!' was shouted from the maintop. The men on watch had
+discovered the long-expected prey.
+
+"'Man the boats!' cried the captain; 'all hands be spry! Where away,
+look out?'
+
+"'Sou'-west!' answered the crow's-nest, 'about two leagues. There must
+be hoceans of 'em! They 'eave like water-spouts, and, lor! how they
+lobtail!'
+
+"The seven boats were arranged in curved shape, so as to form a
+semicircle around the animals; and the captain's, of which I took the
+helm, formed the left tip of the crescent. We pulled steadily for a
+half-hour over a smooth sea, and came at length so close to our
+victims that we could count them. Truly it was 'a fall'! A few cubs
+played recklessly around the surface; but there was an enormous bull,
+whose bulk was much greater than that of the ship's hull, which came
+once in full view, dived vertically, and beat the water with his
+terrible tail, making such billows that a storm seemed to be raging.
+The other animals swam in the froth and foam thus developed, now
+plunging to the far depths, now shooting their huge bodies into the
+air, and falling with a splash, as of the emptying of the ocean. The
+scene was so exciting that even my wonderful discoveries passed out of
+mind. Our oars dipped noiselessly; the crews were silent; the
+harpooners stood, each in the bow of his launch, with naked weapons
+extended, waiting to strike. The first opportunity occurred to the
+launch on our extreme right. At the distance of twenty yards the
+executioner hurled his javelin full into the back of the great bull; a
+roar ensued and a frightful leap. The other creatures repeated the
+agonized cry, and they swam southward with the velocity of a ship
+under full sail.
+
+"'Now, lads, bend your oars!' shouted the captain through his trumpet.
+The entire length of rope unwound directly from the reel or 'bollard'
+of the first launch, and the line of a second boat was attached
+forthwith; a third and a fourth were annexed, but the whale exhibited
+no sign of exhaustion, and dragged his pursuers like the wind. A fifth
+and a sixth line spun out. The captain's cheek grew pale, and he
+opened his clasp-knife with a curse upon his lips. There remained the
+line of our boat alone: unless the monster stopped within ten minutes,
+we should lose every foot of the ship's cordage, and this last rope
+would have to be severed. Tremulously a seaman attached it; it was
+whirled out as if by a locomotive. The oars moved like light, but no
+human activity could approach that of our victim. He nearly swamped
+the launch, and the friction of the bollard threatened to set it
+ablaze.
+
+"'What devil of the deep is this?' said the captain, bending forward
+with his blade. The sailors ceased with hot faces, and stared aghast.
+I seemed to hear calling voices; I grew faint and blind. The bollard
+snapped with a dead, dull sound; I was entangled in the stout twine,
+and tossed into the sea. Some oars were thrown overboard, that I might
+be buoyed up. Three of the launches were turned toward me, and the
+seamen called aloud that I should keep up courage. But the line pulled
+me downward; my heart ceased to beat; I beheld with indescribable
+terror the pale surface receding, and the dark shapes of the vessels
+above me were finally lost to view. I knew that at the first
+inhalation the brine would fill my mouth and lungs; I held my breath
+hard, and tried to pray. Down, down, down into the blue depths--a
+cycle of protracted years it seemed! My ears were stunned with
+strange noises; my lips parted, and at length the sea rushed into my
+throat; for an instant I seemed to strangle, but I did not perish.
+
+"The fluid was mysteriously expelled from me. I breathed as freely of
+the water as a moment before I had breathed of the air! A weight was
+lifted from my brain, which had before been crushing it, and my
+temples grew suddenly cool. A spiracle had developed at the apex of my
+cranium, and I exuded water through a cavity or 'blow-hole' in the top
+of my head, like the cetacea around me!"
+
+The naturalist here paused and ran his hand through his hair. The
+shining something among his gray locks revealed itself as a plate of
+silver, circular in shape, covering what had evidently been an opening
+in the skull. He looked less like a man than ever, and when,
+consulting a glutinous old chronometer, like a jellyfish, he found
+that his hour was passing, he begged so earnestly to be allowed to
+finish his "Introduction," that I gave him leave. A boy coming in with
+copy so frightened him, however, that I thought he was going to turn
+upon his stomach, and swim away through the window.
+
+"I became sensible directly of three organic changes: my heels clave
+together, my feet flattened, and my toes turned out, like a caudal
+fin; my integument grew thick and hard, and my blood thin and chill.
+But these conditions being novel to me, and my fears only equalled by
+my wonder as yet, I was paralyzed, and continued to sink. I had
+descended about one hundred fathoms, and was experiencing a strange
+oppression, as of the forcing together of my bones, when I heard a
+sonorous voice close below me say! 'If you go any deeper, you will
+sustain a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and may not get back at
+all.'"
+
+I looked beneath, and to my horror a huge whale was coming upward with
+extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me;
+but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a
+broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring
+the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and he said again:
+
+"'I should have been asphyxiated in five minutes.'
+
+"'Who is it that speaks?' I faltered. 'Leviathan, king of the sea, be
+merciful!'
+
+"'I am called _New England Tom_ by the creatures of the upper
+element,' answered the whale, 'although falsely thought to be of the
+family of the Spermaceti; but though my exploits have recommended me
+to my species, I am not equal to the high title you have given me.
+_That_ is possessed by you and our sovereign Jonah only!'
+
+"The conviction rushed upon me that I had, indeed, 'dominion over the
+fish'!
+
+"'I have suffered this wound for your majesty's sake,' said the whale
+again; 'for I had been deputed to wait in this latitude for your
+arrival, and convey you to our sovereign. But though I am now in the
+third century of my age, I can survive a dozen such prickings, and if
+I chose could shiver the Crimson Dragon with a blow of my tail, as in
+1804 I stove the Essex, and made driftwood of her spars.'
+
+"In an instant I was seated within the mighty maw of this famous
+monster. His jaw-bones were forty feet in length; the roof of his
+mouth was fifteen feet high, and formed of a spacious arch of
+'balleen,' or whale-bone. His crescent-shaped tail, thirty-five feet
+from tip to tip, swept the depths twice or thrice; and when we emerged
+into the air, the blood spouted from his pores, and he threw cataracts
+of water through his spiracle. I saw the Crimson Dragon some miles
+away, but there were no traces of her boats. The crews of the launches
+were fathoms deep in the ocean!
+
+"I passed the cape of Greenland, rounded the base of Mount Hecla, and
+was escorted to the abode of the king of the cetacea by a multitude of
+his subjects. A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had
+been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came
+out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual,' and a body-guard
+of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales
+surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and
+porpoises brought up the rear. Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his
+arms--three gourds, _argent_, upon a field _vert_; and with these were
+carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical
+shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. But,
+marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since
+no cetaceous creature can be denominated a _fish_) into which he was
+received still lived, and accompanied him. It was now the eldest of
+the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities. The
+Seer-King saluted gravely, and gave me a draught of spirits, distilled
+from the fronds of a rare sea-tangle. His long tenure in the deep had
+obliterated much of the similitude to man, but his memory of
+terrestrial matters was extraordinary. The weeds were wrapped about
+his head after the manner of a crown, and he carried a sceptre of
+walrus tusk. He told me that his original three days' experience under
+the sea had so cooled his blood, that the suns of Nineveh parched him,
+and he had cried for cooling water. I informed him that Nineveh no
+longer existed, at which he was gratified beyond measure; for his only
+knowledge of events happening on the earth had been derived from the
+wrecks which had sunk into his domain. I found that he was badly
+informed upon matters of science, and he heard my theories of
+harmonizing the universes with impatience. In his days, he said, no
+such ideas were broached, and he was indifferent to the intellectual
+development of his subjects.
+
+"My visit was brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral
+grandeur about it--a mighty cavern beneath the waves--yet the
+glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of
+ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready
+to depart.
+
+"An escort of 'thrashers,' or grampuses, accompanied me. The Seer-King
+would have detached a cohort of white whales, but the animosity of my
+tribes might have provoked combat. I left the cetacea with some
+foreboding. They were allied in some degree to man; they were capable
+of some human impressions; their blood was warm like mine; they
+breathed with lungs; they had double hearts; and nourished kindness
+for their offspring. But I was now about to be delivered over to the
+cold, cruel, gluttonous tribes of the fish. The family of sharks
+received me. They could not be counted for multitude. The terrible
+_requiem_ of the storm--the cannibal white shark--welcomed me with
+open jaws; the blue shark flung up his caudal for joy; the fox-shark
+lashed the sea; the northern shark glared through his purblind orbs;
+the hammer-head dilated his yellow irides; the purple dog-fish made a
+low purring huzza; and the spotted eyes of the monk-fish glistened
+with satisfaction. The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the
+port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly
+organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the
+deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat.' Thus I kept steadily southward, the
+water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts
+of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish,
+now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on
+the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now
+passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift
+sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing
+over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now
+swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by
+congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters. The torpedo telegraphed my
+coming to the tribes before, and at last I reached my abode, on the
+line of the equator, in mid-Atlantic.
+
+"The magnitude and beauty of my court no mind can realize. A truncated
+cone of granitic rock, whose base extended to the profoundest depths
+of the sea--even to the region of perpetual fire--formed with its
+upper plane a circular lagoon at the surface of the ocean. Geysers or
+volcanoes of fresh water gurgled up through the centre of this palace,
+and vast submarine groves, intermixed with meadows, extended for
+leagues along its sides. My household consisted entirely of silver and
+golden carp, but my guards were of the loyal and gentle, yet
+courageous and powerful xiphias (sword-fish). These barred the
+unlicensed ingress of my subjects, and if the adventurous foot of man
+should profane my lagoon, I could close its inlet and cover it with
+floods. The dim aisles of the waters were full of wonderful lights:
+combinations of colors, unknown above, were here developed in gigantic
+_fuci_, around whose boles the scarlet tangle climbed, and parasites
+of purple and emerald played upon their rinds. Some of these forests
+pointed upward toward the sun; some grew downward, deriving light and
+heat from the incandescent gulfs. My state apartments were built of
+coral, in wondrous architecture, and trumpet-weed clothed their
+battlements. Some cavernous recesses were lit with constellations of
+shining zoophytes, and there were floors of pearl, studded with
+diamonds. I could stroll through marvellous arch-ways, gathering
+jewels at every step, or wander in my royal meadows, among the wrecks
+and spoils of hurricanes; or rising through the mellow depths, sit
+among the palms of the lagoon, watching the white sails of ships or
+studying the awfulness of the storm.
+
+"For a time I secluded myself, theorizing upon the policy of my
+government. My dominions were vast and venerable; they comprehended
+two thirds of the surface of the globe; no deluges had destroyed them,
+and they had been peopled ages before the coming of man. Life here
+inhabited forms, vegetable and animal, to which the greatest
+terrestrials were puny. But the darkness which of old rested on the
+face of the deep, now shadowed its depths. There was no _mind_ here.
+These gigantic beings were shapes without souls. How should I reason
+with creatures who could not feel, whose heads could not know till
+to-morrow that their members had been severed to-day--some of whom, in
+a single moment, passed their whole existences, and fulfilled all the
+functions of eating, drinking, and generating--who were not only
+incapable of thoughts, affections, and emotions, but who could not
+see, smell, hear, taste, or touch? But such subjects are among the
+afflictions of all wise rulers, and I resolved to conclude upon
+nothing till I had visited every part of my dominions.
+
+"During three years of travel I classified the fishes anew, all
+previous enumeration being paltry, and made the notes and queries
+which form the staple of my manuscript. I found fresh-water creatures
+to which the sheat-fish would be a morsel, and hydras to which the
+fabled sea-serpent would be a worm. I ascended the rivers with the
+salmon, and fathomed the motives of the climbing-perch. I heard the
+narrative of a _siluris_ tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a
+haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon
+the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks
+in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish
+which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the
+horned-fish (_fil en dos_) which the savages discard from their nets
+in terror and prayer; and the sprats which rise with vapors into the
+clouds, and are rained back into the sea. I have collected the
+traditions of many of these beings, and have translated some of their
+ballads. There is music under the ocean; but most of the fishes sing
+with their fins, beating the water to rude measures. Among the
+traditions of all the tribes is that of a time when the waters were
+peaceful and the fishes happy, when none were rapacious, when death
+was unknown, when no storms lashed the ripples into billows, and when
+beings of the upper air bathed at the surface, and the fishes rendered
+them homage. But some foul deed of which the finny folk were guiltless
+brought confusion into the waters; the ocean covered all the globe,
+corpses sank into the depths and were devoured, nets were let down
+from above, strange fires were kindled beneath, and whirlpools,
+water-spouts, storms, and volcanoes began.
+
+"I devoted a fourth year to perfecting my system of organic
+communication, and made some advance toward developing life in
+inorganic matter. From this latter attainment it would be but a step
+to _perpetuate_ life, and I should thus restore immortality to man.
+But the shark family having threatened to revolt, I left off my
+investigations for some months, and organized a military force, with
+which I massacred the malcontents till my subjects swam in blood.
+Returning victoriously at the head of my legions, a sad incident
+occurred. A ship was crossing our line of march, and I had an
+unaccountable curiosity to hear something of terrestrial affairs. Five
+sawfish, at my bidding, staved in the ship's bottom, and she sank
+almost instantly. The corpses of the drowned drifted slowly down, and
+as I passed among them, turning up the faces, I recognized in one the
+features of my mother!
+
+"After a season of remorse I continued my investigations, but a novel
+and unexpected discovery deranged my plans, and wrought a change in my
+destiny.
+
+"The subtlest forms of matter, as commonly known, are the
+imponderables--light, heat, magnetism, and electricity. I had
+concluded that these were manifestations of some still subtler form,
+and that this was _life_, beyond which lay the ethereal elements
+(called _principles_) of mind and soul--soul being ultimate and
+eternal. To demonstrate this I resolved to descend as far as possible
+into the depths of the sea, and examine the beings which dwelt in the
+remotest darkness. The conical shape of my island allowed me to
+descend within its shelving interior, and yet sustain no great
+atmospheric pressure. I selected a sturgeon, whose body was so
+powerfully plated that he could not be crushed, and his long-pointed
+shape gave him great facility for penetrating dense waters. I attached
+a phosphorescent light to his caudal, that I might not lose him in the
+gloom, and he preceded me along the sloping interior. We passed the
+foundations of my court, bade adieu to the deep-swimming hydras, left
+the profoundest polypi behind, and came at length to uninhabited
+regions, three thousand fathoms below the surface. My pioneer here
+suffered great inconvenience, and only by the most vigorous efforts
+was able to progress at all. The blackness was literally tangible, and
+our lantern, at most, only 'darkness visible.' By threat and
+persuasion I forced him forward, hardly able to make headway myself.
+He swept the almost solid element with his powerful tail, depressed
+his sharp snout, sucked a long breath, and we darted forward
+simultaneously. There was a cracking as of bones forced together, and
+my cranium seemed to split. We shot out of the density into lighter
+water, and the momentum carried us fifty fathoms beyond!
+
+"We had passed out of the limit of solar attraction, and were being
+drawn toward the centre of the earth!
+
+"Before, we had been descending; now, we were rising. The fluid grew
+rarer and warmer as we proceeded, the darkness more luminous, and at
+last we became visible to each other, swimming in a ruby and
+transparent liquid, unlike any aspect or part of our native domain.
+The fluid became so rare finally, that the sturgeon was unable to go
+farther, kept down by his superior gravity. Some lights glimmering
+above us, and some mysterious sounds alarming him, he turned and fled.
+I was left alone.
+
+"I reached the surface of this peaceful sea. A scene lay before me
+more beautiful than any wonder of the deep. I knew that I was among
+immortals, and that this was 'Happy Archipelago'!
+
+"The surface was calm. Some purple islets were sprinkled here and
+there, and creatures marvellously fair were basking in the roseate
+waters. They looked like angels half way out of heaven. Their faces
+were of a silvery hue; their hairs shone on the stream like tremulous
+beams of light; their eyes were of a tender azure, and their bosoms
+rose and fell as if they were all dreaming of blessedness. Some
+strains of ravishing harmony that were floating among the islands
+ceased when I appeared, and I thought I heard the snapping of a
+lute-string. All the spirits started at once. They were
+crescent-shaped, and stood upon their nether tips. A star upon their
+foreheads shone like a pure diamond. They saw me and vanished!
+
+"All but one! She was the fairest of the spirits, and looked, thus
+frightened, like the pale new moon. The violet veins faded from her
+lids, and her blue eyes were full of wonder. I felt as if, for the
+first time, a sinless being had looked upon me, and my heart grew so
+black and heavy that I sank a little way. I feared to breathe, for she
+might vanish. I wished to lie forever with her face shining upon me.
+What were science, and dominion, and the secret of man's immortality
+to one pure glance like hers? In the agony of my soul I spoke:
+'Spirit! Immortal! Woman! O stay! Speak to me!'
+
+"'Who are you? Whence do you come? You are not of us, nor of our
+element.'
+
+"The voice was like a disembodied sound, coming from nothing, floating
+in space eternally.
+
+"'I am a creature of a cursed race--ruler of a blighted domain--a
+realm filled with violence: it lies beneath you.'
+
+"The pale face grew tender; the star on the forehead grew dim, like a
+tearful eye. She pitied me.
+
+"'There are beings above us,' she said, 'winged beings, that talk with
+us sometimes; but nothing below. Are _they_ sorrowful as you are? Are
+their brows all heavy with sadness like yours? Why are they unhappy?'
+
+"I wept and moaned.
+
+"'They have not your pure eyes; they cannot hear your voice. They have
+sinned.'
+
+"She glided toward me. I felt my gray hairs dropping one by one; my
+heavy heart grew light; my groans softened to sighs.
+
+"A shape came suddenly between us.
+
+"I knew the long green locks, and the glossy neck. It was Tethys who
+spoke. 'Man,' she said, 'you were made one of us, not one of these. Go
+back to your domain, for you are mortal. Resume dominion over the
+fish, or, striving to win more, lose all!'
+
+"I turned my face seaward bitterly. I looked back once; the blue eyes
+were gleaming--oh, so tenderly!--and I could not go. I muttered an
+execration at my bitter fate. Straightway the sky rocked, the sea
+rose, the pale star vanished. I had spoken a wicked word.
+
+"I was consigned to Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools. In vain I
+struggled in his watery arms; the swift current bore me circling away,
+and finally whirled me with frightful velocity. My feet were shaken
+asunder, my integument softened, my brain reeled. I was passed from
+eddy to eddy; I became drunken with emotion; I suffered all the
+tortures of the lost. A waterspout lifted me from the clutch of the
+sea, and deposited me upon the dry land, close to the home of my
+infancy.
+
+"I have passed the weary hours of my penance in arranging the memoirs
+which follow. Science has again wooed me with her allurements; the
+stars continue their correspondence. I have not despaired of the great
+secret of immortality; and though these hairs are few and white, I
+shall be rejuvenated in the tranquil depths of the water, and reassert
+for ages my rightful dominion over the fish!"
+
+I was in doubt whether to laugh or wonder when the Ancient Mariner
+concluded; but I was relieved from passing judgment upon his article
+by the unceremonious entrance of a tall, lithe, gray-eyed person, who
+wore gold seals and carried a thick walking-stick. The naturalist
+appeared to be bent on diving through the floor, and swimming away
+through the cellar; but he caught the stern, keen eye of the stranger
+and cowered. The tall man lifted his cane, and struck the manuscript
+out of his Highness's hands; he demolished the microscope at a blow,
+and flung the geological hammer out of the window.
+
+"Come along," he said. "No! drop that trash--every article of it, or
+else you'll be experimenting again. Come along!"
+
+They went away together, leaving my office littered with broken glass
+and sea-shells. With some astonishment I followed through the
+warehouse to the street; they had entered a carriage and were driving
+rapidly away. The next morning's paper explained the whole occurrence
+in the following paragraph:
+
+"_Much Learning hath made him mad._--Yesterday noon an elderly lunatic,
+named Robert Jones, committed suicide by leaping over the parapet of
+London Bridge. He was in the custody at the time of Dr. Stretveskit, the
+celebrated keeper of the Asylum for Monomaniacs. He had been at large
+some days, and was traced to several publishing-houses, whither he had
+gone to contrive the publication of some insane vagaries. He was finally
+overhauled at the office of Spry, Stromboli & Co., and placed in a
+carriage; but seizing a favorable moment when travel was impeded upon
+the bridge, he burst through the glass door and cleared the parapet at a
+bound. Jones was an adventurous and dangerous character. Some years ago
+he set fire to the Shrimpshire Asylum, where his family had confined
+him, and went abroad upon a whale-ship; but meeting with an accident, he
+underwent the process of trepanning and came home more crazy than
+before. At one time he attempted to drown his mother, in furtherance of
+some strange experiment; but it was thought at the date of his death
+that he was recovering his wits. Among his delusions was a strange
+one--that he had been made viceroy over all the fishes. His body has not
+been recovered."
+
+I read the last sentence with a thrill. My late visitor might even now
+be presiding at some finny council; and as I should have occasion to
+cross the sea some day, an untimely shipwreck might place me in closer
+relations with him. I determined, therefore, to print the manuscript
+which remained in my hands. May it appease his Mightiness, the King of
+the Fishes!
+
+
+
+
+THE CIRCUIT PREACHER.
+
+
+    His thin wife's cheek grows pinched and pale with anxiousness intense;
+    He sees the brethren's prayerful eyes o'er all the conference;
+    He hears the Bishop slowly call the long "Appointment" rolls,
+    Where in His vineyard God would place these gatherers of souls.
+
+    Apart, austere, the knot of grim Presiding Elders sit;
+    He wonders if some city "Charge" may not for him have writ?
+    Certes! could they his sermon hear on Paul and Luke awreck,
+    Then had his talent ne'er been hid on Annomessix Neck!
+
+    Poor rugged heart, be still a pause, and you, worn wife, be meek!
+    Two years of banishment they read far down the Chesapeake!
+    Though Brother Bates, less eloquent, by Wilmington is wooed,
+    The Lord that counts the sparrows fall shall feed His little brood.
+
+    "Cheer up! my girl, here Brother Riggs our circuit knows 'twill please.
+    He raised three hundred dollars there, besides the marriage fees.
+    What! tears from us who preached the word these thirty years or so?
+    Two years on barren Chincoteague, and two in Tuckahoe?
+
+    "The schools are good, the brethren say, and our Church holds the wheel;
+    The Presbyterians lost their house; the Baptists lost their zeal.
+    The parsonage is clean and dry; the town has friendly folk,--
+    Not half so dull as Murderkill, nor proud like Pocomoke.
+
+    "Oh! Thy just will, our Lord, be done, though these eight seasons more,
+    We see our ague-crippled boys pine on the Eastern Shore,
+    While we, Thy stewards, journey out our dedicated years
+    Midst foresters of Nanticoke, or heathen of Tangiers!
+
+    "Yea! some must serve on God's frontiers, and I shall fail, perforce,
+    To sow upon some better ground my most select discourse;
+    At Sassafras, or Smyrna, preach my argument on 'Drink,'
+    My series on the Pentateuch, at Appoquinimink.
+
+    "Gray am I, brethren, in the work, though tough to bear my part;
+    It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart,
+    And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine
+    To fill the churches of the Elk, and pass the Brandywine.
+
+    "These hairs were brown, when, full of hope, ent'ring these holy lists,
+    Proud of my Order as a knight--the shouting Methodists--
+    I made the pine woods ring with hymns, with prayer the night-winds shook,
+    And preached from Assawaman Light far north as Bombay Hook.
+
+    "My nag was gray, my gig was new; fast went the sandy miles;
+    The eldest Trustees gave me praise, the fairest sisters smiles;
+    Still I recall how Elder Smith of Worten Heights averred.
+    My Apostolic Parallels the best he ever heard.
+
+    "All winter long I rode the snows, rejoicing on my way;
+    At midnight our revival hymns rolled o'er the sobbing bay;
+    Three Sabbath sermons, every week, should tire a man of brass--
+    And still our fervent membership must have their extra class!
+
+    "Aggressive with the zeal of youth, in many a warm requite
+    I terrified Immersionists, and scourged the Millerite;
+    But larger, tenderer charities such vain debates supplant,
+    When the dear wife, saved by my zeal, loved the Itinerant.
+
+    "No cooing dove of storms afeard, she shared my life's distress,
+    A singing Miriam, alway, in God's poor wilderness;
+    The wretched at her footstep smiled, the frivolous were still;
+    A bright path marked her pilgrimage, from Blackbird to Snowhill.
+
+    "A new face in the parsonage, at church a double pride!--
+    Like the Madonna and her babe they filled the 'Amen-side'--
+    Crouched at my feet in the old gig, my boy, so fair and frank,
+    Naswongo's darkest marshes cheered, and sluices of Choptank.
+
+    "My cloth drew close; too fruitful love my fruitless life outran;
+    The townfolk marvelled, when we moved, at such a caravan!
+    I wonder not my lads grew wild, when, bright, without the door
+    Spread the ripe, luring, wanton world--and we, within, so poor!
+
+    "For, down the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout,
+    Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout,
+    And saying: 'Have these starveling boors, thy congregation, souls,
+    That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour forth such living coals?
+
+    "Then prayer brought hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch:
+    Beyond our barren Maryland God's folks were wise and rich;
+    Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived,
+    And all old brethren paid their rents, and many young ones wived!
+
+    "I saw the ships Henlopen pass with chaplains fat and sleek;
+    From Bishopshead with fancy's sails I crossed the Chesapeake;
+    In velvet pulpits of the North said my best sermons o'er--
+    And that on Paul to Patmos driven, drew tears in Baltimore.
+
+    "Well! well! my brethren, it is true we should not preach for pelf--
+    (I would my sermon on Saint Paul the Bishop heard himself!)
+    But this crushed wife--these boys--these hairs! they cut me to the core;
+    Is it not hard, year after year, to ride the Eastern Shore?
+
+    "Next year? Yes, yes, I thank you much! Then my reward may fall!
+    (That is a downright fair discourse on Patmos and St. Paul!)
+    So Brother Riggs, once more my voice shall ring in the old lists,
+    Cheer up, sick heart, who would not die among these Methodists?"
+
+
+
+
+THE BIG IDIOT.
+
+
+"Sister, thy boy is a big idiot--a very big idiot!" said Gerrit Van
+Swearingen, the Schout of New Amstel. Then the Schout struck his long
+official staff on the ground, and went off in a grand manner to
+frighten debtors.
+
+The Widow Cloos made no reply, but dropped a couple of tears as she
+saw her son, Nanking, shrink away before his uncle's frown and roll
+his head in deprecation of such language.
+
+"My mother," he whispered, "won't the big wild turkeys fly away with
+my uncle Gerrit if he calls me such dreadful names?"
+
+"Nanking," said the widow, kissing the big idiot, "your uncle is a
+very great man. I don't know what is greater, unless it is an admiral,
+or a stadtholder, or maybe a king!"
+
+"Yes," conceded Nanking, "he is a dreadfully great man. He puts
+drunken Indians in the stocks and ties mighty smugglers up to the
+whipping-pump. But Saint Nicholas will punish him if he calls me an
+idiot."
+
+"Ah! Nanking," replied the widow, "nothing can curb your
+uncle--neither the valiant Captain Hinoyossa, nor the puissant
+director of every thing, great Beeckman, nor hardly Pietrus Stuyvesant
+himself."
+
+"I know who can frighten him," exclaimed the big idiot. "Santa Claus!
+He's bigger than a schout. Mother, his whip-lash can reach clear over
+New Amstel--isn't it so? How many deers and ponies does he drive? Will
+he bring me any thing this year?"
+
+"My poor son!" said the poor mother, "we are so far from Holland and
+so very humble here, that Saint Nicholas may forget us this year; but
+God will watch over us!"
+
+Nanking could hardly comprehend this astonishing statement: that Saint
+Nicholas could ever forget little boys anywhere. So he went out by the
+river to think about it. There were three or four Swedish boys out
+there rolling marbles and playing at jack-stones. They did not like to
+play with Dutch boys, but Nanking was only a big idiot, and they did
+not harbor malice against him.
+
+"_He! Zoo!_" they cried; "wilt thou play?"
+
+"Yes, directly. But tell me, Peter Stalcop, and you, Paul Mink, do the
+very poorest little boys in Sweden get nothing on Christmas?"
+
+"_Ah, Zon der tuijfel!_ without doubt," cried the boys. "Old Knecht
+Clobes, your Santa Claus, is a bad man. That is why he gave the Dutch
+our country here. And in Sweden, too, he turns people to wolves, and
+brothers and sisters tear each other to pieces."
+
+"But not in Holland," exclaimed Nanking. "There he gives the strong
+boys skates and the weak boys Canary wine. He brought, one time, long
+ago, three murdered boys to life, so that they could eat goose for
+Christmas dinner. And three poor maidens, whose lovers would not take
+them because they had no marriage portions, found gold on the
+window-sill to get them husbands."
+
+"_Foei! Fus!_ You're lied to, Nanking! There is no good Christmas in
+this land."
+
+Nanking said they were very wicked to doubt true and good things. He
+believed every thing, and particularly every thing pleasant. His
+mother, whose house was on the river bank, looked out with a fond
+sadness as she heard him playing, his heart amongst the little boys,
+although he was so big.
+
+"_Ach! helas!_" she said to herself, "what will become of my dear
+man-lamb? He is simple and fatherless, poor and confiding. Thank God,
+at least he is not a woman!"
+
+The Widow Cloos had come but recently from Holland, sent out by
+charity at the instance of her brother, Van Swearingen, the schout or
+bailiff of New Amstel colony. Her son, who was almost a man in years,
+had been kept in the Orphan House at Amsterdam until his growth made
+him a misplaced object there, and his feeble intellect forbade that he
+should become a soldier, and die, like his father, in the Dutch
+battles. So the Widow Cloos brought Nanking out in the ship Mill, to
+the city of Amsterdam's own colony on the banks of the South River,
+which the English called the Delaware. They came in a starving time,
+when the crops were drenched out by rains and all the people and the
+soldiery of the fort were down with bilious and scarlet fever. The
+widow was just getting over a long attack of this illness, and her
+brother, the schout, regarded the innocent Nanking as the cause of her
+poverty.
+
+"Thou hadst better drown him," said the hard official; "he'll eat all
+thy substance or give the remainder away, for he believes every thing
+and everybody."
+
+"O brother!" pleaded the widow, "if he did not believe something, how
+sad would he be! All the children love him, and he is company for
+them."
+
+It was an odd sight to see Nanking down with the boys, as big as the
+father of any of them, playing as gently as the littlest. He rode them
+pig-a-back on his broad shoulders; they liked to see him light his
+pipe and smoke without getting sick. He worked for his mother,
+carrying water and catching fish, and was the only person in New
+Amstel (or Newcastle) who could go out into the woods fearlessly among
+the Minquas Indians; for the Indians all believed that feeble-minded
+people were the Great Spirit's especial friends, and saw beyond the
+boundaries of this world into that better heaven where shad ran all
+the year in the celestial rivers, and the oysters walked upon the
+land to be eaten. Nanking believed all this, too. It was his confiding
+nature which made him useless for worldly business. Hobgoblins and
+genii, charms and saints, and whatever he had heard in earnest, he
+held in earnest to be true.
+
+"Dear me!" thought Nanking, when he was done playing marbles, "can't I
+be of use to somebody? Perhaps if I could do something useful my uncle
+would not think me a big idiot. Then, besides, little Elsje Alrichs
+might let me be her sweetheart and carry her doll!"
+
+Elsje was the daughter of Peter Alrichs, the late great director's
+son, whose father slept in the graveyard of the little log church on
+Sand Hook, beside Dominie Welius, the holy psalm-tune leader. Nanking
+believed that when the weathercock on the church tingled in the wind,
+it was Dominie Welius in the grave striking his tuning-fork to catch
+the key-note. Peter Alrichs inherited the well-cleared farm of his
+papa, and had the best estate in all New Amstel except Gerrit Van
+Swearingen, who was accused of getting rich by smuggling, peculating,
+and slave-catching. Little Elsje liked Nanking, but her father too,
+said he was a big idiot. So Nanking had a hard time.
+
+"Elsje," cried Nanking one day, "don't tell anybody if I give you a
+secret."
+
+"No, big sweetheart!"
+
+"I'm going to catch a stork!"
+
+"We don't have storks in New Netherlands, Nanking."
+
+"That's just where I'm going to be smart," exclaimed Nanking. "Because
+there are no storks here I'm going to catch one. Then uncle Gerrit
+cannot call me a big idiot."
+
+Elsje gave Nanking her doll to hold. He sat there as big as a soldier,
+and handled the doll tenderly; for he believed it to be alive as much
+as she did, and she was a little girl.
+
+"In Holland," said Nanking, "there is a stork on every happy chimney.
+The farmers put a wagon-wheel on the chimney-top, and along comes your
+stork and his family, and they build a nest on the wagon-wheel. There
+it is, Elsje, all twigs and grass, warm as pie, heated by the
+chimney-fire, and such a squawking you never heard. It keeps the devil
+away! The old stork sits up on one long straight leg, and with the
+other foot he hands the worms around to the family. I used to sit down
+and watch them by the hour in that other Amstel where ours gets its
+name."
+
+"By the great city of Amsterdam?" asked Elsje.
+
+"That's it. In Amstel, the suburb of Amsterdam, where you can see such
+beautiful ships from all parts of the world. If I get a stork for our
+chimney may I hold your doll another day?"
+
+"Yes, Nanking, and I'll give you a kiss."
+
+Nanking told his mother next day that he was going to the woods, and
+not to cry if he did not return at dark. The Widow Cloos kissed him,
+and saw him go happily up the street.
+
+"_Om licht en donker!_" she moaned. "Between the hawk and the buzzard!
+Poor, simple son! The Indians may kill him, but here he will only get
+his uncle's curse!"
+
+Nanking walked out through the little settlement of log and brick, and
+past the court-house, where the stocks and whipping-post were always
+standing. He saw his uncle Van Swearingen's smart dwelling, with its
+end to the street and notched gables, and many panes in its glazed
+windows, and two front doors, and large iron figures in front, telling
+the date his uncle built it. A little way off was the fine residence
+of Peter Alrichs, with a balcony on the roof where the family sat of
+evenings, smoking their pipes and seeing starlight come out on the
+river and the flag drop at sunset from Fort Casimir; or hearing the
+roll of drums as they changed the guard or fired a gun to overhaul a
+vessel.
+
+"If I get a stork and bring it back," thought Nanking, "won't I
+astonish this town? It'll be proclaimed, I expect, in a public manner,
+that Nanking Cloos is no longer the big idiot."
+
+The woods closed round New Amstel not very far from the houses, and
+only an Indian path led on through the strong timber or marshy copse.
+Nanking was unarmed and not afraid. He walked until long after sun-up,
+and waded the headwater swamps of Christine Kill, until he saw before
+him the hills of Chisopecke rise blue and wooded, and there he knew
+the Minquas kept their fort. But the Minquas had no storks. He turned
+the first and second of these hills and then crossed the range and
+descended to the rain-washed country on the other side, where, amid
+the low sparse pines on the lonely barrens, he could walk more
+readily, guided south-westward by the proceeding sun. The fierce
+Susquehannocks dwelt beyond the next high range, and Nanking had heard
+from other Indians that they only had some storks. Fierce Indians they
+were, but all Indians had been good to Nanking; so he advanced right
+merrily, and at the crossing of the second river snaked a fish out of
+the water with his line and made a fire with his flint and punk-wood
+to cook it. When he had finished his meal he looked up and was
+surrounded by Indians.
+
+They were fierce, grave Indians, armed with spears and bows. Although
+they looked angry, Nanking wiped his mouth on his ragged sleeve and
+saluted them all kindly--shaking hands. He perceived that they formed
+around him closely, in front and rear, but he was not suspicious on
+this account. The Indians marched him over a long range of very high
+hills and stopped at a place where, through the timber, could be seen
+a noble bay.
+
+"It is Chisopecke Bay," cried Nanking gladly, "and there, they say,
+are storks and plentiful geese. I suppose, when we come to a proper
+place, these Indians will ask me what I want."
+
+The Indians turned down from the bay-view, backward, by another trail,
+and entered a very rocky glen, where rocks as big as the houses of New
+Amstel were strewn all over the country-side. Following downward, by a
+dangerous way like stair-steps, they entered at length a small shady
+amphitheatre, where a waterfall plunged down a gorge and foamed and
+thundered. Nanking fairly danced with delight.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I have seen paintings of cascades in Holland, but
+nothing like this. My mother and Elsje must come here."
+
+The Indians, now present in great numbers, looked at Nanking dancing
+and laughing with the greatest wonder, but still they were far from
+affable. After a while they began to sit around in a large circle and
+sing a doleful sort of tune. Then two Indians produced a long piece of
+grapevine and tied one end of it to a tree and the other end around
+Nanking's wrists, which were fastened together behind his back. A fire
+had already been lighted at the foot of the tree, and the coals were
+now strewn over the ground.
+
+"_Hond mold!_ Keep courage!" thought Nanking. "It is only some kind of
+play or game. How can I get a stork from them unless I play with
+them?"
+
+But the Indians still sung their doleful tune and did not laugh a bit.
+The month was December, and the fire, at first grateful, grew
+unreasonably warm. At last Nanking trod on a hot coal, which burnt his
+old shoe through, and raised a blister on his heel.
+
+"Such a game as this I never learned in Amsterdam or New Amstel,"
+thought Nanking, laughing good-naturedly; "I guess I will cut it short
+by riding one of their boys pig-a-back."
+
+So he picked out a young Indian with his roving eye, one perhaps
+sixteen years old, and, darting upon him, lifted the Indian boy up in
+powerful arms and carried him around the fiery circle. The young brave
+struggled in vain. Nanking clinched his big fingers around the Indian
+and dandled him like a baby. The effect upon the Indians in the
+circle was exciting; they seized their spears, stopped their singing,
+and rushed upon their guest with apparent or assumed fury.
+
+"_Ha! herfe!_" cried Nanking, "I have changed the monotony of this
+game, anyhow!"
+
+At this moment an old Indian woman, the mother of the boy whom Nanking
+had desired to amuse, threw herself between the upraised spears and
+the laughing widow's son. She shouted something very earnestly, and
+then stretched herself at Nanking's feet. All the other Indians also
+flung themselves down in fear or revulsion of feeling, and some
+crawled in another minute to where the burning coals were strewn over
+the sward, and with their fingers or with tree-boughs returned these
+coals to the fire, while others quenched the fire itself with water
+from the torrent. Nanking had never lost his temper. He put the young
+Indian down and kissed him, and shook hands with one after another,
+who only rose as he approached them with a kind countenance. They
+unbound his hands and overwhelmed him with attentions and professions,
+and placed their fingers on their foreheads significantly, still
+looking at him.
+
+"Well," exclaimed Nanking, "I hope they also don't take me for a big
+idiot! No, they do not. It is only a part of the queer game."
+
+It was now growing late in the day, and Nanking wanted some food. The
+Susquehannocks produced nuts, venison, fish, hominy, and succotash.
+Their formerly savage countenances beamed confidence and
+consideration. Nanking expressed his wishes by signs. He wanted a
+great, long-legged, long-winged bird, a stork, to carry back alive to
+New Amstel. The Indian chiefs conferred, and finally replied, by signs
+and assurances, that they had such a bird, but that it would take two
+whole days to procure one.
+
+"Very well," thought Nanking, "I may as well stay here until I get it,
+and not return home like a fool. My mother will trust in God, if not
+in Saint Nicholas, and I trust in both. Elsje will not forget me at
+any time!"
+
+All the next day Nanking played ball and bandy with the Susquehannock
+boys, and taught them jack-stones and how to make a shuttlecock. They
+put eagle's feathers in his hair, and the old men adopted him into
+their tribe. On the third day the absent Indians returned with a
+stork. It was a white stork with a red bill and plenty of stork's
+neck, but short legs. Nanking doubted if it could stand on one leg on
+the top of a chimney and feed worms around to the young stork family,
+but he felt very proud and happy. The whole tribe seemed to have
+assembled to see Nanking go away. He had become the friend of all the
+boys and women and the _protégé_ of the tall warriors. They placed his
+stork in a canoe, and in a second canoe following it were a couple of
+large deers freshly killed, which he was to take to his mother as the
+gift of the fierce Susquehannocks. Amid the cheers and adieus of the
+nation the two canoes pushed off and, entering the broad bay, paddled
+up a river under the side of a bar of blue mountains, until the river
+dwindled to a mere creek, and finally its navigation ceased
+altogether. By signs upon the head of the dead stag, indicating a
+larger deer, Nanking knew they were at the "Head-of-Elk" River. His
+fierce friends left him here with many professions of apology and
+esteem, and soon after they departed Swedes and Minquas appeared, who
+had observed the hostile canoes from their lookout stations on the
+neighboring hills. These also welcomed Nanking, being already well
+acquainted with him, and taking up his venison proceeded through the
+woods toward New Amstel. He carried the live stork himself--a rough
+bird, which would not yield to blandishments or good treatment. After
+a very fatiguing journey and four days' absence from home, Nanking
+entered New Amstel in the dead of night.
+
+"To-morrow," he thought, "I shall be repaid for all this. They will
+say, 'Nanking Cloos is the smartest man in the colony of New Amstel.'
+Perhaps I shall be a burgomaster, and eat terrapin stewed in Canary
+wine!"
+
+Nanking was up betimes, looking at the chimneys on his mother's
+dwelling, of which there were two, and both were the largest chimneys
+in New Amstel. The Widow Cloos lived in a huge log building with brick
+ends, long and rather low, which had been built by the commissary of
+the colony at the expense of the city of Amsterdam as a magazine of
+food and supply for her colonists; but after several years of
+unprofitable experiment with the colony, it was resolved to give no
+more provisions away, and the director, great Captain Hinoyossa, when
+Van Swearingen became the schout, allowed the latter's sister to
+inhabit one end of the warehouse, and that the farthest end from the
+water. The rest was uninhabited, and Nanking, looking at the chimney
+which surmounted the river gable, said to himself:
+
+"That will never do for my stork, as there is no fire lighted there. I
+never saw smoke from that chimney in my life. The stork requires a
+nest where there is heat, and plenty of it."
+
+He therefore prepared to climb to the chimney on the land-side and
+establish a nest. There was a broken cart-wheel in the warehouse,
+which Nanking procured and drew to the roof, and when daylight broke
+upon the town the earliest loungers and fishermen saw the happy
+simpleton working like a chimney-sweep, as they thought, except that
+instead of brushing he was piling brush around the chimney on the
+cart-wheel. His mother came out and looked joy to see him back; the
+soldiers strolled down from the fort and the boys and women from the
+town. Uncle Van Swearingen was there, smiting the ground with his
+shodden staff, and ejaculating, "_Foei! weg! fychaam u!_ Fie! leave
+off! fie on you! What absurdity is this on the property of our
+_hoofstad_, our metropolis?"
+
+"Never mind, uncle!" answered the beaming Nanking. "I have been a
+great man in the last few days. I have lived among the fierce
+Susquehannocks. Presently you shall see something that you shall see!"
+
+Peter Alrichs also came down to the quay with his pretty daughter, who
+could no longer keep her secret. "Good Nanking," she whispered, "is
+building a nest for a real stork. He has found one, just like the dear
+creatures in Holland!"
+
+The news was presently dispersed, and all felt an interest, until
+finally Nanking produced his stork.
+
+"It is like a stork, indeed!" uttered Peter Alrichs; "'tis big as one,
+too, but its wings are all white!"
+
+"'Tis a stork, _yah, op myne eer_! Upon my honor, it is!" muttered
+uncle Van Swearingen.
+
+"Nanking is not an idiot, papa!" said Elsje, overjoyed.
+
+The widow was delighted at the enterprise of her son.
+
+When Nanking had carried the great bird to the nest he made a little
+speech:
+
+"Worshipful masters and good people all, I have been at great pains to
+get this stork, not for my own gratification entirely, though there
+are some here I expect to please particularly. (He looked at Elsje and
+his mother.) This stork will pick up the offal and eat it, and we
+shall have no more bad fevers here for want of a good scavenger. By
+and by he will bring more storks, and they will multiply; and every
+house, however humble, shall have its own stork family to ornament the
+chimney-top and remind us of our dear native land. I have done all
+this good with the hope of being useful, and now I hope nobody will
+call me wicked names any more."
+
+Nanking cut the fastenings on the bird and set it on the new-made
+nest. In a minute the stork stood up on its short legs, poked its
+beautiful head and neck into the air, and with its wings struck
+Nanking so heavy a blow that it knocked him off the roof of the house,
+but happily the fall did not hurt him. As he arose the huge bird was
+spreading its wings for flight. Before Nanking could climb the ladder
+again, it was sailing through the air, magnificent as a ship, toward
+its winter pastures on the bay of Chisopecke.
+
+"_He! Zoo!_" exclaimed the soldiers.
+
+"_Foei! weg!_" cried the fishermen.
+
+Only three persons said "_Ach! helas!_"--the Widow Cloos, pretty
+Elsje, and Nanking.
+
+"Thy stork is a savage bird!" cried Peter Alrichs. "The English on the
+Chisopecke name it a _swan_!"
+
+Nanking burst into tears. His uncle struck the ground with his
+schout's staff, swore dreadfully, and shouted to the Widow Cloos:
+
+"Sister, thy boy is nothing but a big idiot. Thou hadst better drown
+him, as I told thee!"
+
+Nothing could equal the mortification of Nanking. He thought he would
+die of grief. He was now known to be more of an idiot than ever, and
+the fickle Miss Elsje would not let him hold her doll for a whole
+week.
+
+"My poor son," entreated the widow, "do not pine and lose courage! The
+venison will feed us half the winter. You can help me smoke it and dry
+it. Do not give up your sweet simple faith, my boy! As long as you
+keep that we are rich!"
+
+The next day Schout Van Swearingen, the great dignitary, came in and
+said to Nanking: "As you are a big idiot and good for nothing else, I
+will give you an office. Even there you will be a failure, for you are
+too simple to steal any thing."
+
+Nanking's mother was happy to hear this, and to see her son in a
+linsey-woolsey coat with large brass buttons, and six pairs of
+breeches--the gift of the city of Amsterdam--stride up the streets of
+New Amstel, with copper buckles in his shoes and his hair tied in an
+eel-skin queue. The schout, his uncle, who was sheriff and chief of
+police in one, marched him up to the jail and presented him with a
+beautiful plaything--a handle of wood with nine leather whip-lashes
+upon the end of it. "Your duties will be light," said the schout.
+"Every man you flog will give your mother a fee. Come here with me and
+begin your labors!"
+
+In the open space before the jail and _stadt huys_ were a pair of
+stocks and a whipping-post. Nanking's uncle released a rough but
+light-built man, who had been sitting in the stocks, and taking off
+the man's jacket and shirt, fastened him to the post by his wrists.
+
+"Give this culprit fifty lashes, well laid on!" ordered the schout.
+
+Nanking turned pale. "Must I whip him? What has he been doing that he
+is wicked?"
+
+"Smuggling!" exclaimed Schout Van Swearingen. "He has taken advantage
+of the free port of New Amstel to smuggle to the Swedes of Altona and
+New Gottenburg, and the English of Maryland. Mark his back well!"
+
+The sailor, as he seemed to be, looked at Nanking without fear. "Come,
+earn your money," he said.
+
+"Uncle," cried Nanking, throwing down the whip, "how can I whip this
+man who never injured me? Do not all the people smuggle in New Amstel?
+Was it not to stop that which brought the mighty Director Stuyvesant
+hither with the great schout of New Amsterdam, worshipful Peter
+Tonneman? Yes, uncle, I have heard the people say so, and that you
+have smuggled yourself ever since your superior, the glorious Captain
+Hinoyossa, sailed to Europe."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the bold smuggler. "Van Swearingen, _dat is voor u_!
+That is for you!"
+
+"_Vore God_!" exclaimed the schout; "am I exposed and mocked by this
+idiot?"
+
+He took up the whip and beat Nanking so hard that the strong young man
+had to disarm his uncle of the instrument. Then, stripped of his fine
+clothes and restored to his rags, Nanking was returned with contempt
+to his mother's house.
+
+"Mother!" he cried, throwing himself upon the floor, "am I an idiot
+because I cannot hurt others? No, I will be a fool, but not
+whip-master!"
+
+The shrewd Peter Alrichs came to the widow's abode and asked to see
+Nanking. He brought with him the worshipful Beeckman, lord of all
+South River, except New Amstel's little territory, which reached from
+Christine Hill to Bombay Hook. They both put long questions to
+Nanking, and he showed them his burnt heel, still scarred by the
+fagots of the Susquehannocks.
+
+"_Ik houd dat voor waar!_ I believe it is true," they said to each
+other. "They were burning him at the stake and he did not know it.
+Yes, his feeble mind saved him!"
+
+"Not at all," protested Nanking. "It was because I thought no evil of
+anybody."
+
+"Hearken, Nanking!" said Peter Alrichs, very soberly. "And you, Mother
+Cloos, come hither too. This boy can make our fortunes if we can make
+him fully comprehend us."
+
+"Yah, mynheers!"
+
+"He can return in safety to the land of the Susquehannocks, where no
+other Dutchman can go and live. Thence, down the great river of rocks
+and rapids, come all the valuable furs. Of these we Dutch on South
+River receive altogether only ten thousand a year. Nanking must take
+some rum and bright cloth to his friends, the chiefs, and make them
+promise to send no more furs to the English of Chisopecke, but bring
+them to Head-of-Elk. There we will make a treaty, and Nanking and
+thee, widow, shall have part of our profits."
+
+"_Zeer wel!_" cried Nanking. "That is very well. But Elsje, may I
+marry her, too?"
+
+"Well," said Peter Alrichs, smiling, "you can come to see her
+sometimes and carry her doll."
+
+"Good enough!" cried Nanking, overjoyed.
+
+Before Nanking started on his trip, the sailor-man he had refused to
+whip walked into his mother's house.
+
+"Widow Cloos, no doubt," he said, bowing. "Madame, I owe your son a
+service. Here are three petticoats and a pair of blue stockings with
+red clocks; for I see that your ankles still have a fine turn to
+them."
+
+The widow courtesied low; for she had not received a compliment in
+seven years.
+
+Nanking now began to show his leg also, as modestly as possible.
+
+"Ah! Nanking," cried the sailor, "I have a piece of good Holland stuff
+for you to make you shirts and underclothes. 'Tis a pity so good a boy
+has not a rich father; ha! widow?"
+
+The widow stooped very low again, but had the art to show her ankle to
+the best advantage, though she blushed. She said it was very lonely
+for her in the New World.
+
+"Now, Widow Cloos," continued the sailor, "I am Ffob Oothout, at your
+service! I am a mariner. Some years ago, when Jacob Alrichs was our
+director, I helped to build this great warehouse with my own hands.
+They were good men, then, in charge of New Amstel's government.
+Thieves and jealous rogues have succeeded them. Would you think it,
+they suspect even me, and ordered Nanking to whip me with the cat! But
+for Nanking I should have a bloody back at this minute, and you would
+be wiping the brine out of it for me, I do not doubt!"
+
+Nanking had gone out meantime, seeing that he was to get no
+clock-stockings.
+
+"Widow, come hither," said the sailor. "Do you know I like this big
+barn of a warehouse. It is my handicraft, you know, and that attaches
+me to it. Well, you say nothing to anybody, and let me sleep in the
+river end. In a little while the noble veteran, Alexander D'Hinoyosso,
+will be due from Holland on the ship Blue Cock. Then we will all have
+good protection. In that ship are lots of supplies of mine. Of
+evenings we can court and drink liquor of my own mulling. And when
+the Blue Cock comes to port you shall have more petticoats and
+high-heeled shoes than any beauty in New Amstel."
+
+Ffob Oothout stole a couple of kisses from the widow, like a bold
+sailor-man, and she promised that he should lodge in the river end of
+the Amsterdam warehouse.
+
+For the rest of that afternoon Nanking carried Elsje's beautiful doll,
+and his feelings were very much comforted.
+
+"Big sweetheart," she said, "what a smart man you would be if you
+could only make me a bigger doll than this, which would open and shut
+its eyes and cry '_fus_; hush!'"
+
+Nanking left New Amstel at moonlight, at the head of a little
+procession, carrying gay cloths and plenty of rum for the
+Susquehannocks. The last words Peter Alrichs said to him were: "You
+must talk wisely, Nanking. It is a mighty responsibility you have on
+this errand. Remember Elsje!"
+
+Next morning Nanking pushed off in a boat, all alone, from the
+Head-of-Elk, and rowed under the blue bar of mountain into the
+Chisopecke, and turned up the creek below the rocky mouth of the great
+river toward the council-fire retreat of the fierce Susquehannocks. As
+he was about to step ashore a band of Englishmen confronted him, with
+swords and muskets.
+
+"Whom art thou?" cried their leader, a stalwart man, with long
+mustaches.
+
+"Only Nanking Cloos, mynheers, who used to be the big idiot of New
+Amstel. But," he added, with confidence, "I am now a great man on a
+very responsible mission to the Indians. I am to talk much and wisely.
+They are to send to New Amstel thousands of furs and peltries, and I
+am to give them this rum and finery!"
+
+"He talks beautifully," exclaimed the English; and the chief man
+added:
+
+"Nanking, I know thee well. Thy mother is the pretty widow in the
+house by the river. I am Colonel Utye, who swore so dreadfully when I
+summoned New Amstel to surrender. Come ashore, Nanking."
+
+Nanking felt very proud to be recognized thus and receive such
+compliments for his mother. The English poured out a big flagon of
+French brandy and gravely drank his health, touching their foreheads
+with their thumbs. The brandy elated and exalted Nanking very much.
+
+"Nanking," said Colonel Utye, "we desire to spare thee a long journey
+and much danger. Leave here thy rum and presents, and return to thy
+patrons, Alrichs and Beeckman, bearing our English gratitude, and thou
+shalt wear a beautiful hat, such as the King of England allows only
+his jester to put upon his head."
+
+Nanking felt very much obliged to these kind gentlemen. They made the
+hat of the red cloth he had brought. It was like a tall steeple on a
+house, and was at least three feet long. As proud as possible he
+re-entered New Amstel on the evening of the day after he left it. It
+was now within a few days of Christmas, and the Dutch burghers and
+boors, and Swedes, English and Finns, were anticipating that holiday
+by assembling at the two breweries which the town afforded, and
+quaffing nightly of beer. Beeckman and Alrichs were interested in the
+largest brewery, and their beer was sent by Appoquinimy in great
+hogsheads to the English of Maryland in exchange for butts of tobacco.
+
+As Nanking walked into the big room where fifty men were drinking, his
+prodigious red hat rose almost to the ceiling, and was greeted by
+roars of laughter.
+
+"_Goeden avond! Hoe yaart gij!_ How do you do, my bully?"
+
+Nanking bowed politely, and singling out Beeckman and Alrichs, stood
+before them with child-like joy.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I gave all your presents to the noble Colonel
+Utye, who sends his deepest gratitude, and presented me with this
+exalted cap in acknowledgment of my capacity."
+
+"Thou idiot!" exclaimed Beeckman; "'tis a dunce's cap!"
+
+"Dunder and blitzen!" swore Peter Alrichs, "hast thou lost all our
+provision and made fools of us, too?"
+
+They struck the dunce's cap off Nanking's head with their staves, and
+threw their beer in his face.
+
+"Two hundred guilders are we out of pocket," cried both these great
+men. "Was ever such a brainless dolt in our possessions?"
+
+The room rang with the cry, "Incurable idiot!" and Gerrit Van
+Swearingen cried louder than any, "Go drown thyself, and spare thy
+mother shame!"
+
+"Then I shall not marry Elsje?" exclaimed Nanking, bursting into
+tears.
+
+"No!" stormed Peter Alrichs; "thou shalt marry a calf. Away!"
+
+When Nanking arrived home he found his mother sitting very close to
+Ffob Oothout. He told his tale with a broken heart.
+
+"My man," exclaimed the rough sailor, in his kindest tone, but still
+very rough, "take this advice from me: Whatever thou believest, tell
+it not. Where thy head is weak, hold thy teeth tight. Then thou canst
+still have faith in many things, and make no grief."
+
+The next day the Blue Cock sailed into the roadstead and the fort
+thundered a salute. Fort and vessel dipped the tricolor flag of the
+States-General and the municipal banner of Amsterdam. Beeckman
+surrendered all the country on South River to Hinoyossa, who came
+ashore very drunk and very haughty, and threatened to set up an empire
+for himself and fit out privateers against the world.
+
+"Let him lose no time," muttered Ffob Oothout; "the English have
+doomed these Western Netherlands!"
+
+Amidst the festivity Nanking was in a condition of despair. He had
+seen Elsje on the street and she turned up her nose at him. Christmas
+was only one day off, and Santa Claus, the Swede boys insisted, never
+came to the sorrowing shores of New Amstel.
+
+"My uncle Gerrit was right," thought Nanking. "I had better drown
+myself. Yes; I will watch on Christmas eve for Santa Claus. I will
+give him plenty of time to come. He is the patron saint of children,
+and if he neglects poor, simple boys in this needful place, there is
+no truth in any thing. On Christmas morning I will fall into the river
+without any noise. My mother will cry, perhaps, but nobody else, and
+they will all say, 'It was better that the big idiot should be
+drowned; he had not sense enough to keep out of the water.'"
+
+Nanking spent half the day watching the chimneys of his mother's
+house. Both chimneys were precisely alike in form and capacity, and
+the largest in the place. But the chimney next the river did not
+retain the dark, smoky, red color of the chimney on the land side.
+
+"No wonder," thought Nanking, "for no fire nor smoke has been made in
+that river chimney for years. It almost seems that the bricks therein
+are oozing out their color and growing pale and streaked."
+
+Night fell while he was watching. Nanking hid himself upon the roof of
+the house, determined to see if Saint Nicholas ever came to bless
+children any more by descending into chimneys, or was only a myth.
+
+It was a little cold, and under the moonlight the frost was forming on
+the marshes and fields. The broad, remorseless river flowed past with
+nothing on its tide except the two or three vessels tied to the river
+bank, of which the Blue Cock was directly under the widow's great
+dwelling. From the town came sounds of revelry and wassail, of singing
+and quarrel, and from the church on Sand Hook softer chanting, where
+the women were twining holly and laurel and mistletoe. Nanking lay
+flat on the roof, with his face turned toward the sky. The moon went
+down and it grew very dark.
+
+"Lord of all things," he murmured, "forgive my rash intention and
+comfort my poor mother!"
+
+The noise of the town died on the night air, and every light went out.
+Nanking said to himself, "Is it Christmas at all, out in this lonely
+wilderness of the world? Is it the same sky which covers Holland, and
+are these stars as gentle as yonder, where all are rich and happy?"
+
+He heard a noise. A voice whispered, just above the edge of the
+chimney on the river gable: "_Fus-s-s! Pas op!_"
+
+"What is that?" thought Nanking; "somebody saying, 'Hist! be careful?'
+Surely I see something moving on the chimney, like a living head."
+
+The voice whispered again: "_Maak hast! Kom hier!_" Or, "Hasten! Come
+here!"
+
+Nanking raised up and made a noise.
+
+"_Wie komt, daar_?" demanded the voice, and in a minute repeated:
+"_Wie sprecht, daar_?"
+
+They ask, "Who comes and who speaks?" said Nanking. "Blessed be the
+promises of heaven! It is Santa Claus!"
+
+Then he heard movements at the chimney, and people seemed to be
+ascending and descending a ladder. There seemed, also, to be noises on
+the deck of the Blue Cock, and sounds of falling burdens and spoken
+words: "Maak plaats!" or make room for more.
+
+"I never heard of Santa Claus stopping so long at one humble house,"
+thought Nanking.
+
+After awhile all sounds ceased. Nanking crept to the chimney and
+touched it with his hand. It had no opening whatever in the top.
+
+He felt around this mysterious chimney. "He! Zoo!" he said aloud,
+"there is more wood here than brick. 'Tis a false chimney altogether!"
+
+Then he saw that his close observation had not been at fault. The
+chimney over the river gable was a painted chimney, a mere invention.
+Yet, surely Santa Claus had been there.
+
+After a time Nanking opened the top and side of this chimney as if
+they were two doors. He found it packed with goods of all kinds--a ton
+at least.
+
+"I will run and awaken my mother," he thought. "But no. Did not Ffob
+Oothout tell me to blab no secrets and shut my teeth tight? I will
+tell nobody. These costly things are all mine; for there are no other
+boys in this whole dwelling but Nanking Cloos, the fatherless idiot!"
+
+He slipped down and hastened to his boat, which lay in a cove not far
+below. Towing it along the bank to a sheltered place convenient,
+Nanking began to load up the goods from the chimney. Before daylight
+broke he had secured every thing, and hoisting sail was speedily
+carried to the island of the Pea Patch, far down the bay--that island
+which shone in the offing and seemed to close the river's mouth. Here,
+in the wreck of an old galiot, he hid every article dry and secure;
+kegs of liquors and wine, shawls and blankets, pieces of silk,
+gunpowder, beautiful pipes, bars of silver and copper, and a whole bag
+of gold. Nanking covered them with dry driftwood and boughs of trees,
+and sailed again to New Amstel, where he arrived before breakfast.
+
+At breakfast Nanking found upon his bench a beautiful new gun.
+
+"It is thine, good child," said Ffob Oothout, "for sparing me those
+lashes. Thy churlish uncle felt so reproved by thy innocent words that
+he set me free. Widow, here is a _spiegel_ for thee, a looking-glass
+to see, unseen, whoever passes up or down the street. That is a
+woman's high privilege everywhere. Thou shalt be, erelong, the
+best-dressed wife in all New Amstel. Nanking, wouldst thou like to
+have a father?"
+
+"I would like you, Ffob Oothout, for a father."
+
+"Widow," said Ffob, "he has popped the question for me; wilt thou take
+an old pirate for thy man?"
+
+"They are all pirates here," replied the blushing widow, "and thou
+art the best pirate or man I have seen."
+
+"Well, then, when the English conquer this region I have that will
+make thee rich. Till then let us wait on the good event, but not delay
+the marriage."
+
+That Christmas Day they were married in form. As the three sat before
+the fresh venison and drank wine from the store of the Blue Cock,
+Nanking said:
+
+"Father Ffob, you are wise. Give me yet another word of advice, that I
+may not continue to be a big idiot."
+
+"Trust whom thou wilt, Nanking, yet ever hold thy tongue. If thou hast
+now a secret, hold it close. Begin this instant!"
+
+"Even the secrets of Santa Claus?"
+
+"Yes, even them."
+
+Nanking said no more. He found compensation for Elsje's contumely in
+his gun, and roved the forests through, and peeped from time to time
+at his mystic treasures.
+
+One day the news came overland that the English had taken New
+Amsterdam. Then the great Hinoyossa and uncle Van Swearingen and
+Alrichs and Beeckman swore dreadfully, and said they would fight to
+the last man. Ffob Oothout went around amongst the Swedes and the
+citizen Dutch, and prepared them to take the matter reasonably.
+
+One day in October of that same wonderful year, 1664, two mighty
+vessels of war, flying the English flag, came to anchor off New Amstel
+and the fort. They parleyed with the citizens for a surrender, and
+Ffob Oothout conducted the negotiations. The citizens were to receive
+protection and property. The fort replied by a cannon. Then the
+English soldiery landed and formed their veteran lines. They charged
+the ramparts and broke down the palisades, and killed three Dutchmen
+and wounded ten more. Proclamation was made that New Amstel should for
+all the future be named New-_castle_, and that Gerrit Van Swearingen,
+the refractory schout, should yield up his noble property to Captain
+John Carr, of the invaders, and Peter Alrichs lose every thing for the
+benefit of the fortunate William Tom.
+
+The English soldiery proceeded to make barracks of the Amsterdam
+warehouse. The first night they inhabited it they strove to light a
+fire under the wooden chimney in the river gable. The chimney caught
+fire and burnt out like an old hollow barrel.
+
+"Wife," exclaimed Ffob Oothout, looking grimly on, "in that chimney
+was all my property and thine. Poor boy," he said to Nanking, "we must
+all be poor together now."
+
+"No," cried Nanking, "I have yet the gifts of Santa Claus which I took
+from that chimney on the night before Christmas. Yours, father, may be
+burnt. Mine are all safe!"
+
+He sailed his father and mother to the island since called the Pea
+Patch, and Ffob Oothout recognized his property.
+
+"Wonderful Nanking!" he cried, "thy faith was all the wisdom we had.
+God protects the simple! Thou art our treasure."
+
+The great Hinoyossa condignly fled to Maryland. Uncle Van Swearingen
+was exported to Holland, and in the dwelling of Peter Alrichs the
+family of Ffob Oothout made their abode.
+
+"Nanking," asked the houseless Alrichs, "is not Elsje pretty yet?"
+
+"Not as pretty," answered Nanking, "as my little baby sister. I will
+carry nobody's doll but hers."
+
+"Humph!" said Peter Alrichs, "you are not the big idiot I took you
+for!"
+
+
+
+
+A BAYSIDE IDYL.
+
+
+    Basking on the Choptank pleasant Cambridge lies
+    In the humid atmosphere under fluttered skies,
+    And the oaks and willows their protection fling
+    Round the court-house cluster and the public spring.
+
+    There the streets are cleanly and they meet oblique,
+    Forced upon each other by the village creek
+    Winding round the ancient lawns, till the site appears
+    Like a moated fortress crumbling down with years.
+
+    Round the town the oysters grow within the coves,
+    And the fertile cornfields bearing yellow loaves;
+    And the wild duck flying o'er the parish spire
+    Fall into the graveyard when the fowlers fire?
+
+    There the old armorial stones dwellers seldom read;
+    There the ivy clambers like the rankest weed;
+    There the Cambridge lawyers sometimes scale the wall
+    To the grave of Helen, loveliest of all.
+
+    Even here the fairest of the little band
+    Strangers call the fairest girls in Maryland,
+    Like the peach her color ere its dyes are fast,
+    And her form as slender as the virgin mast.
+
+    Like a vessel gliding with a net in tow,
+    Up the street of evenings Helen seemed to flow,
+    Leaving light behind her and a nameless spell
+    Murmured in the young men, like an ocean shell.
+
+    Made too early conscious of her power to charm,
+    Still unconscious ever love of men could harm,
+    Voices whispered to her: "Beauty rare as thine
+    Princes in the city never drank in wine!
+
+    "Hide it not in Cambridge! Cross the bay and see
+    How a world delighted hastes to honor thee.
+    Seek the fortune-teller and thy future hear;
+    There is empire yonder; there is thy career!"
+
+    Oh, the sad ambition and the speedy dart!
+    He, the fortune-reader, read poor Helen's heart;
+    And a face created for the hearthstone's light--
+    Fishers tell its ruin as they scud by night.
+
+    Whisper, whisper, whisper! leaf and wave and grass;
+    Look not sidewise, maiden, as the place you pass.
+    If you hear a restless spirit when you pray,
+    'Tis the voice that tempted Helen o'er the bay.
+
+
+
+
+SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NIGHT.
+
+
+An extraordinary story, some say the recital of a dream, or scenes in
+somnambulism, is that of Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Va. He visited
+Saratoga twenty years ago, well-to-do, the owner of slaves, sloops,
+lands, and fisheries, and visits it now upon an income of $2000 a
+year, derived from boiling down fish into phosphates for the midland
+markets. He preserves, however, the habit and appearance of old days:
+that is to say, his chin is folded away under his lip like a reef in a
+mainsail; his cheek-bones hide his ears, so tusky and prominent are
+the former, and tipped with a varnish of red, like corns on old folks'
+feet; he has a nose which is so long and bony that it seems to have
+been constructed in sections, like a tubular bridge, and to
+communicate with itself by relays of sensation. A straight, mournful,
+twinkling, yet aristocratic man was Andrew Waples, "befo' de waw, sah!
+befo' de waw!"
+
+He had no sooner arrived at Saratoga than he met some ancient boon
+companions, who took him off to the lake, exploded champagne, filled
+his lungs with cigar-smoke, and sent him to bed, the first night, with
+a decided thirst and no occasion to say his prayers. For it was
+Andrew's intention, being a mournful man of the Eastern Shore, to pray
+on every unusual occurrence. Piety is relative as well as real, but
+Andrew Waples on this occasion jumped into bed, said hic and amen, and
+"times befo' de waw," and went to sleep in the somnorific air of the
+Springs.
+
+He awoke with a dry throat, a disposition to faint and surrender his
+stomach, and an irresistible propensity to walk abroad and drink of
+the waters. He looked at his watch: it was two o'clock, and Saturday
+night. "Alas!" said Andrew Waples aloud, "the bars are closed. Even
+Morrissey has gone to bed, and the club-house is in darkness, but
+perhaps I can climb over the gate of some spring company, or find a
+fountain uninclosed. Yes, there is the High Rock Spring!"
+
+He drew on his clothes partly, slipped his feet in slippers, and wrote
+on a piece of paper, which he conspicuously posted on the gas bracket:
+
+"Andrew Waples, Gentleman (befo' de waw), departed from the United
+States Hotel, at two o'clock A. M., precisely. If any accident happens
+to him, seek at the High Rock Spring, or thereabouts."
+
+It was a sad, green, ghostly moonlight streaming through the elms as
+Andrew Waples walked up Broadway. The moon appeared to be dredging for
+oysters amongst the clouds, circling around there by bars, islets, and
+shoals. Bits of spotted and mackerel-back sky swam like hosts of
+menhaden through the pearly sheen of the more open aërial main. The
+leaves of the tall domes and kissing branches of the elms, that peeped
+on either side into open windows of people asleep and told across the
+street to each other the secrets there, were now themselves heavy as
+if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a
+tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey
+lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded
+the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made
+watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the
+concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed
+aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly
+illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa of Chancellor
+Walworth, cowering amongst the pine-trees, expressed the burden of
+parricidal blood that had of late oppressed its memories. There were
+no murmurs from the court-room where Judge Barnard had been tried,
+but its deep silence seemed from the clock to tick: "Removed!
+disqualified!" and "Disqualified! removed!"
+
+Turning from Broadway to lesser streets of cheap hotels and plain
+boarding cottages, where weary women and girls had drudged all day
+long, and washerwomen moaned and fluting and ruffling were the
+amusements of the poor, Andrew Waples became haunted with the idea
+that Saratoga was poisoned, that every soul in the village was dead,
+and that he was to be the last man of the century to drink of the
+Springs. Nature and night were in the swoon of love or death. Parting
+their drowsy curtains went Waples through the muffled echoes, impelled
+by nothing greater than a human thirst.
+
+He saw his shadow, at length, fall down the steep stairs of the valley
+of High Rock Spring, as he stood at the top of the steps uncovered to
+the moon. It was a shadow nearly a hundred feet long, a high-cheeked
+head without a chin and all nose, like the profile of a mountain. But
+what was extraordinary was the total absence of an abdominal part to
+Mr. Waples' exaggerated shadow, for he distinctly saw a young
+maple-tree, in perfect moonlight, grow through the cavity where his
+stomach ought to have been.
+
+"I must be hollow," said Andrew, as he looked,--"the frame of a
+stomach removed; for surely my whole figure is in blackness, except my
+bread-basket." But his fears were dissipated by the sound of voices,
+of glasses clinking and water running, and the evident semblance of
+life at the High Rock Spring in the ravine beneath, to which the steep
+stairs descended. At the same moment he descried another shadow
+propelled alongside his own, as if from some far distance in the rear
+a human object was slowly advancing to stand beside him.
+
+There were very old wooden houses around this precipice or promontory
+of Saratoga, some of them a hundred years old, and decrepit and in
+ruins; for here, at the High Rock, was the original fountain of the
+village. As if from the cover of one of these old and decaying
+tenements came a person of venerable aspect, with a tray of glasses
+fastened to the top of a staff, like a great caster of bottles on a
+broomstick. As this person stood by the side of Andrew Waples, and
+planted his staff on the top step of the stairs, his prolonged shadow,
+falling in the valley, gave him the appearance of a gigantic Neptune,
+with a trident in his hand.
+
+"Hallo!" exclaimed Mr. Waples, "are you a town scavenger, to be up at
+this time of the clock?"
+
+The man replied, after a very curious and explosive sound of his lips,
+like the extraction of a cork from a bottle, "No, sir; I'm only the
+Great Dipper."
+
+"Very good," resumed Mr. Waples. "Then, perhaps, you'll explain to me
+a very great optical delusion, or tell me that I'm drunk. Do you see
+our two shadows as they fall yonder on the ground, and amongst the
+tree-tops? Now, if I have any eyes in my head, there is a stomach in
+your shadow and no stomach whatever in mine."
+
+"Quite right," answered the Great Dipper. "You are the mere rim of a
+former stomach. Abdominally, you are defunct."
+
+Andrew Waples put his hand instinctively where his stomach was
+presumed to be, and he saw the hand of his shadow distinctly imitate
+the motion, and repeat it through his empty centre.
+
+"This is Sir William Johnson's night," remarked the Great Dipper. "We
+have a large company of guests on this anniversary, and no gentleman
+is admitted with a stomach, nor any lady with a character. My whole
+force of dippers is on to-night, and I must be spry."
+
+As the venerable man spoke, and ceased to speak, exploding before and
+after each utterance, it occurred to Mr. Waples that his voice had a
+sort of mineral-water gurgle, which was very refreshing to a thirsty
+man's ears. He followed, therefore, down the flight of rickety stairs
+and stood in the midst of a promenading party of many hundred people,
+variously dressed and in the costumes of several generations.
+
+The canopy or pavilion of the spring, which, like a fairy temple,
+seemed to have been exhaled from in bubbles, was yet capped, as in the
+broad light of day, by a gilded eagle, from whose beak was suspended a
+bottle of the water, and no other light was shed upon the scene than
+the silver and golden radiance emitted together from this bottle, as
+if ten thousand infinitely small goldfish floated there in liquid
+quicksilver. The spring itself, flowing over its ancient mound of
+lime, iron and clay, like the venerable beard over the Arabian
+prophet's yellow breast, shed another light as if through a veil
+fluttered the molten fire of some pulsating crater. The whole scene of
+the narrow valley, the group of springs, the sandy walks, dark
+foliage, and in closing ridges took a pale yellow hue from the
+effervescing water and the irradiant bottle in the eagle's beak. The
+people walking to and fro and drinking and returning, all carried
+their hands upon their stomachs or sides, and sighed amidst their
+flirtations. Mr. Waples saw, despite their garments, which represented
+a hundred years and more of all kinds, from Continental uniforms and
+hunting shirts to brocades, plush velvets, and court suits, that not a
+being of all the multitude contained an abdomen. He stopped one large
+and portly man, who was carried on a litter, and said:
+
+"Have you a window through you, too, old chap?"
+
+"'Sh!" exclaimed one of the supporters of the litter, who wore the
+feathers and attire of an Indian. "'Tis Sir William Johnson--he who
+receives to-night."
+
+"Young man," exclaimed that great and first of Indian agents, "this is
+the spot where all people come to find their stomachs. Mine was lost
+one hundred and ten years ago. The Mohawks, my wards, then brought me
+through the forest to this spot. Faith! I was full of gout and humors,
+and took a drink from a gourd. One night in the year I walk from
+purgatory and quench my thirst at this font. The rest of the year I
+limp in the agonies of dyspepsia."
+
+A large and short-set woman was walking in one of the paths, wearing
+almost royal robes, and her train was held up by a company of young
+gallants, some of whom whistled and trolled stanzas of foreign music.
+"Can you tell me her name!" asked Waples, speaking to a bystander.
+
+"It is Madame Rush, the daughter of the banker who rivalled Girard.
+She was a patroness of arts and letters in her day, full of
+sentiment."
+
+"But disguised in a stomacher!" interrupted our friend. The lady
+passed him as he spoke, and, looking regretfully in his face,
+murmured:
+
+"Avoid hot joints for supper! Terrapin must crawl again. Drink nothing
+but claret. Adieu!"
+
+"Really," thought Andrew Waples, "this is a sort of mass meeting of
+human picture-frames. But here is one I know by his portrait--the
+god-like head, the oxen eyes, the majestic stalk of Daniel Webster."
+He was about to address this massive figure, when it turned and looked
+upon him with rolling orbs like diamonds in dark caves.
+
+"Brandy," said the great man, "'tis the drink of a gentleman, and the
+stimulus of oratory. But public life requires a thousand stomachs. Who
+could have saved the Constitution on only one?"
+
+"Poor ghost!" thought Andrew Waples. "Yet here is a milder man, also
+of mighty girth, like the frame of a mastodon, transparent. Your name,
+my friend?"
+
+"John Meredith Clayton, of Delaware! I filled my paunch of midnights
+with chicken soup. I arose from bed to riot in gravy. Ye who have
+livers and intestines, think of my fame and fate!"
+
+The old man sobbed as he receded, and Waples had only time to get a
+glimpse of the next trio before they were upon him.
+
+"I agree with Commodore Vanderbilt," said the other, the wearer of a
+rubicund face, and great blue eyes. "My _forte_ was oysters and
+economy. I grew wondrous fat and conservative, and one day awoke with
+a stomach that exclaimed, 'I have become round, so that you can
+trundle me for the exercise you deprived me of.' Henceforward, not
+even the unequalled advantages of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad gave
+me pleasure. I live like a skeleton world, without an inner globe,
+without a paunch. Beware?"
+
+"Well," cried Mr. Waples, "it is a singular thing that the
+conservative as well as the volatile lose their full habits. How is it
+with Colonel Tom Scott, I wonder?"
+
+"No rest," exclaimed a full-necked man, "I eat at figures, and think
+in my sleeping car. Go slow, go fast, young man, 'But it is even,
+heads I win, stomach you lose!'"
+
+The shaggy iron-gray whiskers and hair of Charles Sumner were well
+known to Mr. Waples, as that great Senator strutted down the maple
+paths. "You here, also!" shouted Mr. Waples.
+
+"Ay!" answered the champion. "Freedom is not worth enjoying without
+the gastric juice. The taste of Château Yquem pursues me through
+eternity. There are times when Plymouth Rock is a pennyweight in value
+compared to High Rock at Saratoga, and all the acts of Congress
+foolish beside a pint of Congress water!"
+
+A tall and elegant man came by and said: "I was the reviver of the
+running turf. My stomach was tough as my four-in-hand. 'Twas Angostura
+nipped my bud. It was, by Saint Jerome!"
+
+Another passer, with a dark skin and a merry twinkle, said: "Uncle
+John's under the weather to-night. But he can lay out another
+generation yet. While there's sleep there's hope. Cecil's the word!
+Give me me an order."
+
+A tremendous fellow, with a foot a little gouty, gulped down a gallon
+of the water, and said: "Rufe Andrews never gives up while on that
+high rock he builds his church!"
+
+"The way to eat a sheep's head," exclaimed a florid man, "is with
+plain sauce. Clams are not kind after nightfall. Champagne destroyed
+the coats of W. Wickham, Mayor of the _bon vivants_. _Sic transit_
+overtook my rapid transit. Heigh-ho!"
+
+"Hear me lisp a couplet," said the great poet Saxe. "Oh, how many a
+slip 'twixt the couplet and the cup! Abdomen dominates. When Homer had
+no paunch, he went blind."
+
+"Halt! 'Sdeath! is't I, that once could put the whole Brazilian court
+to bed, who prowls these grounds for midnight water now? I am the
+Chevalier Webb. Who says it is dyspepsia? I will spit him upon my
+walking-staff."
+
+"Ees! 'tis good drinkin' at the fount when one can naught sleep.
+Johnson, of Congress Spring, the resident cherub; that's my name. I
+tipped the rosy, and it tripped on me. What measure I used to take
+around the bread-basket!"
+
+"The top of the foine midnight to you!" said Richard O'Gorman. "I'm
+here, my lords and gentle folk, to find a portion of my appetite. It
+was not so when I could lead a revolution in a cabbage garden."
+
+So went past Uncle Dan Sanford and Father Farrell, and arm-in-arm, on
+mutual errands of thirst, Judge Hilton and Joseph Seligman.
+
+"Shudge," said Seligman, "when you refushed me a room, it was only
+becaush you had no stummicks? Heigh, Shudge?"
+
+"Ay, Joseph, me broth of a darlint," answered Hilton, "when a spalpeen
+has no stummick, he speaks without circum--spection. Ye can impty yer
+stummick wherever ye loike over the furniture, if ye'll fill this
+aching void."
+
+So went the procession. All walking with hands laid heavily on their
+paunches, or where they used to be. Lovers had lost the light of
+interest from their eyes, wedded people the light of retrospection,
+statesmen the pride of intellect, princes and legates the pride of
+power. Wealth flashed in a thousand diamonds to contrast with the
+heavy eyes that had no vanity in them, and religion wore the
+asceticism of everlasting gloom instead of the hope of immortal life.
+
+As Mr. Andrew Waples beheld these things, and felt his thirst impel
+him toward the fountain of the High Rock, he became sensible of a
+wonderful change in the proportions of that object. It had always been
+a mound or cone of sand, clay, magnesia, and lime, well oxidized, and
+made rusty-red by the particles of iron in the composition deposited
+with the other materials, through ages of overflow. It had never been
+above three feet in height, and of little more diameter than a man's
+stature. The water, flowing through its middle, sparkled and
+discharged diamond showers of bubbles, and ran down the
+ochre-besmeared sides, to disappear in the ground, the cavity through
+which it came not more than ten inches wide. Such had been the
+dimensions of the High Rock Spring.
+
+But it was now a mountain, rising high in the air, and flowing crystal
+and gold, like a volcano in an eruption of jewels. The pyrites of
+sulphur and motes of iron, that formerly gleamed in the rills that
+trickled down its slopes, were now big as cascades, filled with
+carbuncles and rocks of amethyst. A mist of soft splendor, like the
+light of stars crushed to dust and diffused around the mountain's
+head, revealed an immense multitudes of people scaling the slopes, and
+drinking; and some were raising their hands to Heaven in praise, and
+some were drawing the water from the mountain's base by flumes and
+troughs. This extensive prospect fell to a foreground of people, such
+as Mr. Waples had been mingling with, and these were clamoring and
+supplicating for water faster than a hundred dippers there could pass
+it up. The dippers were of all garbs and periods, from Indians and
+rustics to boys in cadet uniform. The vessels with which they dipped
+were of all shapes and metals, from conch shells and calabashes to
+cups of transparent china, and goblets of gold and silver. Amongst the
+dippers, conspicuous by his benevolent face and clothing of a
+butternut color, was the Great Dipper himself, directing operations.
+
+"Drink freely!" he exclaimed, "for the night is going by. Sir William
+Johnson has ordered his litter, and the company is breaking up. Drink
+while you may, for the sun is soon to arise, and ye who have no
+stomachs will be exposed and disgraced."
+
+"Hark ye! old friend," whispered Andrew Waples to the Great Dipper,
+"are there here people alive, as well as dead people, and why do they
+fear exposure?"
+
+The Great Dipper replied: "Nobody can be said to live who has lost his
+stomach. We make no other distinction here. There are thousands who
+have lost them, however, and who deceive mankind. Even these, you
+perceive, who drink at the High Rock Spring, flirt while they feel
+unutterable gloom, and so are dead women above the ground tied to
+living men, and men without a human hope of health mated to joyous
+beauty and animation."
+
+It seemed at this point that Mr. Waples shrank away down to the
+ground, and the Great Dipper loomed up high as the mountain of High
+Rock. His drinking glasses were as large as Mr. Waples' body; he was a
+mighty giant, clad in colors like those of the overflowing mountain.
+
+"Old chap," cried Mr. Waples, "methinks your clothing up there is of
+much age and tarnish. Tell me its material?"
+
+A voice came down the long ravines of the mountain like rolling
+thunder. "It's calcareous tufa I'm a-wearing, wove on me by exudation
+and accretion in the past two thousand years."
+
+At this point the head of the Great Dipper was quite invisible in the
+clouds, but the tray of glasses he carried, which were now big as
+barrels or full-sized casks, was set down on Mr. Waples' toe. As he
+sought to get out of the way a torrent of water washed him up and
+away, and he was spilled into one of the glasses; and then, as it
+appeared, he was raised an inconceivable distance in the air and
+plunged down like a bursted balloon from the sky to the sea, and he
+found himself immersed in mineral water and rapidly descending,
+against the current, toward the centre of the earth!
+
+Before Mr. Waples could get his breath he was landed in a bar or shoal
+of mineral salt, which came nearly to the surface of the torrent in
+which he found himself, and the current of this torrent was ascending
+toward the surface, as full of mineral substances as a freshet is full
+of saw-logs. Explosions of gas, loud and rapid as the guns in a naval
+battle, took place on every side. The walls of the inclosure made a
+large and almost regular cave or tunnel of blue marl, and in the
+contrary way from the course of the stream. Mr. Waples sank along the
+sides of the cave in the swash or backflow, until he arrived at a
+grand archway of limestone, riven from a mass of slate. A voice from
+the roof of the archway, whispering like a sigh of pain, articulated
+shrilly,
+
+"Who goes back?"
+
+Waples discerned, in the joint or junction of the arch a huge deformed
+object, whose hands were caught between the masses of stone, and he
+still desperately pulled to divide them, so that the torrent could
+escape through. The eyes of this object rolled in pain, but he gave no
+sign of relinquishing his hold, and again the painful whisper skipped
+through the abyss, "Who goes back from the alluvial?" Mr. Waples got a
+breathful of air from an explosion of bubbles, and boldly replied,
+"The Great Dipper's assistant."
+
+"Tell him," whispered the hunchback in the roof, "that Priam, the
+Fault Finder, is holding the strata back, but wants the relief to come
+on three centuries hence, that I may spit upon my hands."
+
+Mr. Waples had no time to reply, for a large bubble of carbonic acid
+gas burst at that moment, and blew him through the gap or "fault" of
+the rock, into the coldest and clammiest cavern he had ever trodden.
+From every part of the walls, ceilings, and floor exuded moisture,
+which flowed off in rills and large canals, until they formed the
+torrent that disappeared at the Fault Finder's Archway.
+
+"Magnesia, faugh!" exclaimed Mr. Waples, unconscious that he was in
+the presence of somebody.
+
+"You don't like Magnesia, then?" rejoined a large, spongy object on
+the floor, whose forehead perspired while he looked up through the
+chalky-white sockets of sightless eyes. "Why, he's a sixth part of all
+that's drunk at the springs. Here, I'll call him up. Come Magnesia!
+come Potash! come Lime, Soda, Lithia, and Baryta! Come ye all to the
+presence of Prince Saturation."
+
+There glided to the Sponge's feet a number of leather-looking beings,
+of broad, circular faces, and to every face a tail was appended on the
+other side.
+
+"The gentleman don't like our laboratory," exclaimed the Sponge,
+purring the while like a cat. "Apply your suckers to him, ye
+percolating angels, and draw him to the forests of Fernandes!"
+
+Mr. Waples felt a hundred little wafers of suction take hold of his
+body, and a sense of great compression, as if he was being pulled
+through a mortar bed. He opened his eyes on the summit of a stalagmite
+in a vast thicket or swamp of overthrown and decaying trees. Birds of
+buried ages, whose long, bittern-like cries flopped wofully through
+the silence, made ever and anon a call to each other, like the Nemesis
+of century calling to century. One of these birds, having authority
+and standing on one leg, observed to Mr. Waples, in a very
+philosophical manner:
+
+"Stranger, are you of the Fungi family?"
+
+"No, Fernandes," answered our bold adventurer; "I live nearer the
+phosphates when at home, and it's a good article."
+
+A mournful chorus of croons from the loons went round the solitude.
+"Phosphates! phew! Phosphates! phew!"
+
+"This apartment," exclaimed the one-legged bird, "is exclusively for
+fungi of the old families. Here we rot piecemeal and furnish gas to
+the nine-thousandth generation after us. By our decay the springs are
+fed with bubbles. Here is the world as it fell in the floral period,
+and our boughs are budding anew in the Eldorado of the waters above
+us."
+
+"Phosphates! phew!" shouted the great birds of this land of Lethe, as
+Mr. Waples' stalagmite broke off and dropped him and set him astride
+of an ancient pterodactyl bird that flew off with its burden to an
+immense height, and swinging him there by the seat of his breeches, as
+if he were to be the pendulum of a fundamental and firmamental clock,
+the griffin-bird finally let go. Mr. Waples was propelled at least six
+miles out of gravity, and tossed into a most deep and silent lake.
+Nothing affected its loveliness but an oppressive shadow that came
+from above, and seemed to sink every floating object in the scarcely
+buoyant waves. No shores were visible, but distant mountains on one
+side; nothing lived in the waters but meteoric lights and objects that
+ran as if on errands for the spirit above. Broad, submissive,
+unevaporating, but sinking down; the great inland lonely pool was
+everywhere the creature of an invisible footprint. Mr. Waples knew the
+power it obeyed to be that prostrate, cloud-like, overbrooding
+presence, far above, with outlines like a mountain range. The silent
+sea was the water-trough of Apalachia, the western dyke of the deluge
+of Noah. The oppressive spirit, stretching overhead, was Bellydown, or
+the thing that brooded over the waters of chaos, known to
+schoolmasters as Atmospheric Pressure.
+
+Mr. Waples saw it all now. The spirit overhead, with equal and
+eternal pressure, forced down this meteoric water through the slopes
+of stone, until it reascended toward the clouds of its origin and was
+lost in the forest of the fossils, where every decaying fibre made
+bubbles to drive it forward, and hold in solution the mineral
+substances it was to receive in the porous magnesian barrier between
+it and freedom. Soaking through this, the water escaped by the break
+in the strata at the arch of the Fault Finder.
+
+But who had ever passed back against the current of the earth's
+barometry, from the spa to the reservoir, like Andrew Waples, of
+Horntown, Eastern Shore of Virginia?
+
+He felt a mighty vanity overwhelm him to get recognition of some kind
+from Bellydown, who disdained even thunder for a language.
+
+"Thou sprawling spirit, up yonder in the sky!" shouted Mr. Waples,
+with much firmness, "if thou art not mere nightmare, mere figment of
+the sciences, let me feel thy strength unequally, for once!"
+
+The vast cloud object moved and yawned. Something like a small world,
+wearing a boot, smote Andrew Waples in the rear, as if the spirit
+above had kicked him on the proper spot. He felt a pain and a flying
+sensation, that was like paralysis on wings, and he never seemed to
+stop for years, until he fell and struck the ground, and, after an
+interval, looked around him.
+
+He was in his room, at the United States Hotel, and had fallen out of
+bed. The clock in the Baptist church cupola struck two. On the gas
+bracket was pinned a written notice, not yet dry, that Andrew Waples
+had just started for the High Rock Spring.
+
+But he knew that his adventure continued to be true, for when he went
+to breakfast at daylight, he found he had no stomach.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHANTOM ARCHITECT.
+
+
+    Four hundred miles of brawling through many a mountain pass,
+    From the shadow of the Catskills to the rocks of Havre de Grace,
+    The Susquehanna flashes by willowy isles of May
+    And deluges of April to the splendors of the bay.
+
+    It brings Otsego water and Juniata bright,
+    Chenango's sunny current and dark Swatara's night,
+    By booms of lumber winding and rafts of coal and ore,
+    And gliding barges crossing the dams from shore to shore.
+
+    It is an aisle of silver along the mountain nave,
+    Where towers the Alleghany reflected in its wave,
+    By many a mine of treasure and many a borough quaint,
+    And many a home of hero and tomb of simple saint.
+
+    The granite gates resign it to mingle with the bay,
+    And softened bars of mountain stand glowing o'er the way;
+    The wild game flock the offing; the great seine-barges go--
+    From battery to windlass, and singing as they row.
+
+    The negroes watch the lighthouse, the trains upon the bridge,
+    The little fisher's village strewn o'er the grassy ridge,
+    The cannoneers that, paddling in stealthy rafts of brush,
+    With their decoys around them, the juicy ducks do flush.
+
+    And oft by night, they whisper, a phantom architect
+    Lurks round the Cape of Havre, of ruined intellect,
+    Who had designed a city upon this eminence,
+    To cover all the headland and rule the land from hence.
+
+    And sometimes men belated the phantom builder find,
+    Lost on the darkened water and drifting with the wind;
+    Then by his will a vision starts sudden on the night--
+    The city flashing splendor o'er all that barren height.
+
+    Its dome of polished marble and tholus full of fire;
+    The dying look of sunset just fading from the spire;
+    The towers of its prisons, the spars and masts of fleets,
+    And lines of lamps that clamber along the crowded streets.
+
+    The ships of war at anchor in the indented ports,
+    The thunder of the broadsides, the answer of the forts--
+    These by his invocation arise and flame and thrill,
+    Raised on his faith tenacious and strengthened by his will.
+
+    My soul! there is a city, set like a diadem,
+    Beyond a crystal river: the new Jerusalem.
+    The architect was lowly and walked with fishermen;
+    But only He can open the blessed sight again.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOBBY BROTHER.
+
+
+I.
+
+The express train going south on the Northern Central Railroad, March
+3d, 186-, carried perhaps a score of newly-elected Congressmen,
+prepared to take their seats on the first day of the term. For every
+Congressman there were at least five followers, adventurers or
+clients, some distinguished by their tighter-fitting faces, signifying
+that they were men of commerce; others, by their unflagging and
+somewhat overstrained amiability, not to say sycophancy, signifying
+that out of the aforesaid Congressmen they expected something "fat."
+Of the former class the hardest type was unquestionably Jabel Blake,
+and the business which he had in hand with the freshly Honorable
+Arthur MacNair, who sat at his side reading the Pittsburg news-paper,
+was the establishment of a national bank at the town of Ross Valley,
+Pennsylvania.
+
+Jabel Blake had as little the look of a bank president as had his
+representative the bearing of a politician. MacNair was a thin, almost
+fragile young person, with light-red hair and a freckled face and
+clear blue eyes, which nearly made a parson of him--a suggestion
+carried out by his plain guard and silver watch and his very sober,
+settled expression. The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, who had served
+three terms from the Apple-butter District, remarked of him, from the
+adjoining seat, "Made his canvass, I s'pose, by a colporterin'
+Methodist books, and stans ready to go to his hivinly home by way of
+the Injin Ring!"
+
+But, in reality, the Congressman belonged to the same faith with his
+constituent and client--both Presbyterians like their great-grandfathers,
+who were Scotch pioneers among the spurs of the Alleghenies; and there
+still lived these twain, in fashion little changed--MacNair a lawyer at
+the court-house town, and Jabel Blake the creator, reviver, and
+capitalist of the hamlet of Ross Valley. Jabel was hard, large, bony, and
+dark, with pinched features and a whitish-gray eye, and a keen, thin,
+long voice high-pitched, every separate accent of which betrayed the love
+of money.
+
+"It's an expensive trip," said Jabel Blake; "it's a costly trip. More
+men are made poor, Arthur MacNair, by travellin' than by sickness.
+Twice a year to Pittsburg and twice to Phildelfy is the whole of my
+gadding. I stop, in Phildelfy, at the Camel Tavern, on Second Street,
+and a very expensive house--two dollars a day. At Washington they rob
+everybody, I'm told, and I shall be glad to get away with my clothes."
+
+"Tut! Jabel," said MacNair, "brother Elk has taken rooms for me at
+Willards', and for the little time you stay at the capital you can
+lodge with us. A man who has elected a Congressman in spite of the
+Pennsylvania Railroad shouldn't grudge one visit in his life-time to
+Washington."
+
+"Oh!" said Jabel, "I don't know as I begrudge that, though your
+election, Arty, cost me four hundred and seven dollars and--I've got
+it here in a book."
+
+"I know that," said MacNair quietly; "don't read it again, Jabel. You
+behaved like a sturdy, indignant man, paid all my expenses, though you
+protested against an election in a moral land involving the
+expenditure of a dime, and though you pass for the closest man west of
+the mountains. And here we are, going upon errands of duty, as little
+worldly as we can be, yet not anxious to belittle ourselves or our
+district."
+
+"I'd cheerfully given more, Arty, to beat that corporation. A
+twenty-dollar bill or so, you know! But money is tight. I've scraped
+and scraped for years to start my bank at Ross Valley, and every
+dollar wasted retards the village. You boys have cost me a sight of
+money. There's Elk's sword and horse, and the schooling of both of
+you, and the burying of your father, Jim MacNair, eighteen years ago
+this May. Dear! dear!"
+
+The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, catching a part of this remark,
+observed that Jabel Blake, judging by his appearance, shouldn't have
+buried MacNair's father, but devoured him. Jabel's unfeeling remark
+gave MacNair no apparent pain; but he said:
+
+"Jabel, don't speak to Elk about father. He is not as patient as he
+should be, and perhaps in Washington they disguise some of the matters
+which we treat bluntly and openly. There's Kitty Dunlevy, you know,
+and she is a little proud."
+
+The glazed, whitish eye of Jabel bore the similitude of a beam of
+satisfaction.
+
+"It's nothing agin you boys," he said, "that Jim MacNair, your father,
+didn't do well. He wronged nobody but himself, as I made the
+stonecutter say over his grave. _That_ cost me upwards of eleven
+dollars, so I did _my_ duty by him. You boys don't seem to have his
+appetite for liquor. You are a member of Congress, and Elk was one of
+the bravest ginerals in the war; and I don't see, if he saves his
+money and his health, but he is good enough even for Judge Dunlevy's
+girl."
+
+Judge Dunlevy was the beau ideal of Jabel Blake, as the one eminent
+local statesman of the region round Ross Valley--the County Judge when
+Jabel was a child, the Supreme Justice of the State, and now a
+District Justice of the United States in a distant field. His
+reputation for purity, dignity, original social consideration, moral
+intrepidity, and direct Scotch sagacity had made his name a tower of
+strength in his native State. To Jabel's clannish and religious nature
+Judge Dunlevy represented the loftiest possibilities of human
+character; and that one of the two poor orphans--the sons of a
+wood-cutter and log-roller on the Alleghenies, and the victim of
+intemperance at last--whom Jabel had watched and partly reared,
+should now be betrothed to Catharine Dunlevy, the judge's only
+daughter, affected every remaining sentiment in Jabel's heart.
+
+Absorbed in the contemplation of this honorable alliance, Jabel took
+out his account-book and absently cast up the additions, and so the
+long delay at Baltimore caused no remarks and the landscapes slipped
+by until, like the sharp oval of a colossal egg, the dome of the
+Capitol arose above the vacant lots of the suburbs of Washington.
+
+A tall, handsome, manly gentleman in citizen black, standing
+expectantly on the platform of the station, came up and greeted
+MacNair with the word,
+
+"Arthur!"
+
+"Elk!"
+
+And the brothers, legislator and soldier, stood contrasted as they
+clasped hands with the fondness of orphans of the same blood. They had
+no superficial resemblances, Arthur being small, clerical, freckled,
+and red-haired, with a staid face and dress and a stunted, ill-fed
+look, like the growth of an ungracious soil; Elk, straight and tall,
+with the breeding and clothing of a metropolitan man, with black eyes
+and black hair and a small "imperial" goatee upon his nether lip; with
+an adventurous nature and experience giving intonation to his regular
+face, and the lights and contrasts of youth, command, valor,
+sentiment, and professional associations adding such distinction that
+every lady passenger going by looked at him, even in the din of a
+depot, with admiration.
+
+To Jabel Blake, who came up lugging an ancient and large carpet-bag,
+and who repelled every urchin who wanted the job of carrying it, Elk
+MacNair spoke cordially but without enthusiasm.
+
+"Jabel," he said, "if I hear you growl about money as long as you are
+here, I'll take you up to the Capitol and lose you among the
+coal-holes."
+
+"It took many a grunt to make the money," said Jabel Blake, "and it's
+natural to growl at the loss of it."
+
+By this time they had come to the street, and there in a livery
+barouche were the superb broad shoulders, fringed from above with
+fleece-white hair, of Judge Dunlevy. Health, wisdom, and hale,
+honorable age were expressed attributes of his body and face, and by
+his side, the flower of noble womanhood, sat Catharine, his child,
+worthy of her parentage. Both of them welcomed Arthur MacNair with
+that respectful warmth which acknowledged the nearness of his
+relationship to the approaching nuptials, and the Judge said:
+
+"Great credit to Jabel Blake as a representative citizen, in that his
+eyes have seen the glory of these fine boys, to whom he has been so
+fast a friend!"
+
+Jabel's glassy eyes shone, and his mouth unclosed like a smile in a
+fossil pair of jaws.
+
+"It's the nighest I ever come to being paid for my investment in Arty
+and Elk," he said, "to get sech a compliment from Judge Dunlevy! They
+_are_ good boys, though they've cost me a powerful lot, and I hope
+they'll save their money, stick to their church, and never forgit Ross
+Valley, which claims the honor of a buildin' 'em up."
+
+"Get up here, Jabel, and ride!" cried Elk. "Remember that coal-hole,
+old man!"
+
+"No! no!" cried Jabel; "I can walk. These fine carriages is expensive
+luxuries. They'll do for politicians, I 'spose, but not for business
+men with limited means."
+
+The Judge made Jabel Blake sit facing him, however, and they rattled
+off to the hotel, where Elk MacNair had secured a parlor and suite for
+his brother in the retired end of the structure, commanding a view of
+Newspaper Row upon one side and of the Treasury façade on the other.
+The long, tarnished mirrors, the faded tapestry, and the heavy,
+soiled, damask curtains impressed Jabel Blake as parts of the wild
+extravagance of official society, and gave him many misgivings as to
+the amount of his bill. He retained enough of his Scotch temperament,
+however, to make no ceremony about a glass of punch, which the General
+ordered up for the old man, Arthur MacNair only abstaining, and the
+beauty and amiability of the Judge's daughter, who sat at his side and
+beguiled him to speak of his idolized village, his mills, his
+improvements, and his new bank, softened his hard countenance as by
+the reflection of her own, and touched him with tender and gratified
+conceptions of the social opportunities of his _protégés_. Miss
+Dunlevy's face, with the clear intellectual and moral nature of her
+father calmly looking out, expressed also a more emotional and more
+sympathetic bias. A pure and strong woman, whose life had ripened
+among the families and circles of the best in condition and influence,
+she had never crossed to the meaner side of necessity, nor appreciated
+the fact, scarcely palpable, even to her father, that he was poor. An
+entire life spent in the public service had allowed neither time nor
+propriety for improving his private fortune; and as his salary
+continued over the war era at the same modest standard which had
+barely sufficed for cheaper years, he had been making annual inroads
+upon his little estate, which was now quite exhausted. His daughter
+might have ended his heartache and crowned his wishes by availing
+herself of any of several offers of marriage which had been made to
+her; but the soldierly bearing, radiant face, and fine intellect of
+Elk MacNair had conquered competition when first he sought, through
+her father's influence, a lieutenancy in the army.
+
+His career had been brilliant and fortunate, and when he was brought
+in from the field dangerously wounded, her womanly ministrations at
+the hospital had helped to set him upon his horse again, with life
+made better worth preserving for the promise of her hand, surrendered
+with her father's free consent. It was a love-match, without
+reservations or inquiries, the _rapport_ and wish of two equal
+beings, kindred in youth, sympathy, and career, earnest to dwell
+together and absorbed in the worship of each other. Folded in full
+union of soul as perfectly as the leaves of a book, which are in
+contact at every point equally, they felt at this period the wistful
+tenderness of a marriage near at hand, and their eyes anticipated it,
+seeking each other out. She was cast in the large stature of her
+father, and her dark brown hair and eyes betokened the stability of
+her character, while her graces of movement and speech no less
+revealed her adaptability to the social responsibilities which she had
+solely conducted since her mother's death. Together, Catharine and her
+affianced made a couple equal to the fullest destiny, and they won
+praise without envy from all.
+
+"It is a happy fortuity," said Judge Dunlevy, putting aside his glass;
+"Catharine's marriage to a worthy man, native to my own part of the
+country; Arthur's induction into national life; and hard-working Jabel
+Blake's final triumph with his bank! There is no misgiving in the mind
+of any of us. The way is all smooth. Perfect content, perfect love, no
+stain upon our honors or our characters: with such simple family
+democracies all over the land we vindicate the truthfulness of our
+institutions, and grow old without desponding of our country!"
+
+"I feel almost religiously happy," said Arthur, the Congressman; "not
+for myself, particularly; not for my mere election to Congress, for in
+our district there are many abler men to make representatives of--I
+hope none with more steadfast good intentions!--but Elk here always
+had so much health, blood, wayward will, and brilliancy that I
+sometimes feared he might abandon the safe highways of labor and
+self-denial and try some dangerous short-cut to fortune. To see him
+survive the battle-field and begin the longer campaigns of peace with
+a profession, a reputation, no entanglements, and such a wife, makes
+me a religious man. God bless you, brother Elk!"
+
+General MacNair said, in a jesting way, that Arthur was the truest,
+most old-fashioned, and most ridiculously scrupulous brother that ever
+grew up among the daisies; but he was affected, as were they all.
+
+"Elk MacNair," asked Jabel Blake, in his hard, incisive, positive,
+business voice, "what do you mean to do after you are married?"
+
+The General looked at Jabel as if he were a little officious and with
+large capacities for being disagreeable.
+
+"I have arranged to buy a partnership in a legal firm having the
+largest practice in the North west. This is better than beginning
+alone and waiting to make a business."
+
+"How much will that cost?" persisted Jabel Blake, not remarking the
+growing repulsion with which the General answered, after some little
+embarrassment:
+
+"One hundred and sixty thousand dollars."
+
+"Why!" cried Jabel Blake, "that is nearly as much as it takes to start
+the Ross Valley bank. Take care! Take care! Beware, Elk MacNair, of
+getting into debt at your time of life. It makes gray hairs come. It
+breaks up domestic pleasure. It mortgages tranquil years. Neither a
+borrower nor a lender be! That's Bible talk, and the Bible is not only
+the best book for the family, but the best business book besides."
+
+"I don't mean to run in debt," said the General, with a look, perhaps
+surly; "I mean to buy into the firm with cash."
+
+"Bosh!" said Jabel Blake, rising up, "where did you get one hundred
+and sixty thousand dollars, Elk MacNair?"
+
+"If you were not claiming to its fullest extent the privilege of my
+father's friend, Jabel, I should tell you that it was none of your
+business! I will have made the money by the practice of law in the
+City of Washington."
+
+"Dear me, Elk," said his brother, quietly; "I don't presume to be
+worth five thousand dollars, all told. But I suppose you have genius
+and opportunity, and the times are wondrous for men of acquaintance
+and enterprise."
+
+Jabel Blake stared at Elk MacNair a long while without speaking.
+
+II.
+
+The sudden revelation that Elk MacNair was very rich had, on the
+whole, a depressing effect. Kate Dunlevy, who had expected to marry
+purely for love, found with a little chagrin that she was also
+marrying for money. The Judge was led to remark upon the curiosities
+of a speculative age and a fluctuating currency, and said he longed
+for the solid times of hard coin, cheap prices, easy stages, and a
+Jeffersonian republic. As for Jabel Blake, he was too late for that
+day to deposit his bonds at the Treasury and obtain the currency for
+the Ross Valley bank, so he went sauntering around the city, grim as a
+defeated office-seeker.
+
+The brothers also made some calls, and Arthur MacNair was puzzled and
+at the same time pleased, to find that his dashing junior knew
+everybody, had something to chat about with innumerable strangers or
+members, and was freely admitted to any public office he desired. They
+came home at twilight, quite fatigued, and found Jabel Blake lying on
+a bed in the inner chamber, fast asleep.
+
+"Dreaming of his bank!" said Elk MacNair; "what a metallic soul must
+Jabel's be! His very voice rattles like money. His features are cut
+hard as a face on a coin."
+
+"Jabel has good points, Elk," said the Congressman; "if you can
+understand the passion of the town builder you can apprehend him. He
+has devoted his life to Ross Valley, and the only text of Scripture he
+finds it hard to understand is, that he who ruleth his soul is greater
+than he who buildeth a city."
+
+The two brothers sat together in the main room; the day, at the
+windows, was growing grayer, and they were silent for a while.
+
+The face of Elk MacNair had been growing long during the whole
+afternoon, but with an assumed gayety he had sought to make the hours
+pass pleasantly, and when his thoughtful and modest brother endeavored
+to argue with him that his legal labors were wearing him out, Elk
+MacNair turned the conversation off in a cheerful way by saying:
+
+"Arthur, I have arranged that you shall have the chairmanship of a
+first-rate committee."
+
+"How arranged it?"
+
+"Oh, these things can be managed, you know. Every good position in
+Washington has to be begged for, or brought about by strategic
+approaches. I know the Speaker and the Speaker's friends below him,
+and the old chairman of the committee where I wish you to be; and,
+among us all, you have obtained the rare distinction, for a new
+member, of going to the head of one of the best of the second-class
+committees."
+
+"I do not like this, Elk," said Arthur. "I hope I am without ambition,
+particularly of that sort which would annihilate processes and labors,
+and seek to obtain distinction by an easy path. I do not know that I
+shall make a speech during the whole of this Congress, although I
+shall try to be in my seat every day, and to vote when I am well
+informed. What committee is it that you have been at such pains to put
+me at the head of it?"
+
+"The Committee on Ancient Contracts."
+
+Arthur MacNair, who had not much color at the best of times, turned a
+little pale.
+
+"Elk," said he, "there is a bad sound in that word 'contracts.' Of
+course, I do not take much stock in the widespread scandal about our
+Government giving away contract work to do from base or personal
+considerations; but I have a little belief that one ought to avoid
+even the appearance of evil. I think I must refuse to go on that
+committee."
+
+Elk MacNair seemed to grow darker and older, and his face assumed an
+intensity of expression which his brother did not perceive.
+
+"Pshaw! Arty," he said, with agitation, "everything here goes by
+friends. You brought with you no renown, no superstition, nothing
+which would entitle you to the Speaker's consideration. He might have
+put you, but for me, away down on the Committee on Revolutionary
+Pensions."
+
+"I think I would like that committee," said Arthur MacNair quietly.
+"In it I might be the means of doing gratitude to some old and needy
+hero. I like those tasks which involve no notoriety. At home, in our
+church and among our townsfolks, I always tried to get on the
+societies which are unknown to public fame; and there, any little
+thing which I can diligently do brings its own reward. I must decline
+to go on the Committee on Ancient Contracts, Elk!"
+
+The younger brother, with his dark burning eyes, met at this point the
+cool, unsuspecting glance of the country lawyer, and something in it
+seemed to embarrass even his worldliness, for he rose from his seat
+and threw up his hands impatiently.
+
+"Oh! very well," he said. "I thought I was doing you a service, and
+now I see that it has been love's labor lost. In fact, I want you on
+that committee to serve a little turn for me!"
+
+The country brother looked up with truthful surprise.
+
+"For you, Elk?"
+
+"Yes," cried the younger, striding up and down the floor with the step
+of one made decisive by being put at bay; "I want you upon that
+committee, not only to do me a turn but to do me a benefit; to come to
+my rescue; to fulfil the expectations of many hard-working months; to
+make me happy. Yes, Arthur, to make my fortune!"
+
+Arthur MacNair followed the rapid walk and excited voice of his
+brother with astonishment. His small, thin, commonplace face seemed to
+develop lights and intelligences which were painful to him, the
+clearer his apprehensions became. He said, in a quiet, still voice, as
+if he also were interested now,
+
+"I am afraid I am on the eve of hearing something bad, my brother. If
+it must come, let it all come."
+
+"Arthur MacNair," said Elk, his voice raised above the ordinary pitch,
+and the recklessness of an officer in the ardor of battle showing in
+his working face, quick talk, and rapid gestures, "you _are_ on the
+eve of hearing something. In your answer lies my destiny. I told you I
+was a lawyer, and had made one hundred and sixty thousand dollars with
+which I was to buy my way into an attorney's firm and establish myself
+in business. It was true. I have made that engagement. My talent and
+energy are recognized, and the place of which I spoke is waiting for
+me immediately after my marriage. The lady who is to be my bride is
+divided from me by no other consideration than this--that I have not
+obtained the one hundred and sixty thousand dollars."
+
+The Congressman grew paler, and he made an effort to say "Go on," but
+his voice was scarcely audible, and Elk MacNair saw that he seemed to
+be suddenly sick. With self-reproach the younger brother observed all
+this, but it was too late for him to falter; the time was too
+precious.
+
+"Arty," he said; "oh, my brother, the whole story must be told and the
+full crisis met. I am dependent upon you for the price of my
+happiness; for the hand of my wife; for the key to my fortune; for all
+that makes the future auspicious and the past clear. I am not a
+lawyer, as I have said, in the common sense in which, with modest
+effort and goodness, you have followed out your career. I am a
+lobbyist!"
+
+"I returned from the war flushed with my success, and told on every
+hand that an immediate and profound prosperity were close before me.
+These politicians and speculators around the capital took me by the
+hand, flattered me, and showed me where my fortune was within my own
+grasp. Little by little they led me on, using my reputation and
+influence to accomplish their ends; and my mode of living, my
+acquaintances, my expectations, increased with my facilities, until,
+chafing under the consciousness that I was working out the private
+interests of others, I resolved to stake all upon one large hazard,
+conclude this wayward, self-accusing life, and depart from the
+purlieus of legislation. Up to the present time no stigma has been
+attached to my irregularities, none have suspected that I was less
+than I claimed to be--a soldier and a gentleman, betrothed to the
+noblest woman in the world. But this manner of living in the end works
+the destruction of habits and reputation to any who continue in it. To
+be brief, I have found political life nothing but a commerce. All have
+their price, and the highest sometimes sell out the cheapest. Men are
+estimated here by their boldness and breadth only, and a single
+successful venture of the kind I have in hand will dismiss me from
+this city rich and without exposure, and I swear never again to be
+seen in the lobbies of the Federal legislature. All my dependence in
+this, however, is upon you. I watched your campaign in our native
+region--how gallantly and how exceptionably you fought it, none knows
+so well!--and I took to heart the belief that, wishing to see me
+distinguished, wedded, and settled, your old scruples might give way,
+and you would afford me this last, best chance. Shall I go on?"
+
+The small, thin face of the elder brother seemed to have lost all of
+its vitality; his fragile form was even more diminished; it might
+almost have been paralysis which had seized him.
+
+"Water!" he muttered. "I cannot talk."
+
+The younger brother ran for a glass, and with a look of mingled guilt
+and affection sought to support him with his arm. Arthur MacNair
+feebly repelled his assistance.
+
+"You may finish, sir," he said.
+
+"God forgive me," cried Elk MacNair, sinking into a chair; "my
+brother, I beseech you, do not think so evil of me as to suppose that
+in this enterprise I would compromise your character for one minute,
+and if it shall be necessary, all the fault shall be mine by open
+confession. There is an old claim for postal services rendered many
+years ago, which has reposed in the catacombs of one of the
+departments. The claimant has long been dead, and it was purchased for
+a small sum from his heirs. There are some equities about the claim;
+the attestations in its favor are purely documentary, and I have so
+entirely manipulated every instrumentality on the way to its passage,
+judicial, legislative, and executive, that if the Committee on Ancient
+Contracts should report favorably upon it at the beginning of the
+session, my confederates in the House will see that it goes along, and
+the department will pay it immediately. Congress will then at once
+adjourn, within a day or two, for such is the usage here. With my
+share of the money, which will be large, I will be a man of wealth and
+able to turn my back once and for all upon this Capitol. You are to be
+the chairman of the committee; the other members, as is habitual here,
+will intrust the whole matter to you; a few words explanatory of this
+claim will send it on its way, and the crisis of my life will have
+passed."
+
+When the younger brother had finished, he also seemed to have expended
+his strength in the effort he had made, and he sat limp and
+despondent. The elder brother, on the contrary, appeared to recover
+his strength by a vigorous effort of the will. He stood up. He walked
+straight before his brother and looked down upon him with his
+penetrating blue eyes.
+
+"Elk MacNair," he said, "tell me--by our common origin, solemnly,
+truthfully, and on your honor, tell me--will this claim stand the test
+of full investigation? Is it right?"
+
+"Arthur," said the younger, feebly, "under that appeal I must speak
+truthfully. The claim is irregular; perhaps it has been paid already.
+There is no time for investigation. I have stocked the cards, and the
+trick must be taken at once or never. You have this alternative. I can
+take you off that committee, and I have a man in reversion who will
+get the post and pass the claim."
+
+The stature of Arthur MacNair seemed to expand, and he became the
+positive spirit of the room.
+
+"Not so," he said; "it shall not pass, Elk MacNair, neither by my help
+nor by any other man's! You have acknowledged to me that there is no
+justice in this thing. You have made me a party to a fraud. You shall
+know that the only oath I came here to take is that of allegiance to
+the interests of the country. No brotherhood, no sympathy, no
+ambition, no pity, nothing shall be able to swerve me from my full
+duty."
+
+"What would you do, fanatic?" cried Elk MacNair.
+
+"I will denounce that claim upon the floor of Congress, and couple
+with the denunciation the story of this infamous proposal you have
+made to a member of Congress."
+
+The younger brother gave a laugh.
+
+"What nonsense, Arthur," he said. "If you expect to find any large
+class of Americans who will appreciate such heroism, exhibited at the
+sacrifice of your own blood and family, you do not know your
+countrymen in these days. The only men who deal in sentiment in our
+time are demagogues, who never feel it. A sneer will go up from all
+the circles of the capital, from all the presses of the land, at a man
+who seeks, in a political age, to play the part of the elder Brutus."
+
+"Miserable, lost, dishonored man!" said Arthur MacNair. "In the
+valleys of my State, in the quiet farming districts all through the
+Union, among the hard-working, the penurious, and the plain--such as
+you and your class despise--there are armies of men who would rise and
+march upon this capital if they appreciated the whole of the scene in
+which you have figured to-day! You would steal the money of the
+people that you may buy a character and a position among your
+countrymen. Shame upon the man who would defend the acquisition of
+such booty to wed the woman he loves."
+
+Every word which Arthur MacNair had uttered, and most of all the last,
+cut like a knife into the pride of Elk MacNair.
+
+"I thought I was pleading with my brother," he said hoarsely, "not to
+a stone. I shall say no more. I have placed myself in your power.
+Remember this: if my point is not carried within three days, or if it
+be balked by your interference, I will blow out my brains. I have
+walked to the door of hell on the battle-field, and I can go further."
+
+He seized his hat and hurried away like a fury. Arthur MacNair stood
+motionless an instant in the middle of the floor, and then, worn out
+with the intensity of the scene, his limbs gave way beneath him, and
+he fell unconscious.
+
+In a moment the hard, strong face and giant form of Jabel Blake
+appeared over the threshold of the bedroom; he lifted his Congressman
+and counsel in his arms and carried him grimly to a sofa.
+
+III.
+
+The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe was much delighted, on the morning
+subsequent to the occurrences related in our last chapter, to see
+Jabel Blake walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with the pensive air of a
+man whose heart had been broken. The Honorable Perkiomen supposed that
+Jabel had failed to receive some drawback or other upon his
+income-tax, and he rejoiced in the reverses of the close and thrifty.
+
+But Jabel Blake was now concerned solely with the sudden and violent
+rupture between the MacNair brothers. He had little acquaintance with
+Elk MacNair, and no great fondness for him; but, being well informed
+as to the positive, combative traits of character in Arthur MacNair,
+Jabel knew very well that what his counsel had threatened to do he
+would do, though his own heart-strings might be sundered.
+
+The deepest wish in Jabel's heart, next to establishing a national
+bank in Ross Valley, was to see the marriage between Kate Dunlevy and
+the MacNair family brought to pass; yet such was his reverence for the
+Dunlevys and so great his antagonism to the Washington Lobby that he
+was half inclined to be himself the means of breaking off the match
+between the daughter of his great neighbor and exemplar and the son of
+his old chum and companion.
+
+Jabel took his way to the house of the old Circuit Judge, which was
+one of a row of tall brown-stone structures not far from the city
+hall, and when he rang the bell a servant showed him to a library in
+the second story, where the Judge was dictating certain judicial
+opinions to his daughter. The two elderly men retired to an adjacent
+apartment, which seemed, from its appointments and the character of
+needlework and literature strewn about, to be the _boudoir_ of Miss
+Dunlevy; and the Judge, who was somewhat past the prime of life,
+plunged into a long story about Ross Valley and its early settlement,
+speaking much of the time with his eyes closed in a sort of half
+reverie, while Jabel, who occupied a seat nearer to the library, was
+meantime overhearing a conversation between Kate Dunlevy and young Elk
+MacNair, who had followed hard upon Jabel's heels. The old Judge
+meantime, used to their voices, paused only to remark that he thought
+Elk MacNair one of the strongest, most brilliant, and most promising
+men in the nation, and then went on with his dissertation upon pioneer
+days among the spurs of the Alleghenies. Jabel, however, who was an
+attentive, inquisitive busybody, and who lived in a part of the
+country where folks of quality and large pursuits were few, observed
+that the two voices in the next room were lowered, and that their
+key, while not so high, was yet even more startling than before.
+
+"Kate," said Elk MacNair, "I had counted upon my brother as an assured
+ally in something of the most momentous importance to me at this
+juncture, before our marriage. My brother is a man of power, but of
+narrow views, and I have unconsciously aroused his animosity. He is
+not to be appeased. Nothing can divert him from his purpose.
+
+"It can be nothing, if Arthur is the arbiter and your happiness the
+subject," said Miss Dunlevy.
+
+"It is a point of honor differently taken by two men," said Elk
+MacNair; "and the issue is a matter of character. It is a matter of
+fortune besides, and if neither relents both will suffer."
+
+These words were attended with some emotion which smote the rough
+feelings of Jabel Blake, and he was a witness of some subsidiary
+endearments, besides, which softened his indignation against the young
+officer. So he followed Elk MacNair from the house and accosted him
+upon the street.
+
+"General," he said, "I claim the privilege of a guardian over you
+boys--over your brother in particular, who is a true man and an
+obstinate one. I know the matter of your difference. If you do not
+yield, Arthur MacNair will keep his word! You will be exposed on the
+floor of Congress, exactly as he promised, and your engagement with
+Kitty Dunlevy broken forever."
+
+"Jabel Blake," answered the soldier, "I know just what I am about. I
+told my brother that I would blow my own head off if he sacrificed me
+for a sentiment. And just that I mean to do."
+
+"I know the devil in the MacNair blood," said Jabel Blake; "but you
+are playing a false part and Arthur a true one. He fought his campaign
+against the corruptions and chicanery of power, and he will trample
+you out like a snake."
+
+"He thinks he's correcting a boy," said Elk MacNair; "he shall find me
+a soldier."
+
+"And you will find him a Christian soldier, truer to his allegiance
+than to rob his country!"
+
+"Pshaw!" laughed Elk MacNair; "a skinflint who has raked up fortune
+with his fingers, ground down his laborers, pinched his soul, and
+stooped his stature for money, has no right to be my chaplain, Jabel
+Blake! You have grown rich like a scavenger. What matter if I bring
+down fortune with my rifle, though the American eagle be the bird. I
+would spare my body some of the dirty crawling you have done to get
+your bank!"
+
+"Base boy!" cried Jabel Blake, with more contempt than anger; "I will
+live to teach you that a life of thrift and honest toil is above your
+power to insult it. You can neither repel me nor break your brother's
+heart. The time will come when you will weep to deserve the respect
+you have lost from these gray hairs."
+
+He passed away with his old, heavy, deliberate gait, and left the
+young man almost repentant.
+
+IV.
+
+The galleries and floors of the House of Representatives were crowded,
+as was usual upon early working days of the session. Among the members
+in a retired seat his red shock of hair, clerical dress, and thin,
+worn, commonplace, freckled face denoted the new member from the
+Scotch district of Pennsylvania. The gay daughter of the Honorable
+Perkiomen Trappe, picking him out from the diplomatic gallery by the
+aid of her opera-glass, remarked that she mourned for her country when
+Europe could behold such a specimen of homespun among American
+Congressmen.
+
+"And what's more, pet," said the Honorable Perkiomen, "he's a bin put
+on a fat committee. He has the cheer in the room on Ancient Contracts,
+and your unfortnit father is only a member under him. I think that
+staving cavalry brother of his'n, Elk MacNair, fixed his feed for
+him!"
+
+They turned to look at Elk MacNair, sitting in the gallery near by
+with the venerable Judge and the Judge's daughter. His dark goatee,
+eyes, and hair, were set in a face unusually pale and intense, and his
+manly and refined worldly bearing suited his associations. Kate
+Dunlevy, with her charms of bloom, repose, and stateliness, looked
+like the wife of such a public man.
+
+"Elk," said she, "you do not seem to be at ease to-day. You are pale
+and nervous, and you have stared down there at your brother's seat
+till people are taking notice of you."
+
+"I am suffering a little, Kitty; that is all. My case comes up within
+five minutes, and I might as well blow my head off if it shall stick
+anywhere."
+
+His eyes seemed to flame out with a reckless light as he said this.
+
+"Arthur has a sick look as well," said Kate. "This public life is too
+exciting for him. See how nervously he sips that glass of water."
+
+"Sick!" exclaimed Elk MacNair, with a voice of bitterness, yet with a
+melancholy glance of admiration in the direction of the Congressman;
+"he is more dangerous than sick. His will is sublime, Kate; nothing
+can soften it, not even pity."
+
+The committees were now being called by the Speaker, and chairman
+after chairman rose to make his report. As the list diminished more
+and more, and the Committee upon Ancient Contracts approached its
+turn, there were no two such livid, deathly faces in all the crowded
+house as these two brothers wore. Elk MacNair's had a settled
+ferocity. The youthfulness and comely moods were gone from it, and the
+burnt-out countenance of a man of the world looked dead and ashen
+above the exhausted reservoirs of a diseased mind. Nothing was left
+but the last chance before despair, and apprehensive of the failure of
+this hope also, his gloved hand, resting upon a pocket hidden at his
+hip, sought support from the hilt of a pistol secreted there. Was
+_this_ the meaning of the sullen and ghastly determination glaring
+from his eyes? Yes, love and death were almost mated; and so in every
+busy Congress do the spectres of temptation and ill-omen lurk in wait.
+
+The country brother on the floor showed also his tenacious purpose in
+his compressed lips, straight, expanded breast and shoulders, and
+clear and direct but grave look. No extremity of occasion could make a
+heroic figure of him, but in his plain face was the beauty of moral
+courage. He rose to his feet when the Speaker cried:
+
+"Committee on Ancient Contracts is next in order. The gentleman from
+Pennsylvania!"
+
+The people in the galleries were not disappointed that such a homely
+man should have no voice nor grace, and that he spoke only with the
+gravest effort.
+
+"The gentleman's voice is inaudible to the chair," said the Speaker.
+
+But Elk MacNair had heard it from where he sat. He had distinguished
+the fitful words:
+
+"The committee reports against the ---- claim for postal services,
+desires that it do not pass, and the chairman wishes to make a
+personal explanation relative to the claim."
+
+"Kitty," said Elk MacNair, in a coarse whisper, "my brother has broken
+my heart!"
+
+"Stay!" said Miss Dunlevy; "he staggers in his seat as if he were
+about to fall. A page has run to him with a letter. He reads it. Elk,
+for Heaven's sake, go to his help! He is dying!"
+
+There was a rush of members about the new chairman of committee.
+Confusion reigned upon the floor of Congress. The lobby brother had
+apprehended it all. He cleared the gallery at a run, passed a familiar
+doorkeeper like a dart, and raised his senior to his breast.
+
+"Arty," he whispered, "may Heaven forgive me! I repent of my folly and
+wickedness, and entreat you to speak to me!"
+
+"Heaven has forgiven you, Elk MacNair!" muttered the spent
+Congressman. "Your father's friend has spared your fame and my
+feelings at the expense of his fortune. It has taken the bank of Jabel
+Blake--the dream of his life--to save you from a dishonored name, and
+to give you a wife too worthy for you!"
+
+He put a piece of paper in the lobbyist's hands. It said:
+
+     "Arthur, I have given you the last gift in my power--a
+     costly and a dear one--to keep your brother from disgrace,
+     and to save you both remorse. I have bought the ---- claim,
+     and destroyed it, but Ross Valley has lost the bank.
+
+                                         "JABEL BLAKE."
+
+V.
+
+On the terrace of the Capitol, while all this was occurring, a gaunt,
+gigantic, aged figure might have been seen, looking away into the city
+basking in the plain at his feet, with almost the bitterness of
+prophecy. He carried an old worn carpet-bag, and a railroad ticket
+appeared in his hat-band. It was Jabel Blake, shaking the dust of the
+capital city from his feet!
+
+To him the soft and purple panorama brought no emotions, as pride of
+country or æsthetic associations; and even the bracing savor of the
+gale upon the eminence seemed laden, to his hard regard, with the
+corruptions and excesses of a debauched government and a rank society.
+The river, to him, was but the fair sewer to this sculptured
+sepulchre. The lambent amphitheatre of the inclosing ridges was like
+the wall of a jail which he longed to cross and return no more. He saw
+the dark granite form of the Treasury Department, and groaned like one
+whose heart was broken there. The bank of Ross Valley was never to be!
+
+Jabel thought in one instant of the inquiries which should be
+addressed to him on his return, the prying curiosity of the hamlet,
+the strictures of his neighbors and laborers, the exultation of his
+enemies, the lost chance of his cherished village to become the mart
+of its locality and dispense from its exchequer enterprise and aid to
+farms and mines and mills.
+
+"The good God may make it up to my children some day," he said; "but
+the bank is never to be in the life of old Jabel Blake!"
+
+So Jabel went home and met with all obtuseness the flying rumors of
+the country. His worst enemies said that he had fallen from grace
+while in Washington, and "bucked" with all his bonds against a faro
+bank. His best friends obtained no explanation of his losses. He kept
+his counsel, grew even sterner and thriftier than he had ever been,
+and only at the Presbyterian church, where he prayed in public
+frequently at the evening meetings, were glimpses afforded of his
+recollections of Washington by the resonant appeals he made that the
+money-changers might be lashed out of the temples there, and
+desolation wrought upon them that sold doves.
+
+There was no bank at Ross Valley, but people began to say that old
+Jabel Blake had particles of gold in the flinty composition of his
+life, and that his trip to Washington had made him gentler and wider
+in his charities. He was attentive to young children. He encouraged
+young lovers. He lifted many errant people to their feet, and started
+them on their way to a braver life of sacrifice. And fortune smiled
+upon him as never before. His mills went day and night, stopping never
+except on Sabbaths. The ground seemed to give forth iron and lime
+wherever he dug for it. The town became the thriftiest settlement in
+the Allegheny valleys, and Jabel Blake was the earliest riser and the
+hardest delver in the State.
+
+It happened at the end of two years that rheumatism and an
+overstrained old age brought Jabel Blake to bed, and a flood, passing
+down the valley, aroused him, despite advice, to his old indomitable
+leadership against its ravages. He returned to his rest never to
+arise; for now a fever laid hold upon the old captain, and he talked
+in his delirium of Judge Dunlevy and his bank, and he was attended all
+the while by Arthur MacNair.
+
+One night, in a little spell of relief, Jabel Blake opened his eyes
+and said,
+
+"Arty, I dreamed old Jabel Blake was in heaven, and that he had
+founded a bank there!"
+
+"Jabel," said the young Congressman, "you must have some treasure laid
+up there, old friend. And not only in heaven, but in this world also.
+Look on this happy family redeemed by your sacrifice!"
+
+Jabel Blake opened his eyes wider, and they fell upon Judge Dunlevy.
+
+"This is a great honor," he said; "Ross Valley brings her great
+citizen back."
+
+"No!" cried the Judge, "it is you, Jabel, who have brought us all to
+your bedside to do ourselves honor. Here are Elk MacNair and my
+daughter, who owe all their fortune to your fatherly kindness, and who
+have come to repay you the uttermost farthing. Providence has
+appreciated your sacrifice. They bring for your blessing, my grandson,
+and the name they have given him is Jabel Blake."
+
+"Jabel," said General MacNair, "take with our full hearts this money.
+It has been honestly earned with the capital of your bank. We return
+it that you may fulfil the dream of your life!"
+
+Jabel Blake took the money, and a smile overspread his face. His hard
+lineaments were soft and fatherly now, and their tears attested how
+well he was esteemed. He drew Elk MacNair's ear to his lips, and said
+feebly, and with his latest articulate breath,
+
+"General, you owe me two years' interest!"
+
+They laid Jabel Blake away by his fathers, and on the day of the
+funeral Ross Valley was crowded like a shrine.
+
+
+
+
+POTOMAC RIVER.
+
+
+    Brave river in the mountains bred,
+      And broadening on thy way,
+    So stately that thy stretches seem
+      The bosom of the bay!
+    Thy growth is like the nation's life,
+      Through which thy current flows--
+    Already past the cataracts
+      And widening to repose.
+
+    Thy springs are at the Fairfax stone,
+      Thy great arms northward course,
+    They join and break the mountain bars
+      With ever rallying force;
+    But in thy nature is such peace,
+      The beaten mountains yield,
+    And lie their riven battlements
+      Within thy silver shield.
+
+    Through battle-fields thy runnels wind,
+      In fame thy ferries shine;
+    Thy ripples lave the ancient stones
+      On Freedom's boundary line;
+    Where every slave the border crossed,
+      A living host repass'd,
+    And of the sentries of thy fords,
+      John Brown shall be the last!
+
+    Yet, O Potomac! of thy peace
+      Somewhat let faction feel,
+    And Northern Pilgrims patient hear
+      Of Mosby and MacNeill.
+    The long trees bloom where Stuart cross'd,
+      And weep where Ashby bled,
+    And every echo in thy hills
+      Seems Stonewall Jackson's tread.
+
+    The love we bore in other days
+      No difference can bar,
+    And truce was kept at Vernon's grave
+      However rolled the war.
+    Like thee, oh river! human states
+      By many a rapid rage,
+    Before they reach the deeper tides
+      And glass the perfect age.
+
+    Brief is the span since Calvert's huts
+      Were still the Indian's sport,
+    And Braddock's columns stumbled on
+      The borderer Cresap's fort,
+    Till now the tinted hills grow fond
+      Around yon marble height,
+    Where Freedom calmly rules a realm
+      That tires her eagle's flight.
+
+    And still the wild deer sip thy springs,
+      The wild duck haunt thy coves,
+    And all the year the fisher fleets
+      Bask o'er thine oyster groves;
+    The strange new bass thy trout pursue.
+      And where the herring spawn,
+    The blue sky opens to let through
+      Thine own majestic swan.
+
+    Haste, Nature! Raze yon shiftless halls,
+      Where pride penurious bides,
+    The while the richness of the hills
+      Runs off to choke the tides;
+    Where every negro cabin stood
+      A freeman's hearthside warm,
+    And broad estates of bramble wood
+      Expunge in many a farm!
+
+    Fill and revive these fair arcades,
+      O race to Freedom born!
+    The tinkling herds that roam the glades,
+      The barge's mellow horn,
+    The lonesome sails that come and go
+      Repeat the wish again:
+    The ardent river yearns to know
+      Not memories, but MEN!
+
+
+
+
+TELL-TALE FEET.
+
+
+The din of the day is quiet now, and the street is deserted. The last
+bacchanal reeled homeward an hour ago. The most belated cabman has
+passed out of hearing. The one poor wretch who comes nightly to the
+water-side has closed her complaint; I saw her shawl float over the
+parapet as she flung her lean arms against the sky and went down with
+a scream. Here, in the busiest spot of the mightiest city, there is no
+human creature abroad; but footsteps are yet ringing on the
+desolateness. They are heard only by me. There are two of them; the
+first light, timorous, musical; the other harsh and heavy, as if shod
+with steel. I recognize them with a thrill; for they have haunted me
+many years, and they are speaking to me now. The one is soothing and
+pleading, and it implores me to write; but the second is like the
+striking of a revengeful knell. "Confession and Pardon," says the one;
+"Horror and Remorse," echoes the other. They tinkle and toll thus
+every midnight, when my hour of penance arrives and I have tried to
+register my story. It is almost finished now. Let me read the pages
+softly to myself:
+
+"My life has been a long career of suffering. The elements, whose
+changes and combinations contribute to the pleasure of my species,
+have arrayed themselves against me. I am fashioned so delicately that
+the every-day bustle of the world provokes exquisite and incessant
+pain. Embodied like my fellows, my nerves are yet sensitive beyond
+girlishness, and my organs of sight, smell, and hearing are
+marvellously acute. The inodorous elements are painfully odorous to
+me. I can hear the subtlest processes in nature, and the densest
+darkness is radiant with mysterious lights. My childhood was a
+protracted horror, and the noises of a great city in which I lived
+shattered and well-nigh crazed me. In the dead calms I shuddered at
+the howling of winds. I fancied that I could detect the gliding
+revolution of the earth, and hear the march of the moon in her
+attendant orbit.
+
+"My parents loved me tenderly, and, failing to soothe or conciliate
+me, they removed from the busy city to a secluded villa in the
+suburbs. Those labors which necessitated abrupt or prolonged sound
+were performed outside our grounds. The domestics were enjoined to
+conduct their operations with the utmost quietude. Carriages never
+came to the threshold, but stopped at the lodge; the drives were
+strewn with bark to drown the rattle of wheels; familiar fowls and
+beasts were excluded; the pines were cut down, though they had moaned
+for half a century; the angles of the house were rounded, that the
+wind might not scream and sigh of midnight, and the flapping of a
+shutter would have warranted the dismissal of the servants. Thick
+carpets covered the floors. My apartments lay in a remote wing, and
+were surrounded with double walls, filled with wool, to deaden
+communication. Goodly books were provided, but none which could arouse
+fears or passions. Fiery romances were prohibited, and histories of
+turmoil and war, with theology and its mournful revelations, and
+medicine, which revived the bitter story of my organism. My library
+was stocked with dreamy and diverting compositions--old Walton, the
+pensive angler; the vagaries of ancient Burton, and the placid
+essayists of the Addisonian day. Of poets I had Cowper and Wordsworth,
+who loved quiet life and were the chroniclers of domestic men and
+manners. Pictures of shadowy studios and calm lakes, unfrequented
+coverts and sleepy wayside inns, covered my wall. The tints of
+tapestry, panel, and furniture were subdued, and the sunshine which
+mellowed a stained window was softened by an ingenious arrangement of
+shades and refractors. Art opposed her quaintest contrivances against
+the intense and violent moods of Nature, and my retirement was secure
+from the inroads of all except my careful guardians.
+
+"But I was still unhappy, and the prey of vivid fancies. This privacy
+suggested the great world without, where men were wrestling with
+dangers. I imagined ships upon stormy seas, and whirlwinds around
+mountain-homes; the chaos of cities, the rout of armies, dim arctic
+solitudes, where the icebergs tumbled apart and the frozen seas split
+asunder. They had banished painful occurrences, but the sensitive
+organism could not be destroyed, and I bore up until almost insane,
+struggling to be cheerful when stunned and dazzled. At last, when my
+mother stole into my room one day--it was October, I think, for I
+could hear the tiniest leaves dropping to the grass far below--I laid
+my head wearily in her lap and covered my ears with my hands. My eyes
+were filled with tears.
+
+"'My dear mother, I cannot bear this life. I suffer as of old, though
+there be not a mote across the sun nor a breath in the air. If my mind
+could be led from these consciousnesses, I might be calm.'
+
+"'Luke,' said my mother, 'you need a companion.'
+
+"The thought was a new one, and so thrilled me.
+
+"'No, mother,' I replied; 'strong, healthy beings could not exist thus
+cloistered.'
+
+"'For less than money,' she responded, 'they have done more.'
+
+"'We should not agree,' I said; 'I would be peevish and he would
+despise me.'
+
+"'Your companion must be a woman, my son.'
+
+"A succession of short chills passed through every nerve, and a
+moment's faintness possessed me.
+
+"'It must not be,' I pleaded; 'a restless, chatting, plotting woman
+would be worse than all.'
+
+"My mother marked my rising agitation and glided away.
+
+"'Whatever can relieve you, dear Luke,' she said, 'your father shall
+obtain.'
+
+"I now fancied that they believed me mad, and that a keeper was to be
+introduced to me, under the guise of a companion. I formed many mental
+portraits of this fierce person, and they kept me awake through the
+long watches. I even meditated escape, and unclosed my casement with
+that design, but the sunlight, the bird songs, and the zephyrs rushed
+into my window and staggered me like so many sentinels. One day I
+slept fitfully, and dreamed that I was poor and orphaned, with the
+alternatives of death or work before me. I had wandered to a village
+and thrown myself beneath some elms, with a horrible despair sealing
+my eyelids. Suddenly the grass was stirred by some human footfalls,
+and two soft voices were speaking close beside me.
+
+"'It is strange,' said the first voice; 'he is pale and delicate, but
+with no evidences of heavier afflictions.'
+
+"'You do not know him,' murmured the other; 'wait and see!'
+
+"A face bent down to mine, and the lips of a woman touched my cheek. I
+started in my sleep, caught my breath gaspingly, and quivered like an
+aspen.
+
+"'This is indeed terrible,' said the soft voice compassionately; 'but
+do not despair. It cannot be nature. It must be habit, or bashfulness,
+or the effect of some childish and forgotten fright. Cheer up, and
+hope!"
+
+"'Be kind to him, Heraine,' resumed the other; 'you are my last resort,
+and becoming his companion you become my child. Do not vex, do not excite
+him. Be yourself--always calm, gentle, and affectionate--and the kindness
+which you show my boy may God return to you in mercy and blessing!'
+
+"I unclosed my eyes; the scene was resolved to my quiet library.
+Something glided through the door, but a form from the other side
+flung a shadow across my face. A premonition of the keeper thrilled me
+a moment, but I turned slowly at length and looked into the intruder's
+face.
+
+"A woman, or rather a girl with a woman's face, serene and placid, as
+if never ruffled by care or passion, sat between me and the window,
+and the gloomy light softened her calm countenance. As I looked up her
+lashes fell, and her blue eyes were bent fixedly upon the floor. She
+seemed like one of my sedate portraits, which had come down from its
+case. She waited, apparently, for some sign of recognition, or until
+my surprise should have passed away, and did not move while I ran her
+over with keen curiosity. She was, probably, of my own age, though her
+self-possession might have stamped her as much older; but the bloom of
+her cheek and her bosom just ripening were indices of a girl's year's.
+She raised her eyes at length and bade me good afternoon in a voice
+which reminded me of the faintest lullaby. The quiet tone was seconded
+by an assuring glance, and directly we were conversing without
+restraint, as if friends of years rather than acquaintances of an
+hour.
+
+"Heraine was the impersonation of composure. The neutral tint of dress
+corresponded with the smooth tresses of her brown hair. Her touch was
+magnetic, and petulancy vanished at her smile as at a charm. Her
+intelligence was, doubtless, the secret of her power. She divined my
+moods without inquiry, and cheered them without effort. She led me out
+of the unhealthy atmosphere engendered by my sensitiveness, and I
+sometimes forgot my disability for hours. She was as good as she was
+capable, and as amiable as she was resolute. We fraternized
+immediately, and I felt all the newness of a regenerated life. My
+temperament was fitful as of yore, but the gloomy spectres vanished;
+and my attention being weaned from the slighter occurrences of
+nature, I was no longer racked by their tremors and jars. The soft
+face of Heraine seemed to hush all chaos, and when she smiled I
+thought that the very earth had ceased to roll. When her large liquid
+eyes were fully opened upon me, I seemed to be looking into the hungry
+blue of the sky, and carried aloft by the look beyond the influence of
+matter. For the moment my nerves grew numb, the compass of my senses
+narrowed to her wondrous face, and the fetters which bound me to it
+were forged of gold.
+
+"The months went by like the stars, which wheel eternally, but seem
+motionless as we watch them. Sometimes we read aloud, but our voices
+were low and lulling, as if quieter than silence. Then we talked of my
+calm paintings, shadowing deeper lonelinesses in them. But it was my
+highest rapture to sit in stillness for hours while Heraine, cushioned
+at my feet, made cunning embroideries, like some facile poet whose
+fingers were dropping rhymes.
+
+"I remarked that our conversations were progressive. My companion led
+me gradually into forbidden themes, as if to strengthen and embolden
+me. We went forth, in fancy, from our shadowy chamber, through deep
+groves, into twilights, beneath soft skies, even into the glare of the
+sun, and, at last, among the storms and the seas. I may have quivered,
+but I was not shocked; for the wrack and roar of the universe were
+drowned in the quietness of her voice. Then we walked abroad a little
+way, and, though pained, I endured; for she did not abuse these
+successes. She had travelled in far countries, and often read me
+friendly letters which attested how well the world esteemed her.
+Sometimes her acquaintances came to the house, but never to my room;
+and once or twice she was absent a whole day, when my nervousness
+returned. There was one correspondent whose missives were never read
+to me--a fine, bold hand, which at length became familiar. Their
+receipt pleased her, I thought, and once I ventured to say,
+
+"'Heraine, you have a pleasant letter there.'
+
+"She only blushed very much, and all her quietness was gone for a
+moment.
+
+"As the months expanded into years, a new feeling engendered from our
+intimacy. I did not comprehend it at first. It crept upon me like the
+unfolding of a new sense, or the gradual realizing of the earliest
+profound thought. An unexpected event gave it recognition.
+
+"The boldly-indorsed letters came twice a month at first, afterward
+four times, and finally twice, thrice, and even five times a week.
+Heraine was quick and flushed. She passed but two or three hours daily
+in my apartment, and substituted for the embroidery a dress of such
+bright hues that it dazzled my eyes. One day she took her accustomed
+seat, with a face subdued to sadness and an irresolute manner.
+
+"'Luke,' she said, after a long pause, 'we have passed many days
+pleasantly together?'
+
+"She did not wait for me to speak, though I thrilled and turned deadly
+white.
+
+"'And because so pleasantly, I contemplate my farewell with regret.'
+
+"'Your farewell, Heraine?'
+
+"'Yes,' she said firmly; 'to-day--this afternoon--this hour--I bid
+adieu to Glengoyle!'
+
+"I fell forward in my seat, forcing down my heart, which sobbed and
+swelled, and the whole world rang, flared, and burst into violence. If
+the seas had opened their fountains and the crust of the globe crushed
+up, there would have been no greater chaos. But in my faintness and
+agony I caught the blue eye which had soothed and melted me so often,
+and, clasping my hands, I fell at her knees and said,
+
+"'Heraine, I love you!'
+
+"It was her time to tremble now, and I interpreted the pallor of her
+cheek as a signal of hope.
+
+"'I know that I love you,' I said; 'if the earth and the stars were to
+be blotted out, and you remain, I should not miss them. You are my
+universe. Without you there is no creation, and the elements are at
+war. If you leave me, you have left only a bright space in a wretched
+eternity. No voice but yours can say "peace" to me. Be merciful and
+remain!'
+
+"She was moved with my appeal, and tears came to her eyes.
+
+"'I did not know that it had come to this,' she said. Then her
+composure returned, and she raised me with a smile.
+
+"'If you would win any woman,' she said meaningly, 'you must first be
+a man. You are not a man, Luke. You are a child! You have shut the
+sunlight from you, and the trill of a thrush pierces you like an
+arrow. Would you cage your wife in the gloominess of this sepulchre?
+Would you hush her songs, and tremble beneath her caresses, and die in
+the delights of her love? Go! Open the window of this vault! Mingle
+with the crowds of cities! Ascend into the mountains! Cross the seas!
+Become worthy of my affection, and then entreat me again!'
+
+"She had shown me the abject thing I was. Her conditions were harder
+than death; but the hope she had spoken was like a glimpse of Heaven,
+and I answered,
+
+"'Heraine, I will do it!'
+
+"In a month I set out for my travels. An easy coach conveyed me to
+London, and the third day I lay sick in Paris. Sore of body and brain,
+strained in nerve and stunned in sense, I persisted in my resolve, and
+was whirled, more dead than alive, across the Continent to Berlin. In
+the period of three months I had traversed all the leading kingdoms
+and pushed my purpose to the sandy banks of the Nile. Every moment in
+this journey was an infinity of torture; but in the bitterest pangs I
+remembered the divine consummation, and kept on. My infirmities were
+increased rather than diminished. In the deepest thunder I could hear
+the delving of the beetle; and though the whole vault blazed with
+electric light, I could see the twinkle of the glow-worm. But among
+the multitude of noises which haunted me, the most persistent were the
+footfalls of men. There were pauses in the lives of all other beings.
+The weasel and the hyena rested sometimes, and I could avoid their
+haunts, but men were forever alert and ubiquitous. I heard them in
+abysses, upon peaks, and in wildernesses. They trod upon my nerves;
+they crushed sleep from my soul. I closed my ears in vain; I fled
+without refuge; I prayed without avail. The patter of little children,
+the footfall of the maiden, the elastic pace of the youth, the racking
+limp of the cripple, the veteran hobbling upon his wooden stump, the
+confused tread of crowds, the steady tramp of soldiers--these tortured
+me by daylight, and I kept penance at midnight with the going of
+outcasts and vagrants.
+
+"I learned to classify these footfalls. My sensations of them were so
+keen that my memory retained them. I recognized individuals, not by
+their faces but by their feet. A solitary tourist met me among the
+ruins of Luxor; I knew his tread, though months had elapsed, among the
+thousands on London Bridge. A gypsy family, whom I passed on the
+Spanish sierras, went under my window in Paris, and I missed the feet
+of the lad who had been hanged. Ten thieves were marched to the
+pillory in Kiev; I counted the paces of the four who escaped, from a
+closed diligence on the Simplon. I lost not one among the millions of
+footfalls. But there were two which I distinguished every where. When
+I pursued, they retreated; when I fled, they followed me. They were
+like two echoes in different keys; and one of them I loved, the other
+I hated. The first was soft, tinkling, harmonious, like a memory
+rather than a sound; the other was firm, vigorous, and vehement, and
+it kept time with the soft footstep, as if to drown it to my ears.
+When I was fagged and wretched, the light footfall approached me; but
+when, inspirited, I rose to behold its owner, it died away in the
+thunder of its companion tread.
+
+"At last I embarked for America, and when the land disappeared I said
+to myself, 'At sea, at least, no footfalls can follow.' But one night,
+when the clangor of the screw drove me upon deck, I heard, far astern,
+through the deep fog, the sound of two haunting feet. Next morning a
+swifter steamer overtook us. The waves revelled between, and the winds
+were high, but above the bellow of our engines and the elements, those
+thrilling footfalls rang out. I caught a glimpse of a familiar
+something, as the rival craft went by, and reeled and fell upon the
+deck.
+
+"I found New York the noisiest city in the world, and felt that a
+week's tenure would drive me mad. A fire occurred in Broadway the
+night of my arrival, and the din of the mobs which ran to its relief
+was greater than all the combined clamors of Europe. So I resorted to
+a beautiful village called Wyoming, in the heart of the Susquehanna
+mountains, and passed the month of September in comparative quiet. If
+any place in the world is shut in from brawls and storms, it is this
+historic valley. Its reminiscences were sad and painful to me, but its
+scenes were like soft dreams.
+
+"During a part of my tenure in the village I missed my shadowy
+attendants; but when, one day, I ascended to Prospect Rock, I heard
+amid the hum of farms and mines and mills, those same audible
+repetitions floating up the sides of the mountain. The valley grew dim
+upon my sight, and I hastened nervously to my cottage. Thenceforward I
+seldom lost them. When I penetrated the wild glen of the Lackawanna,
+or climbed the Umbrella Tree, or ventured into the Wolf's Den, or sat
+upon Queen Esther's Rock, or sailed upon Harvey's Lake, they followed
+me, the one lulling, the other maddening--invisible but omnipresent
+types of the good and the evil which forever hover in the air.
+
+"One day I ventured to Falling Waters, a reservoir which is
+precipitated from a cliff, called Campbell's Ridge, into a gorge of
+the Shawnee Mountains. The deafening roar of the cataract would be
+almost deathly to me; but, strengthened by the promise of Heraine, I
+determined to add this achievement to the long list of inflictions
+endured for her sake.
+
+"I made the ascent on foot, and could see, from the base of the ridge,
+the skein of foam shining through the pines in its everlasting flight
+down the rocks. I became accustomed to the sound as I gradually
+approached, and mused, with gladness, of an early return to England.
+Heraine would acknowledge my vindication. Suffering more anguish from
+a sunbeam or a song than others from the knout or the rack, I had yet
+run the gauntlet of the intensest horrors, cheered by the certainty of
+her regard. She would confess her error. We should shut out the world
+again from our shadowy home at Glengoyle, and go down together, hand
+in hand, to a deeper stillness. As I mused thus I heard the haunting
+footfalls again, going up the mountain before me. To my delight, their
+attendant demon was inaudible, and I pursued them rapturously. The
+rush of waters grew louder. They had moaned before; they shrieked and
+screamed now, as if in the agony of their suicidal leap. But, clear
+and musical, above the hell of sound rang the tinkling feet which had
+led me around the globe.
+
+"I called aloud. I quickened my pace. I could see only in glimpses
+through my tears; but along the steep sinuosities of the path
+something fluttered and vanished, and fluttered again--I recognized
+Heraine.
+
+"I knew now the fidelity of her affection. She had followed my invalid
+wanderings, to be near me in want and prostration. I could have knelt
+in the aisle of the dim woods, with God's choir of waters pealing
+before me, to weep my gratitude. But as the figure of Heraine
+disappeared above, those other abhorred footfalls rang keenly below.
+Deep, rapid, and elastic, they were sonorously defined above the clash
+of the cataract. I fled, with my hands upon my ears.
+
+"On and on! winding among boles, creeping beneath branches, climbing
+ledges, vaulting over fissures and chasms, I reached the open plain at
+last, and halted unnerved upon the brink of the abyss.
+
+"The glory of the prospect filled me with exquisite pain. A mist,
+arched by a delicate rainbow, rose from the tumbling flood, and the
+sunny valley was visible, at intervals, beyond it, inclosed by blue
+mountains and intersected by the pale, ribbon-like Susquehanna. It was
+my fate to endure, not to enjoy; but at this moment the cataract was
+forgotten in a deeper torment; the boughs opened, the sky split with
+the shock of feet, and a man bounded from the wood.
+
+"He was tall, handsome, and athletic, and his ruddy cheeks were
+flushed with exercise. He made a trumpet of his hands, and hallooed,
+long and clear,
+
+"'Hera--a--a--ine!'
+
+"Then he whistled through his fist till the rocks and water rang.
+
+"'Where the deuce is the dear girl?' he said, and his eyes fell upon
+me.
+
+"A terrible hatred rose in my heart against this man. It was the first
+great passion I had nurtured, and had received no other provocation
+than the empty sounds of his footfalls. But antipathies are not
+accidental merely; they are organic; and my quick sense took alarm
+even from his tread. One's character may be defined in his gait, but I
+knew from the tramp of this person that his nature was averse to mine.
+Why had he followed my affianced across the seas? Why had his crashing
+drowned the music of her steps? Why had he uttered her name with an
+endearment? Why had he been retained at her side, and I sent alone and
+wretched before? My wrists knotted nervously as these accusations took
+shape, and my blood became gall.
+
+"'I beg pardon,' he said curtly; 'but are you the young man we are
+looking for?'
+
+"I asked through my teeth whom he designated in the term '_we_.'
+
+"'Heraine, of course,' he replied; 'give me your hand! We have
+followed our little invalid--that's what we call you--over many a
+league, and may make his acquaintance at last. Ralph Clendenning, at
+your service!'
+
+"I shrank menacingly from him, and counted the dull throbs of my
+heart.
+
+"'What! timid!' he said; 'and with so old a friend? I never met you,
+indeed, but then I have talked of you so often that you have grown to
+be quite a brother.'
+
+"I saw that he was frank and winning, and hated him the more.
+
+"'Upon my word,' he added, 'there was none whom I had resolved in my
+mind to love so well, for the sake of Heraine.'
+
+"A cry escaped me, so bitter that it seemed a howl, and I clenched my
+hands.
+
+"He still followed me along the very edge of the cliff, extending his
+hand. A horrible impulse rushed upon me, and a thought darker than
+jealousy caught it up. I hurled myself against him. He staggered on
+the brink of the abyss, and went down with a sharp, half-stifled
+scream!
+
+"My eyes followed the dead weight, as it rolled from ledge to ledge,
+accelerated each instant by the force of the cataract. A world, tossed
+out of gravity and crashing among the planets, could not have been
+more awfully distinct. Down--down--down--a formless mass of fibre and
+bone, the mist seemed to buoy it up when it reached the deepmost
+cascade, and as it disappeared through the tops of the pines I heard
+the coming of footfalls.
+
+"Mine was a soul in torment, listening to music in heaven. I stood,
+stiff and numb in horror, staring into the gulf. The roar of the
+cataract was smothered to a babble. The rainbow vibrated tremulously
+to the dropping harmonies. I saw the familiar shadow as it gided to
+my feet. A soft hand thrilled me with its touch, and the old voice
+said,
+
+"'Dear Luke, I am Heraine, come back.'
+
+"I could not stir. My eyes were forged to the abyss.
+
+"'Why do you glare so wildly?' she said. 'Come! you have been brave,
+and must not fail now. Have you no kind greeting for Heraine?'
+
+"Down in the abyss, swaying and rocking upon the pine bough, with the
+frank smile as when I murdered him, I saw my victim in fancy.
+
+"'Speak, Luke,' she repeated. 'I have a dear friend here; he has made
+the long pilgrimage with me, fondly anticipating this meeting. You
+will know him to-day, and I am sure you will love him.'
+
+"Still surging upon mist and spray and bough, with the halo of the
+rainbow shimmering above it, the noble face turned upward forgivingly.
+
+"'We have planned for your happiness, dear friend. Compared to the
+retreat we have fashioned for you, Glengoyle is a Babel. But you are
+ill, Luke; What terrible allurement lies in the waterfall? Come away
+from the brink! Ralph! Ralph!'
+
+"She called in clear tones. The woods and waters answered back.
+
+"'He is there,' I stammered; 'down--deep--dead--do you see him?--how
+he smiles and surges on the tufts of the pines! I--thrust him over--in
+rage--even as he gave me his hand--I slew him!'
+
+"'Merciful God!' she whispered in horror; 'he was my husband!'
+
+"The rainbow dissolved; the waterfall deluged the valley; the
+mountains were covered with waves; the skies grew pitchy dark; I saw
+nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My sensations upon waking were those of a diver who has risen from
+the tranquil depths to the surface. Hubbub recommenced; horror
+returned. My hair was shaven close to my skull; my head ached
+dismally; I moved my hand with an effort, and my eyelids were so weak
+that I could not unseal them for a time.
+
+"I was lying in my old chamber at Glengoyle, and Heraine was sitting
+at my bedside. Her garments were sable, her brown hair thin, her face
+placid, as of yore, but marked by deep-seated grief, and the magnetism
+of will and courage was gone from it. To the eye she was the same; to
+the mind, a weak and broken thing. Crime had changed both our natures;
+she had been tutor and governess before, and I the passive, submissive
+creature; but sin had made me bold, and sorrow worn her to a woman.
+
+"'Luke,' she said, in the same lullaby tone, 'do you know me? do you
+recognize the place? are you still weak?'
+
+"'Heraine,' said I, sternly, 'do not the wrongs we have done each
+other forbid this intimacy?'
+
+"'Oh, Luke!' she replied, 'let us not uncover the past. I have buried
+your sin with its victim, and watched you through weary months, and
+prayed God to pardon you.'
+
+"'Can God pardon your sin to me, Heraine?'
+
+"'I trust so, Luke,' she said feebly, 'if ever in my life I treasured
+you a hard thought or did you any injury.'
+
+"'Is it no injury,' I said, 'to have lured me by a false promise from
+my quiet home? I have endured the torture of cities, seas, suns, and
+storms. Your pledge was my spur and talisman through all. But you had
+cheated me with a lie. You were another's already. For you I have
+stained my hands with blood and shut heaven against my soul!'
+
+"'As I have an account to Settle, Luke,' she pleaded, 'I meant your
+happiness only. To have told you that I was wedded would have pained
+you. I thought to familiarize you with scenes and sounds, by making my
+regard an incentive to adventure. It was your mother's plan. I yielded
+to the deception, and believed it good."
+
+"'It was a wicked falsehood,' I said; 'you knew the weakness of my
+nature--that my sensitiveness was a disease--that to cross me was to
+kill. You have made both of us wretched forever.'
+
+"My cruelty was murdering her; her face grew deathly in its pallor,
+and she pressed her hands upon her heart.
+
+"'Let the dead man lie between us,' I proceeded; 'it is not seemly for
+you to be my friend; and to me you are an ever-present accusation. We
+must not see each other!'
+
+"'Oh, Luke!' she cried, falling upon her knees imploringly; 'I am a
+bruised thing, a-weary of the world. This silence and darkness are
+endeared to me. Do not send me away!'
+
+"'You agitate me,' I said; 'let us do our penance, each in loneliness.
+There was a time when our sorrows were mutual; it is past; we have
+only to say farewell.'
+
+"I covered my face with my hands; she touched my brow with her lips,
+and when the door had closed upon her sobbing I heard her footfalls
+making mournful music on the stairs. They rang upon the lawn, then
+pattered down the drive; they passed desolately out of the gate, they
+were lost on the highway, and then the world became blank again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Luke,' said my mother timidly, 'Mrs.
+Clendenning--Heraine--is--dead.'
+
+"'I know it,' said I quietly.
+
+"She seemed surprised, and interrogated me with her eyes.
+
+"'She died at twilight yesterday,' I stated; 'as the first candles
+were lit in the lodge and the earliest star appeared--I heard her
+footsteps.'
+
+"'At that time she passed away,' sobbed my mother. 'Oh, Luke! you were
+cruel to the poor girl. Her parting prayer was made for you. To the
+last you stood between Heraine and heaven.'
+
+"'At that time, mother, I was sitting at my window. Tears and thrills
+haunted me during the afternoon, and I was frightened in the silence
+and darkness. And I heard Heraine's footsteps come up the road, pass
+the lodge, ascend the stairs, and cross my threshold. They were like
+echoes rather than sounds--hollow and ghostly; and mingled with them
+were the deeper footfalls of my other spectre, her husband.'
+
+"I could not inhabit my chamber now. These awful sounds drove me into
+the open world, where I hoped to lose them in the tread of multitudes.
+I wandered to the old church on the day of the funeral, and looked
+upon the bier with dry and burning eyes. The pastor read of the holy
+Jerusalem, and said that her pure feet were walking the golden
+streets. But in the hushes of the sobbing I heard them close beside
+me, and while children were strewing her grave with flowers they
+followed me over the stile and through the village till I gained the
+fields and took to my heels in fright.
+
+"I sought the resort of crowds, and lived amid turbulences. In busy
+hours I baffled my pursuers; but in the dark midnights, when only the
+miserable walked, I suffered the agonies of remorse and penance. The
+ever-flowing stream of life on London Bridge became my solace. My
+apartments are here, and I sit continually at an open window, leaning
+far forward, to catch the thunder of the tramp. I know the footfalls
+as of old. I see the suicide pace to and fro, to nerve herself for the
+deed. I hear her sleek betrayer, and detect their wretched offspring
+as he first essays to filch a handkerchief or a purse.
+
+"Oh, the footfalls! the footfalls! Each tread marks a good or a wicked
+thought. A fiend or an angel starts beneath every heel. They write an
+eternal record as they go. Their voices float forever to witness
+against or for us. We people space as we cleave it. The ground that is
+dumb as we spurn it has a memory and a revenge. I am more sensitive
+than my kind; and my penance to these monitors of my sin is but a
+realization of the terror which all must feel at the accusation of
+their footfalls."
+
+
+
+
+UPPER MARLB'RO'.
+
+
+    Through a narrow, ravelled valley, wearing down the farmer's soil,
+    The Patuxent flows inconstant, with a hue of clay and oil,
+    From the terraces of mill-dams and the temperate slopes of wheat,
+    To the bottoms of tobacco, watched by many a planter's seat.
+
+    There the blackened drying-houses show the hanging shocks of green,
+    Smoking through the lifted shutters, sunning in the nicotine;
+    And around old steamboat-landings loiter mules and over-seers,
+    With the hogsheads of tobacco rolled together on the piers.
+
+    Inland from the river stranded in a cove between the hills,
+    Lies old Marlb'ro' Court and village, acclimated to her chills;
+    And the white mists nightly rising from the swamps that trench her round,
+    Seem the sheeted ghosts of memories buried in that ancient ground.
+
+    Here in days when still Prince George's of the province was the queen,
+    Great old judges ruled the gentry, gathering to the court-house green;
+    When the Ogles and the Tayloes matched their Arab steeds to race,
+    Judge Duval adjourned the sessions, Luther Martin quit his case.
+
+    Here young Roger Taney lingered, while the horn and hounds were loud,
+    To behold the pompous Pinkney scattering learning to the crowd;
+    And old men great Wirt remembered, while their minds he strove to win,
+    As a little German urchin drumming at his father's inn.
+
+    When the ocean barks could moor them in the shadow of the town
+    Ere the channels filled and mouldered with the rich soil wafted down--
+    Here the Irish trader, Carroll, brought the bride of Darnell Hall,
+    And their Jesuit son was Bishop of the New World over all.
+
+    Here the troopers of Prince George's, with their horse-tail helmets, won
+    Praise from valiant Eager Howard and from General Wilkinson;
+    And (the village doctor seeking from the British to restore)
+    Key, the poet, wrote his anthem in the light of Baltimore.
+
+    One by one the homes colonial disappear in Time's decrees.
+    Though the apple orchards linger and the lanes of cherry-trees;
+    E'en the Woodyard[3] mansion kindles when the chimney-beam consumes,
+    And the tolerant Northern farmer ploughs around old Romish tombs.
+
+    By the high white gravelled turnpike trails the sunken, copse-grown route,
+    Where the troops of Ross and Cockburn marched to victory, and about,
+    Halting twice at Upper Marlb'ro', where 'tis still tradition's brag,
+    That 'twas Barney got the victory though the British got the swag.
+
+    But the Capital, rebuilded, counts 'mid towns rebellious this--
+    Standing in the old slave region 'twixt it and Annapolis;
+    And the cannons their embrasures on the Anacostia forts
+    Open tow'rd old ruined Marlb'ro' and the dead Patuxent ports.
+
+[Footnote 3: "The Woodyard," the finest brick mansion on the western
+peninsula of Maryland, the seat of the Wests, twelve miles from
+Washington, burned down a few years ago by the unaccountable ignition
+of the great beam of wood over the big chimney-place, which had stood
+there for nearly 200 years. Either seasoned by the fire or fired by
+spooks, it caught in the night, and a heap of imported bricks stood
+next morning in place of The Woodyard.]
+
+    Still from Washington some traveller, tempted by the easy grades,
+    Through the Long Old Fields continues cantering in the evening shades,
+    Till he hears the frogs and crickets serenading something lost,
+    In the aguey mists of Marlb'ro' banked before him like a frost.
+
+    Then the lights begin to twinkle, and he hears the negroes' feet
+    Dancing in the old storehouses on the sandy business street,
+    And abandoned lawyers' lodges underneath the long trees lurk,
+    Like the vaults around a graveyard where the court-house is the kirk.
+
+    He will see the sallow old men drinking juleps, grave and bleared--
+    But no more their household servants at the court-house auctioneered;
+    And the county clerk will prove it by the records on his shelves,
+    That the fathers of the province were no better than ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+PREACHERS' SONS IN 1849.
+
+
+When I admit that these reminiscences are real, it will at once be
+inferred that I am a preacher's son. The general reputation of my
+class has been bad since the day of Eli; but I affirm and maintain
+that reason does not bear out this verdict, however obstinate
+experience may be. For why should the best parents have the worst
+children? and that our itinerant sires were godly and self-sacrificing
+men the most prodigal of their boys must confess. No flippant or
+errant example rises before me when I take my father's portrait in my
+hand and recall the humility and heroism of his life. A stern and
+angular face, out of whose saliences look two ruddy windows, lit by a
+steadfast cheerfulness, is thinly thatched by hairs of iron-gray, and
+around the long loose throat a bunch of frosted beard sparkles as if
+the painter's pencil had fastened there in reverence. I do not need to
+study the bent, broad shoulders and thin sinewy limbs to measure the
+hardness and steepness of his path; he climbed it like a bridegroom,
+humming quaint snatches of hymns to lull his human waywardnesses, and
+all the fever and errantry of our own vain career shrink abashed
+before his high devotion.
+
+That I have turned out a rover is not odd; for the travelling
+preacher's son is cradled upon the highway. Three months after my
+birth we "moved" a hundred miles; by my sixteenth year we had made
+eleven migrations.
+
+We children little sympathize with our weak and sickly mother on these
+occasions, but look forward to a change of abode as something very
+novel and desirable. We count the days between Christmas and April,
+after which the annual "Conference" assembles in the distant city, and
+we see our father, in his best black suit, quit the parsonage door
+with an anxious face, cut to the heart by his wife's farewell, "May
+they give you a good place, Thomas!"
+
+Then come letters--one, two, three: "The bishops are friendly;" "The
+Presiding Elder has promised to do the best for us that he can;" "The
+influential Doctor Bim has praised our missionary sermon, and Brother
+Click, the Secretary, has applauded our Charge's large subscription to
+the _Advocate_;" "Our character has passed even the severe approval of
+the great theologian, Steep;" "Take courage, my dear, and hope for the
+best!"
+
+The membership, meanwhile, are dropping in by couples to say kindly
+words to our mother, whom they pity, and it is rumored that they are
+collecting a purse to help us on our way. At last our father returns,
+striving to hide his solicitude in a smile, for no fate to which they
+could consign himself would scathe that grisly servant of his Master;
+but for his family, who do not altogether share the spirit of his
+mission, he has a little fear. He kisses us all in order, from the
+least to the biggest, commencing and ending with our mother, and
+playfully prevaricates as to our "appointment," the name of which we
+noisily demand, until his wife says timidly,
+
+"Where do they send us, Thomas?"
+
+He tries to smile and trifle, but the possibility of her discontent
+gives him so great pain that we children perceive it.
+
+"How would you like to go to Greensburg?"
+
+"Not _Greensburg_!" she says, with a sudden paleness.
+
+"Isn't it a good circuit?" he says smilingly; "they paid the last
+preacher three hundred dollars, and his marriage fees were a hundred
+more. They say he saved fifty dollars a year!"
+
+"Oh, Thomas, I thought I had fortitude, but this--"
+
+"Is only to test your faith," he cries. "A poor preacher's wife should
+be willing to go anywhere--even to Greensburg; but that is not our
+appointment, dear; we move to Swan Neck."
+
+Then the fun begins in earnest. The church people come to look at our
+contribution bedquilts, and help us pack up the blue earthenware. The
+legs of the prodigious box, yclept a milk chest, are summarily
+amputated and laid away in it, with the parental library, which, we
+are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and
+use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and
+regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had
+suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John
+Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much
+necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our
+humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel,
+and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect the large
+gilt-edged cups and saucers, which say upon their edges, "To our
+pastor," and "To our pastor's wife." The thin rag carpets are folded
+away; the potatoes in the bin are sold to Brother Bibb, the grocer,
+and to a very few of the select sisters we present a can of our
+preserved quinces, with directions how to prepare them. Poor Em., the
+black domestic, drops so many tears upon the parlor stove as she
+carries it out to the wagon that the fresh blackening she has so
+industriously given it goes for nothing; for Em. is to be discharged,
+and the fact troubles her, though a preacher's servant has little to
+eat and plenty to do.
+
+At last the old parsonage is quite bare and deserted, though our
+successors, box and baggage, have moved in upon us, much to the
+annoyance of the females, who see with jealousy that the new arrival
+gets the lion's share of attention, and that Brother Tipp, whose
+class-book we took from him, and who has backbitten us ever since, is
+courteous as a dancing-master with our rival. We shall talk for six
+years to come--that is, our mother--of Bangs's, the new-comer's,
+impudence in feeding his horse on our oats, and shall never speak of
+him as Brother Bangs, but simply call him _Bangs_, emphasized. We are
+not even sure that he will not turn his poultry loose before ours has
+been secured, and we boys, with great zeal, run down the roosters and
+ducks, giving them, if the truth must be told, longer chase than is
+necessary. The aged muscovy, we are sorry to say, lames himself in the
+retreat, and the only goose on the premises hides among Powell's, the
+neighbor's, so that we cannot tell which from which. However, the
+property is tied up at last in the several wagons; Sister Phoenix's
+lunch has been eaten, and our father, the itinerant, in his
+shirt-sleeves, stands up, with pain and perspiration on his brow, to
+bid his flock good-by.
+
+"Now, brethren," he says, with a quiver at his throat, "my time is
+passing; I have finished the work appointed for me to do. Renew the
+kindnesses you have done me and my little ones upon the good steward
+who is to replace me. My heart weeps to cut the bonds which have held
+us so long together; but in this world I am a pilgrim and a stranger.
+Let us all pray!"
+
+As his shrill, broken voice goes up in a mingled wail and hosanna, we
+children peep by stealth into the working faces of the bystanders, and
+our own grow tearful, till our little sister cries aloud, and our
+mother falls into some fond matron's arms.
+
+Immediately our wagons are on the way. The clustering village roofs
+and the church spire sink down behind. We are too full of excitement
+to share the silence of our elders, and the passing objects while us
+to laughter and debate.
+
+Swan Neck is a representative circuit. It lies, as everybody knows,
+somewhere upon the Eastern shore--that landmark and stronghold of
+Methodism. The parsonage is in Crochettown, the county-seat, and the
+circuit comprises half a dozen churches down the neck, among the pine
+forests and on the bay side. Our father tells our mother on the way of
+the advantages of the place, till we take it to be quite a metropolis.
+He says that Wiggins, whom we succeed, gives a first-rate account of
+it. One of the members (Judd) is a judge, and our church, in short,
+rules the roast thereabout, and makes the Episcopalians stand around,
+not to speak of the Baptists, who try as usual to edge us out.
+
+The boys ask with glowing cheeks if there is a river at Crochettown,
+and are thrown into ecstasy by the reply that a large steamboat
+touches there twice a week, and that there is a drawbridge. We are
+less interested in the statement that the schools are good, but hear
+with delight the history of one Dumple, an innkeeper, who persecutes
+our church and sells quantities of "rum" to our young men. William,
+the son of Wiggins, our predecessor, was once seen in the bar-room and
+reported to his father, who fetched him home by _posse comitatus_, and
+found that he smelled strongly of soda water.
+
+As we go along the road in this way, our furniture mean time having
+been shipped by water, a very compact and knotty young man rides up
+behind us upon a nag which we at once identify as church property. The
+sleekness of the flanks betokens his conversance with other people's
+corn-cribs, and he has a habit of shying at all the farm-house gates
+as if habituated to stopping whenever he liked and staying to dinner.
+His Perseus has a semi-gallant, semi-verdant way of lifting his hat,
+and his voice is hard as his knuckles.
+
+"Woa, Sal!" he says (all preachers drive mares, it may be
+interpolated), "have I the pleasure of addressing Brother Ryder?"
+
+"The same, sir."
+
+"My name is Chough, sir; the annual Conference has done me the favor
+of associating my name with yours at Swan Neck."
+
+"Oh, ho! You are my colleague; my wife, Brother Chough!"
+
+The wife runs Brother Chough over immediately, who looks very red and
+awkward, and she gives her estimate of him in an undertone. It will be
+bad for Chough if he is at all airish or scholastic, or individual in
+his opinions, for between a senior pastor's wife and his young
+assistant there is an hereditary distrust; conceit has no show at all
+in a young itinerant.
+
+But Chough wisely confines his remarks to asking questions about the
+bishops, and agrees with us that Doctor Bim's address on the church
+extension cause was sound as the Fathers, and finally gives us his own
+extraction, which we trace to the respectable Choughs of Caroline
+County, and at once fraternize with him.
+
+Those were happy days for us children! Cornfield and barn and negro
+quarter rolled by us like things of fable. We watched the squirrels in
+the scrubwood as never again we shall take interest in human
+companionship, and stopped at farm-house troughs to water our nag with
+keener joy than that with which we have since gazed upon far blue seas
+or soft cis-alpine lakes and rivers.
+
+At last we reach the place; the complement of free negro cabins lies
+on its outskirts; we ask the way to the Methodist preacher's
+residence, and learning with feigned surprise that "he has just gone
+an' lef town for good," cross a sandy creek and bridge, climb a hill,
+and stop at our future threshold.
+
+It is an ancient edifice of brick; a pigmy stable stands beside it,
+with a gate intervening, and in the rear we have a lot big enough to
+graze one frugal horse, and a garden sufficiently large to employ us
+boys. Our father starts off immediately to find the keys; but in the
+face of a gathering of small lads in pinafores and jack-knives, who
+come to gaze at us, we scale the gate, enter a back shutter, and cry
+a welcome to our mother from the second-story front.
+
+We hastily scan the several chambers to claim all that we find in the
+drawers and closets; are gratified to observe the bow-gun and
+shinney-sticks of the young Wigginses departed, and quite fall out
+among ourselves over the wooden effigy of an Indian which has tumbled
+down from the barn-top.
+
+Soon the nearest neighbor of our persuasion arrives with our father,
+and takes our mother and the baby away to his dwelling. A fat old
+trustee and local preacher carries off ourself and sister, and we go
+bashfully and wonderingly into the heart of the town, past the church,
+past the market-house, past the tavern and court and public hall,
+until the door of our host closes upon us, and our short sandy hairs
+appear at the windows to scan the street and the people.
+
+Yeasty, our host, is the only local preacher in Crochettown, where he
+also keeps a store, but is said to be as rich as Croesus, and
+miserly as get out; and he has a pretty daughter, Margot, who sweeps
+into the room like a little queen, and, being older than ourselves,
+patronizes us till we blush. She rattles off all the town talk, the
+parties in the winter season, the terrible master of the academy, and
+the handsomest boys, including Barret, who is dissipated and writes
+poetry; the beauty of Marian Lee, who seems to be the terror of young
+gentlemen, though Margot don't see any thing in her, the proud piece!
+
+And so we pick up the history of the village with the diligence of
+Froissart or Jean de Troyes, and eat last winter's apples by the ruddy
+grate, listening to Margot, with our very round tow head upon our
+sister's, filled with vague dreams of greatness and wealth, and old
+Yeasty's silver half dollars piled up around us, and Margot to chat at
+our side forever.
+
+Oh! innocent days of itinerant urchinhood, your freshness comes no
+more; we "move on" as of old--waifs in the wide circuit of this nomad
+life--but with the hymns which lulled us in the neglected
+meeting-house, the prophecies they told us of toil, duty, reverence,
+and content, have floated into heaven whither our father has gone!
+
+The bulk of our furniture being delayed, and our mother impatient of
+accepting hospitality, we move into the great, bare parsonage house on
+Saturday, and sit in the only furnished room. It grieves even
+ourselves to see how this merry moving has thinned her anxious white
+face, and therefore we forbear to fret her when we read the three long
+Bible chapters she exacts. Josh, our brother, does not purposely
+pronounce physician "physiken," as he is in the habit of doing, and
+our sister remembers for once that ewe lamb is to be called "yo," and
+not "e-we" in two syllables. The dinner is quite cold, but Josh, who
+complains, is reminded of the poor Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, who
+could not afford salt with his potatoes. Josh says that for his part
+he don't like potatoes anyhow, and will not be comforted.
+
+In the afternoon we present ourselves at Sunday-school, and as the
+preacher's sons are supposed to be first-class ecclesiastical
+scholars, are put in the Bible-class. Here we surprise everybody by
+the quantity of verses we know by heart, and get many red and blue
+tickets for our reward. It must be confessed that we had been twice
+before paid for the same lesson, it being our perquisite to carry all
+that we know from school to school. We see Margot among the girls,
+swinging her feet under the seat as she hummingly commits her lesson
+to memory, and as her feet are very pretty, they do not perhaps move
+unconsciously. But Josh and we have quite a battle as to Margot, Josh
+saying, "She's my girl," and we averring that "we know better--she's
+mine," until finally our sister disposes of the matter by betraying us
+to the little coquette, whereat we are both ashamed, and go home
+hastily.
+
+We feed and curry the horse by turns, and hunt eggs in the stable
+with boisterous rivalry, and have quite a contest as to who shall go
+down upon "the circuit" first, which is at last settled in favor of
+the first person.
+
+On the appointed Sunday we rise betimes, "gear up" the nag to the
+sulky, and depositing a carpet-stool in the foot, sit upon it between
+our father's legs, and trot out of town at a respectably slow gait to
+clear the preacher of any suspicion of keeping a fast horse. Fairly
+out of town, however, we switch up somewhat, ourself watching over the
+dasher the clods and dust thrown from the mare's shoes, and our father
+humming snatches of hymns, with his grave eyes twinkling.
+
+We say "How de do," of course, to every passer-by, as it is the pride
+of the profession to lead the etiquette of the country; and, passing
+remarks upon the badness of the fences, the staunchness of the barns,
+and the coziness of the dwellings, soon leave the cultivated high-road
+for one of the by-ways which lead down the sparsely-settled "Neck."
+The sombre pine forests gather about us; a squirrel or two runs across
+the route, and a solitary crow caws in the tree-top; we hear the loud
+"tap-tap-tap" of a woodpecker, and see through the sinuous aisles of
+firs some groups of negroes pattering to church. The men take off
+their hats obsequiously, and the women duck their heads, and our
+father says benignantly, "Going to church, boys? that's right! I like
+to see you honor the Great Master!" At which the younger Africans show
+their teeth, and the more forward patriarchs reply, "Yes, massar,
+bress de Lord!"
+
+So the teams increase in number like the wayfarers, all with the same
+object in view, until we see the church at last, standing behind a
+line of whitewashed palings, flanked by less pretentious worm fences,
+and in the rear a long shed for horses, open in front, shadows the few
+tomb memorials of stone and stake.
+
+Several lads and worldlings at the gate, slashing their boots with
+riding-whips, make obeisance, while two or three plain old gentlemen
+walk down to meet us, saying:
+
+"Brother Ryder, we _pré_-sume! Welcome to Dodson's Corner, Brother
+Ryder!"
+
+We tie up the nag, loosen her bridle bit, and follow into the
+meeting-house--a lofty building unplastered at the roof, whose open
+eaves and shingles give place in summer to nests of wasps, and in the
+winter to audacious birds, some of which swoop screaming to the
+pulpit, and beat the window panes in futile flight. Two uncarpeted
+aisles lead respectively to the men's side and the women's side--for,
+far be it from us, primitive Methodists, to improve upon the
+discipline of Wesley--and midway of each aisle, in square areas, stand
+two high stoves, with branching pipes which radiate from their red-hot
+cylinders of clay. The pulpit is a square unpainted barricade, with
+pedestals on each side for a pair of oil-lamps; the cushions which
+sustain the Bible are the gift of young unconverted ladies, and are
+sacredly brought to the place of worship each Sunday morning and taken
+away in the afternoon.
+
+By the side of the stove the old stewards and the new minister stand
+awhile talking over the moral _status_ of the country, the advances
+made by the Baptists, and the amount of money contributed by Dodson's
+Corner to the various funds of the church. The folk, meanwhile, drop
+in by squads, the colored element filling the unsteady gallery in the
+rear, until our father looks at his open-faced watch, and says:
+
+"Bless my soul, brethren, it is time to begin the services!"
+
+He ascends into the pulpit. We sit on what is known as the "Amen
+side," with our thumb in our button-hole, and watch the process of the
+chief steward, who is unlimbering his tuning-fork. He obtains the
+pitch of the tune by rapping the pew with this, or, if his teeth be
+sound, which is rare, touches the prongs with his incisors. Then his
+head--whose baldness, we imagine, arises from the people in the rear
+looking all the hair off--is thrown back resolutely, his jaws fly wide
+open, he projects a tangible stream of music to the roof, to the alarm
+of the birds, and comes to a dead halt at the end of the second
+line--for here we have congregational singing, and even those without
+hymn books may assist to swell the music. But very often the leader
+breaks down; the vanguard of old ladies cannot keep up the tune;
+volunteers make desperate efforts to rally the chorus, but retire
+discomfited, and the pastor, in addition to praying, reading, and
+preaching, must finally, in his worn, subdued voice, lead the forlorn
+hope.
+
+The sermon on this inaugural occasion may justly be termed a work of
+art. It must be conclusive of the piety, learning, eloquence, and
+sound doctrine of the preacher, and be by turns argumentative,
+combative, stirring, pathetic, practical, and pictorial. The text has
+about the same connection at first with the discourse that a campanile
+has with a cathedral. A solid eulogium upon the book from which it is
+taken gives occasion for some side-slashes at Voltaire, Hume, and
+Gibbon; the deaths of these are contrasted with the obsequies of the
+righteous, and the old-fashioned, material place of punishment is
+reasserted and minutely described. The text is then said to naturally
+resolve itself into three parts--the injunction, the direction, and
+some practical illustrations. The injunction, it is further allowed,
+re-subdivides itself, and these parts are each proclaimed in the form
+of speech of "Once more." We are quite too old a hand at listening to
+imagine that "once more" means _only_ once more, and start to
+enumerate the beams in the roof, the panes in the windows, and the
+gray hairs in the old gentleman's head before us. About the time that
+we feel sleepy an anecdote arouses us: then the iteration of
+expletives from the membership succeeds; we see that the owner of the
+tuning-fork has fallen to sleep in so ingenious an attitude that he
+would never have been detected but for his snore, and are amused by
+the fashion one good lady has of slowly wagging her head as she drinks
+in the discourse. A slight commotion in the gallery arises, which
+gives a steward excuse to steal down the aisle and hasten to the scene
+of disturbance; the final appeal, brimming with the poetry of mercy,
+grace, patience, and salvation is said; we all kneel down upon the
+hard cold floor while the last prayer is being made, and receive the
+benediction, as if some invisible shadow of bright wings had fallen
+upon the dust and fever of our lives.
+
+To say that the first person is weary but vindicates the sagacity of
+our father, who steals down to our side and whispers, "You may go out,
+Fred, if you are tired." But curiosity compels us to remain after the
+congregation is dismissed, that we may hear the class-meeting
+experiences.
+
+Those solemn corollaries to the service thrill me with their
+recollection even now. The almost empty church echoing the sobs of the
+weary, and heart-bruised, and spirit-broken; the pinched, hard faces
+of the older people telling their bitter trials in bereavement,
+misappreciation, and poverty. But bursting through all, that
+unconquerable enthusiasm which lends to the face more than the glow of
+intelligence, and to the heart more than the recompense of riches; the
+timid utterance of the younger converts, outlining the rebellious
+instincts of their tempted bodies, and their need of more faith,
+grace, and help divine. While these speak in order, the bald-headed
+chorister interpolates appropriate snatches of psalms, and the
+preacher cries, "Patience, my brother! All will be well! Hope on, hope
+ever!"
+
+At last the impatient negroes in the gallery have their opportunity,
+and roll down thunders of exuberant piety, which, by their natural,
+almost inspired eloquence, pathos, and vehemence, stir even their
+masters to ejaculations of praise.
+
+How must such spiritually social reunions cheer the long, hard lives
+of these poor, remote believers! He was a profound statesman who,
+projecting a gospel for the lowly, devised the class-meeting as an
+outlet for their suppressed emotions, sympathies, and sorrows.
+
+However, it is all over, and there is quite a dispute after the
+"class" as to who shall have the pastor's company to dinner. It is a
+piece of fine diplomacy to determine this. Policy dictates the most
+influential; feeling, the most reverend and poor. But the interest of
+the church is paramount; a compliment or a promise appeases the vanity
+of the humbler, and we follow the double team of the great landholder,
+Tibbet, and are soon sitting before his roaring fire.
+
+Itinerants are notoriously big eaters. Our father keeps a weather eye
+on the provender as it is brought in smoking, and it being soon
+apparent that the dinner is to be orthodox, if not apostolic, his
+social attributes improve wonderfully. He breaks out in little spurts
+of anecdote, not entirely secular, nor yet too didactic to be jovial.
+They run upon young Brother Bolt, who once, after an unusual happy
+"revival" night, to show his great faith, tried to leap over a creek
+and doused himself to the ears; upon the great controversialist,
+Whanger, who, being invited to preach in a "High Church" pulpit,
+improved the occasion to trace apostolic succession as far back as
+Pope Joan; upon the first intelligent contraband of his kind, whose
+mistress affirmed that if one's ill deeds were numerically greater
+than his good ones he would be--jammed, and if the contrary, saved,
+and who responded, "Spose'n dey boff de same, missus?"
+
+These are told with inimitable spirit and mimicry, as want of clerical
+wit is a direct impeachment of the validity of one's "call" to preach;
+and when the table is filled, and with outstretched hands the blessing
+said, our father gets a universal compliment for his carving. There is
+roast turkey, with rich stuffing, bright cranberry sauce, and savory
+pies of pumpkin, mince, and persimmon, cider to wash down the mealy
+ripeness of the sweet potato, and at the end transparent quinces
+drowned in velvet cream. How glibly goes the time! We play with a
+young miss, who shows us her library, in which, we are sorry to say, a
+book about pirates deeply absorbs us. But at last the sulky comes to
+the door; we say good-by with touched full hearts, and pass hummingly
+to appointment No. 2.
+
+This is "Sand Hill," perhaps, or "Mumpson Town," or "Ebenezer," or
+"Dry Pond;" and when we have mustered again in the afternoon, and in
+the evening for the third time, turn Sal's head toward the parsonage,
+and sail along in the night, cold and worn, past fields of stubble,
+over which the wind sweeps, past negro cabins, watching like human
+things upon us, through dreary woods where the tall pines rock against
+the stars and the clouds sail whitely by like witches going to a
+rendezvous, past cheerful homes, gleaming light and rest and worldly
+competence, the owners whereof have heard no deep command to carry the
+gospel into wildernesses, or hearing disobeyed. And all the while our
+father sings softly to himself, looking now and then at us who are his
+cross, and again into the shining constellations which hide his crown.
+
+But we "preacher's sons," by which name we are universally
+distinguished, have our own crosses as well. It is generally agreed
+that much ought to be expected of us and little obtained. Let one of
+us play truant from school, or use a naughty word in play, or make
+marbles a source of revenue, or fight on the common when provoked, or
+steal a cherry, and the fact travels our town over like a telegram. We
+once suffer greatly in repute by selling our neighbor's old iron and
+brass to an itinerant pedler, and are alleged to have run up a debit
+account of one dime with an old negro who sells spruce beer and "horse
+cakes"--whereafter we fail.
+
+The church people, much to our dissatisfaction, present us with
+castaway coats and boots, which we are made to wear, and once or
+twice, when we encounter Margot in this shape, we burst into tears
+and run home to hide our wounded vanity in the stable loft. There, in
+the "mow," while we devise bitter and futile conspiracies against
+society, the mare, munching her fodder, looks up at us with patient
+eyes, as if to say: "Am I not also mortified for the faith?" But we
+are cut to the heart to think that Margot may contrast us with
+better-dressed boys, and therefore think us of little spirit,
+learning, and courage. It is for you, pretty coquette, that we carry
+many scandals and scars! We do not quite love you, Margot; but we are
+foolishly vain and sensitive, and your eyes are very beautiful!
+
+Still we are acknowledged at school to be "smart." All preacher's sons
+are so by common concession, and though we may not visit the circus,
+like others, we get abundance of free tickets for concerts, panoramas,
+and glass-blowers. Once, indeed, the great Chippewa chief,
+Haw-waw-many-squaw, having thrown the town into consternation by
+placards of himself scalping his enemies and smoking their tobacco,
+makes a triumphal entry into the main street at full gallop, and
+pitching his tent before the court-house, walks into the
+parsonage--war plumes, moccasins, and all--gives us complimentary
+seats, and eats the better half of our dinner. This incident is a
+source of pride to ourself beyond any thing experienced by any urchin
+besides. We boast of it frequently, and, being disliked therefor,
+commit several impromptu scalpings on our own account.
+
+Vagabonds unnumbered beg our hospitality, and get it. Some of these it
+would be difficult to determine, either as to profession or
+destination. Many of them are systematic pensioners upon the preacher,
+and plead devotion to our denomination as a means of gaining our
+hearts. They have the gossip of the "Conference" at their tongues'
+ends, and lead our family devotion with the grace and hypocrisy of
+Belial.
+
+The weddings that we hold are frequent and various. Runaway couples
+come to us, blushing and short-winded, satisfy us of their lawful age,
+are united, and pass into the moon, leaving a five-dollar bill behind
+them. We cannot quite find it in our hearts, even at this late day, to
+forgive those numerous candidates for felicity who hold the par value
+of a wedding ceremony to be no more than two dollars. Yet, though we
+grieve to admit it, two dollars is the average fee. At one time the
+negro population, anxious to be wived by a white preacher, makes
+inroads upon us _en masse_ to the detriment of decorum and our
+carpets. We summarily shut down upon this business when we find that
+their fees come to but half a dollar a pair.
+
+However, the year drifts by, and we are greatly concerned to know if
+it is the sentiment of Swan Neck that we shall continue its pastor
+another year. Old Yeasty, Margot's father, as we are aware, feels
+himself slighted because we do not call upon him of Sundays to make
+the closing prayers; for Yeasty's prayer is a sermon under another
+name, and runs the morning into twilight; but a sly compliment that we
+pay him in a diplomatic sermon at the end of the conference year
+brings him round all right, and back we go to Swan Neck.
+
+So with burying the dead and writing their obituaries; making the
+babes pure with that holy sprinkling which gives them, dying early, to
+a Christian immortality; launching our thunders upon the bold,
+softening the hearts of the errant, mingling with our unbending creed
+the more pliable ethics of worldly graces, and, in a word, walking
+like Saint John on the savage border of civilization, to thrill the
+brutal and unlettered with the tidings of one just day to come--our
+itinerant lives drift on till the marble slab in the meeting-house
+wall writes the itinerant's only human memorial.
+
+We have dreamed our last. Burst from the narrow chrysalis which we
+would gladly rebuild again, the seething, churning sea is before us
+and around us; we only catch, like the strains of bells through the
+fog, the hum of hymns, the drowsy murmur of the buzzing
+Sabbath-school, and the nasal ring of the itinerant's summer sermon.
+Margot is married to Chough, our whilom colleague, and makes her
+migration in his Bedouin train, and does not know how once she
+thrilled us. The tuning-fork is rusty, and the chorister in his coffin
+may hear, if he can, his successor stirring the birds in the roof with
+his sonorous melody. All are at rest, and we live on--moving, moving,
+moving--so deeply fastened into our natures are our early instincts;
+but every night we say the same parsonage prayer, and every morning
+look upon the wall where hangs the grave, grim features we revere--the
+Itinerant Preacher.
+
+
+
+
+CHESTER RIVER.
+
+
+    Wise is the wild duck winging straight to thee,
+    River of summer! from the cold Arctic sea,
+    Coming, like his fathers for centuries, to seek
+    The sweet, salt pastures of the far Chesapeake.
+
+    Soft 'twixt thy capes like sunset's purple coves,
+    Shallow the channel glides through silent oyster groves,
+    Round Kent's ancient isle, and by beaches brown,
+    Cleaving the fruity farms to slumb'rous Chestertown.
+
+    Long ere the great bay bore the Baltimores,
+    Yielded thy virgin tide to Virginian oars;
+    Elsewhere the word went, "Multiply! increase!"
+    Long ago thy destinies were perfect as thy peace.
+
+    Still, like thy water-fowl, dearly do I yearn,
+    In memory's migration once more to return,
+    Where the dull old college from the gentle ridge,
+    O'erlooks the sunny village, the river, and the bridge.
+
+    On the pier decrepit I do loiter yet,
+    With my crafty crab-lines and my homespun net,
+    Till the silver fishes in pools of twilight swam,
+    And stars played round my bait in the coves of calm.
+
+    Sweet were the chinquapins growing by thy brink,
+    Sweet the cool spring-water in the gourd to drink,
+    Beautiful the lilies when the tide declined,
+    As if night receding had left some stars behind.
+
+    But when the peach tints vanished from the plain,
+    Or struggled no longer the shad against the seine,
+    Every reed in thy march into music stirred,
+    And to gold it blossomed in a singing bird.
+
+    Eden of water-fowl! clinging to thy dells
+    Ages of mollusks have yielded their shells,
+    While, like the exquisite spirits they shed,
+    Ride the white swans in the surface o'erhead.
+
+    Silent the otter, stealing by thy moon,
+    Through the fluttered heron, hears the cry of the loon;
+    Motionless the setter in thy dawnlight gray
+    Shows the happy hidden cove where the wild duck play.
+
+    Homely are thy boatmen, venturing no more
+    In their dusky pungies than to Baltimore,
+    Happy when the freshet from northern mountains sweeps,
+    And strews the bay with lumber like wrecks upon the deeps.
+
+    Not for thy homesteads of a former space,
+    Not for thy folk of supposititious race;
+    Something I love thee, river, for thy rest,
+    More for my childhood buried in thy breast.
+
+    From the mightier empire of the solid land,
+    A pilgrim infrequent I seek thy fertile strand,
+    And with a calm affection would wish my grave to be
+    Where falls the Chester to the bay, the bay unto the sea.
+
+
+
+
+OLD WASHINGTON ALMSHOUSE.
+
+
+A stranger in Washington, looking down the wide outer avenue named
+"Massachusetts," which goes bowling from knoll to knoll and disappears
+in the unknown hills of the east, has no notion that it leads
+anywhere, and gives up the conundrum. On the contrary, it points
+straight to the Washington Asylum, better known as the District
+Poor-House, an institution to become hereafter conspicuous to every
+tourist who shall prefer the Baltimore and Potomac to the Baltimore
+and Ohio Railroad; for the new line crosses the Eastern Branch by a
+pile-bridge nearly in the rear of the poor-house, and let us hope that
+when the whistle, like
+
+          "the pibroch's music, thrills
+    To the heart of those lone hills,"
+
+the dreary banks and bluffs of the Eastern Branch will show more
+frequent signs of habitation and visitation.
+
+To visit the poor-house one must have a "permit" from the mayor,
+physician, or a poor commissioner. Provided with this, he will follow
+out Pennsylvania Avenue over Capitol Hill, until nearly at the brink
+of the Anacostia or Eastern Branch, when by the oblique avenue called
+"Georgia" he will pass to his right the Congressional burying-ground,
+and arriving at the powder magazine in front, draw up at the almshouse
+gate, a mile and a quarter from the palace of Congress.
+
+It is a smart brick building, four stories high, with green trimmings,
+standing on the last promontory of some grassy commons beloved of
+geese and billygoats. The short, black cedars, which appear to be a
+species of vegetable crape, give a stubby look of grief to the region
+round the poor-house, and, thickest at the Congressional Cemetery,
+screen from the paupers the view of the city. Across the plains, once
+made populous by army hospitals, few objects move except funeral
+processions, creeping toward the graveyard or receding at a merry
+gait, and occasional pensioners, out on leave, coming home dutifully
+to their bed of charity. The report of some sportsman's gun, where he
+is rowing in the marshes of the gray river, sometimes raises echoes in
+the high hills and ravines of the other shore, where, many years ago,
+the rifles of Graves and Cilley were heard by every partisan in the
+land. Now the tall forts, raised in the war, are silent and deserted;
+the few villas and farm-houses look from their background of pine upon
+the smart edifice on the city shore, and its circle of hospitals
+nearer the water, and its small-pox hospital a little removed, and
+upon the dead-house and the Potter's Field at the river brink. We all
+know the melancholy landscape of a poor-house.
+
+The Potter's Field preceded the poor-house on this site by many years.
+The almshouse was formerly erected on M Street, between Sixth and
+Seventh, and, being removed here, it burned to the ground in the month
+of March, fourteen years ago, when the present brick structure was
+raised. The entire premises, of which the main part is the almshouse
+garden, occupy less than fifty acres, and the number of inmates is
+less than two hundred, the females preponderating in the proportion of
+three to one. Under the same roof are the almshouse and the
+work-house, the inmates of the former being styled "Infirmants," and
+of the latter "Penitents." The government of the institution is vested
+in three commissioners, to whom is responsible the intendent, Mr.
+Joseph F. Hodgson, a very cheerful and practical-looking "Bumble."
+
+Every Wednesday the three commissioners meet at this almshouse and
+receive the weekly reports of the intendent, physician, and gardener.
+Once every year these officers, and the matron, wagoner, and baker are
+elected. Sixteen ounces of bread and eight ounces of beef are the
+ration of the district pauper. The turnkey, gate-keeper, chief
+watchmen, and chief nurses, are selected from the inmates. The gates
+are closed at sunset, and the lights go out at eight P.M. all
+winter. The inmates wear a uniform, labelled in large letters
+"Work-house," or "Washington Asylum."
+
+The poor-house is an institution coeval with the capital. We are told
+that while crabbed old Davy Burns, the owner of the most valuable part
+of the site of Washington City, was haggling with General Washington
+over his proportion of lots, his neglected and intemperate brother,
+Tommy, was an inmate of the poor-house.
+
+Thus, while the Romulus of the place married his daughter to a
+Congressman, and was buried in a "mausoleum" on H Street, Remus died
+without the walls and mingled his ashes, perhaps, with paupers.
+
+The vaunted metropolis of the republican hopes of mankind--for such
+was Washington, the fabulous city, advertised and praised in every
+capital of Western Europe--drew to its site artists, adventurers, and
+speculators from all lands. From Thomas Law, a secretary of Warren
+Hastings, who wasted the earnings of India on enterprises here, to a
+Frenchman who died on the guillotine for practising with an infernal
+machine upon the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the long train of
+pilgrims came and saw and despaired, and many of them, perhaps, lie in
+the Potter's Field. Old books and newspapers, chary on such personal
+questions, contain occasional references as to some sculptor's
+suicide, or to the straits of this or that French officer, a claimant
+about Congress; and we know that Major L'Enfant, who conceived the
+plan of the place, sought refuge with a pitying friend and died here
+penniless. The long war of twenty years in Europe brought to America
+thousands in search of safety and rest, and to these the magnetism of
+the word "capital" was often the song of the siren wiling them to the
+poor-house. By the time Europe had wearied of the sword, the fatality
+attending high living, large slave-tilled estates, the love of
+official society, and the defective education of the young men of
+tide-water Virginia and Maryland, produced a new class of native-born
+errants and broken profligates at Washington, and many a life whose
+memories began with a coach-and-four and a park of deer ended them
+between the coverlets of a poor-house bed. The old times were, after
+all, very hollow times! We are fond of reading about the hospitality
+of the Madisonian age, but could so many have accepted it if all were
+prosperous?
+
+In our time, work being the fate and the redemption of us all, the
+District Almshouse contains few government employés. Now and then, as
+Mr. Hodgson told us, some clerk, spent with sickness or exhausted by
+evil indulgences, takes the inevitable road across the vacant plains
+and eats his pauper ration in silence or in resignation; but the age
+is better, not, perhaps, because the heart of man is changed, but in
+that society is organized upon truer principles of honor, of
+manfulness, and of labor. The class of well-bred young men who are
+ashamed to admit that they must earn their living, and who affect the
+company of gamesters and chicken-fighters, has some remnants left
+among us, but they find no aliment in the public sentiment, and hear
+no response in the public tone. Duelling is over; visiting one's
+relatives as a profession is done; thrift is no more a reproach, and
+even the reputation of being a miser is rather complimentary to a man.
+The worst chapters of humanity in America are those narrating the
+indigence of the old agricultural families on the streams of the
+Chesapeake; the quarterly sale of a slave to supply the demands of a
+false understanding of generosity; the inhuman revelling of one's
+friends upon the last possessions of his family, holding it to be a
+jest to precipitate his ruin; the wild orgies held on the glebe of
+some old parish church, horses hitched to the gravestones, and punch
+mixed in the baptismal font; and at the last, delirium, impotence,
+decay! Let those who would understand it read Bishop Meade, or descend
+the Potomac and Rappahannock, even at this day, and cross certain
+thresholds.
+
+The Washington poor-house seems to be well-arranged, except in one
+respect: under the same roof, divided only by a partition and a
+corridor, the vicious are lodged for punishment and the unfortunate
+for refuge.
+
+We passed through a part of the building where, among old, toothless
+women, semi-imbecile girls--the relicts of error, the heirs of
+affliction--three babies of one mother were in charge of a strong,
+rosy Irish nurse. Two of them, twins, were in her lap, and a third
+upon the floor halloaing for joy. Such noble specimens of childhood we
+had never seen; heads like Cæsar's, eyes bright as the depths of wells
+into which one laughs and receives his laughter back, and the
+complexions and carriage of high birth. The woman was suckling them
+all, and all crowed alternately, so that they made the bare floors and
+walls light up as with pictures. A few yards off, though out of
+hearing, were the thick forms of criminals, drunkards, wantons, and
+vagrants, seen through the iron bars of their wicket, raising the
+croon and song of an idle din, drumming on the floor, or moving to and
+fro restlessly. Beneath this part of the almshouse were cells where
+bad cases were locked up. The association of the poor and the wicked
+affected us painfully.
+
+Strolling into the syphilitic wards, where, in the awful contemplation
+of their daily, piecemeal decay, the silent victims were stretched all
+day upon their cots; among the idiotic and the crazed; into the
+apartments of the aged poor, seeing, let us hope, blessed visions of
+life beyond these shambles; and drinking in, as we walked, the solemn
+but needful lesson of our own possibilities and the mutations of our
+nature, we stood at last among the graves of the almshouse dead--those
+who have escaped the dissecting-knife. Scattered about, with little
+stones and mounds here and there, under the occasional sullen green of
+cedars, a dead-cart and a spade sticking up as symbols, and the
+neglected river, deserted as the Styx, plashing against the low banks,
+we felt the sobering melancholy of the spot and made the prayer of
+"Give me neither poverty nor riches!"
+
+1871.
+
+
+
+
+OLD ST. MARY'S.
+
+
+    This is the river. Like Southampton water
+    It enters broadly in the woody lands,
+    As if to break a continent asunder,
+    And sudden ceasing, lo! the city stands:
+    St. Mary's--stretching forth its yellow hands
+    Of beach, beneath the bluff where it commands
+    In vision only; for the fields are green
+    Above the pilgrims. Pleasant is the place;
+    No ruin mars its immemorial face.
+    As young as in virginity renewed,
+    Its widow's sorrows gone without a trace,
+    And tempting man to woo its solitude.
+
+    The river loves it, and embraces still
+    Its comely form with two small arms of bay,
+    Whereon, of old, the Calvert's pinnace lay,
+    The Dove--dear bird!--the olive in its bill,
+    That to the Ark returned from every gale
+    And found a haven by this sheltering hill.[4]
+
+    Lo! all composed, the soft horizons lie
+    Afloat upon the blueness of the coves,
+    And sometimes in the mirage does the sky
+    Seem to continue the dependent groves,
+    And draw in the canoe that careless roves
+    Among the stars repeated round the bow.
+    Far off the larger sails go down the world,
+    For nothing worldly sees St. Mary's now;
+    The ancient windmills all their sails have furled,
+    The standards of the Lords of Baltimore,
+    And they, the Lords, have passed to their repose;
+    And nothing sounds upon the pebbly shore
+    Except thy hidden bell, Saint Inigo's.
+
+[Footnote 4: The Catholic settlers of Maryland had a ship called The
+Ark, and a pinnace called The Dove.]
+
+    There in a wood the Jesuits' chapel stands
+    Amongst the gravestones, in secluded calm.
+    But, Sabbath days, the censer's healing balm,
+    The Crucified with His extended hands,
+    And music of the masses, draw the fold
+    Back to His worship, as in days of old.
+
+    Upon a cape the priest's house northward blinks,
+    To see St. Mary's Seminary guard
+    The dead that sleep within the parish yard,
+    In English faith--the parish church that links
+    The present with the perished, for its walls
+    Are of the clay that was the capital's,
+    When halberdiers and musketeers kept ward,
+    And armor sounded in the oaken halls.
+
+    A fruity smell is in the school-house lane;
+    The clover bees are sick with evening heats;
+    A few old houses from the window pane
+    Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats
+    The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets,
+    And clangorous music of the oyster tongs,
+    Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats,
+    And sound of seine drawn home with negro songs.
+
+    Night falls as heavily in such a clime
+    As tired childhood after all day's play,
+    Waiting for mother who has passed away,
+    And some old nurse, with iterated rhyme
+    Of hymns or topics of the olden time,
+    Lulls wonder with her tenderness to rest:
+    So, old St. Mary's! at the close of day,
+    Sing thou to me, a truant, on thy breast.
+
+
+
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